Just a thought to ponder on…a bit maudlin perhaps but I thought I’d ask the wise folks of LB…
Is suicide only an act of the unbalanced or can it be a considered act of the rational as well?
No need to panic I am not standing on a window sill as we speak just contemplating the philosphic implications.
blimey you need to get a new job!
It depends on what you class as sane, and insane…
Sorry, I mis-remembered your words… it depends on what you class as rational and irrational mind.
Same as sanity I suppose…
Funny, I was thinking similar questions the other day… must be the time of the year or something!
Any sane person who is low enough in life could commit suicide…:crying:
Quite interesting reading if you google suicide + rational
suicide could be seen as a way of taking control of your ‘life’ when you feel particularly out of control. That is, you are deciding consciously to end it. It could be argued it is an irrational response which is made rationally.
I think I need a lay day after that - my brain hurts
People commit suicide more through depression than through insanity I thought?
As regards rationality, a rational decision for one person in one state of mind is an irrational decision for another person in another state of mind. The finality of suicide would suggest that whether it came about by a rational or irrational decision is immaterial- either way the protagonist ends up dead.
The problem really is that no-one lives in a vacuum and however convinced the suicidal person is that it’s the right thing for them to do at the time it’s the people around them who are going to suffer when they’re gone and to my mind that makes it a wrong decision, rational or not. Unless you have never had any contact with another human being then ‘autonomy’ is not really an option.
I’m not sure you could describe someone as rational if they were thinking of committing suicide. How can you be thinking in a rational way, if you think that the best solution for a problem is to end your life? I know it’s not as clear cut as that, but then I just can’t get my head around anybody with a healthy body wanting to kill themselves! Personally, I think that if you are that unhappy with your life you should change your curcumstances. Whether it’s money problems, family issues, work or whatever, everybody is capable of changing their situation. It’s a question of whether you are strong enough to do it! Everyone is a potential victim, but not everyone is a potential survivor! It’s a matter of strength of the mind!
I have a friend called Anthony, who went through a couple of years of depression. It varied from day to day, sometimes he was fine, others he would be at the verge of suicide. He actually tried it twice! Thankfully, he decided to end it with pill’s rather than the tall building approach. I think he did it more as a cry for help than anything else, as both times he called close friends and told them what he’d done, and both times he was taken to hospital in plenty of time. He’s over it all now, thankfully he’s one of the luckier ones! 
On the same subject, but a bit more controversial, I must admit that I do think the terminally ill should have the choice of euthanasia. Why should they have to go through the pain and indignity of a terminal disease in it’s later stages? You wouldn’t put your family pet through all that pain, so why would you do it to your family?
Good, thought provoking topic! 
Depends on whether you consider emotions rational or irrational and at what point they change from the one to the other.
Whether something is rational or not is (imho) more to do with whether it follows a structured and consistent approach.
The Nazis were rational when they packed people off to the camps. They may well have been completely insane, but within the framework of that insanity they were acting rationally.
People who purposefully drive in the middle lane of a motorway “because it’s safer” are being rational within the context of what they believe. Their belief may well be unfounded, but that doesn’t affect whether they are being rational or not.
If I believed there was a real possibility of monsters being under my bed, then I would be irrational not to check for them before getting in. This rational behavior may give my nearest and dearest cause to try to get me to go and see a mental health professional, but it would still be rational behaviour on my part to check for the monsters.
I agree that whether something is rational or not is subjective (or objective) but unlike Benelli I wouldn’t consider the Nazis actions rational. They would have needed to have based their actions on reason rather than on emotion for that to have been the case.
horrible subject…
one thats a bit to close for comfort for me, for what sits worth there is no way someone who commits suicide is thinking rationally.
If i had a bike accident, lost my legs, the ability to sh*g the mrs, lost my job and developed a slow and painful form of terminal cancer, i would make the rational decision to end my life early. Does that make me insane? Discuss…
But I think that’s just what they were doing. Hence the popularity of cod-“sciences” like eugenics which seek to give a rational basis for it all.
If The Daily Mail truly believes that there are hordes of immigrants coming to steal our jobs and our women, and that this is the biggest worry in current-day UK, it IS acting rationally by making sure that every day’s front page headline features that threat. This applies whether or not they are correct or incorrect in their beliefs.
I don’t agree. Maybe there is a confusion over the semantics here. I thought that someone acting ‘rationally’ meant ‘in a way based on reason rather than emotions’. This would preclude emotive Daily Mail headlines. I’m not a historian but my understanding was that Nazism sprung from a particularly emotive form of nationalism. To be truly rational you have to be devoid of emotion and coming back to the original thread, this could not usually be said of the suicidal.
That must be Benidorm!
I think we’re agreeing (on the definition), except that I’m saying that “unusual” behaviour is often rational TO THE PERSON EXHIBITING THE UNUSUAL BEHAVIOUR (sorry for the caps, just trying to emphasise). Using my earlier example, the Daily Mail would actually believe that we’re being overrun by immigrants. In that case, the logical thing to do is to shout it from the rooftops to try to draw attention to it. And, in my definition, that would be rational. There’s no emotional side to it. Emotional behaviour in that sense would see the editor of the DM so overwhelmed with rage/sadness/whatever, that they were unable to write the headlines because they’d broken their hand by punching the desk, or the nearest immigrant, in an emotional fit.To take the example of autistic behaviour (soory to be so gloomy, but there’s a flyer for Rain Man on my colleague’s desk), they are being extremely rational when they do all the things which seem “odd” to non-autistics. It’s just that their value system sometimes doesn’t overlap with the majority and so their rational behaviour can seem irrational. If I always eat my carrots last, because I consider it wrong to mix orange food with any other colour food, then that’s rational for me. It may be odd to you, but it’s rational to me. On the other hand, if I were to insist on eating my carrots last today, but tomorrow I’m happy to mix them up with the other food, then I’d probably say I’m not being rational.
“Benidorm” naaaaa Ibiza mate now thats INSANE:D:w00t:
