Lots of talk about suicide since a great man chose to end his life recently. Before I get into this I want to relate my own personal story. My son Joel was born at the base hospital in Camp Lejeune North Carolina in 1958. It was my first duty assignment after Marine Corps Officer's Basic School in Quantico, Va.
In 1981 he committed suicide. We do not know the reason. He left two thick journals and we still don't know the reason. I won't go into details because I have a message to convey. I will say that the threat of nuclear war and the threat of Ronald Raygun were on his mind. He wrote a couple of songs to sing as he played his guitar. They were about those two threats.
Suicide is a very broad concept. Instantaneous forms are clear cut. The slow forms are more subtle. There are many ways of ending your life even some forms of gambling with it. Since we all will die eventually, the way we do it can be complicated. Read on below and I'll explain what I am hinting at so far.
Let's skip the quick ways for they are not relevant to my point here. Let's rather think about poison as a metaphor. Some poisons are quick but others need time to build up and finally accomplish irreversible damage that ultimately ends life.
I won't name a specific substance but you get the idea. Some poisons are not really avoidable in our present civilization yet we can live with them in us for a long time. Others work quicker or circumstances can cause a greater than normal exposure. It is rather normal for our exposure to poison to begin at conception. One can read some good books about this.
Many people develop habits that poison them. Often there is a great deal of denial wrapped up in their dealings with the issue. Closely connected is the addiction to some forms of poison. Denial and addiction go hand in hand.
That brings us to my point. We as a species are addicted to a way of life that is a great threat to our well being as individuals and as a species. The way we live creates many threats to our survival and often accelerates the process of dying.
Now we are experiencing an obvious threat in the form of Global Warming and Climate Change. We write about the coming collapse of civilization and mass extinctions.
We are addicts and we have been in denial. The obvious deniers are not alone. We all live in a way that is bring about the events we are are discussing more and more. We can't seem to grasp the fact that we all are involved in making it happen. We want to change the way we live but can we?
The irony and symbolism of one man's suicide at a time like this should not escape us. We have an arrogance as a species that is rather ironic. We see ourselves as so clever yet we fail to see how limited that cleverness really is.
We have come to a point where the best hope for a political system that is capable of being just and humane is clearly a pipe dream. We have a technology that makes a modern form of magic yet it controls us rather than we control it. We have religions that seem to produce instability and division rather than unity and empathy.
Are we suicidal? I wonder what an alien would think about what we are. I am at the last part of my life and have been able to accomplish much. My quest for knowledge drove my scientific career and my my love of life drove my painting. I have loved and been loved. I write these things now for it seems clear that we have no answers to the question of suicide. We seem to only be able to chose the speed with which we let the poison work. We have set into motion processes that will limit that choice. Future generations are beginning to see what is in store. I hope it does not cause them to opt for quicker ways to end life. There is still much to be gained from living. I am in no hurry to go. Were I writing this decades hence I might see it differently. Who knows?