This doesn't strike me as flippant at all, and I'm grateful for your thoughts.
My own thinking isn't that far from yours. Suicide strikes me as grotesque-- but then, suicide in my time and place has a very different meaning from that of Seneca's. In modern America, suicide is nearly always a desperate act by a person undergoing some kind of internal torment. I suppose the archetypal modern example is Kurt Cobain-- or maybe I'm showing my age. Given the sort of background we share, I'm sure you've lost friends to this sort of suicide, as I have.
What about a different type of suicide, such as Cato's? Would that feel different? Are there any modern examples of it? The only one that comes to mind is Salvador Allende. What if Donald Trump committed suicide on the White House lawn, rather than submit to Joe Biden?
Hmm. I'm now remembering the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves to protest the Vietnam War. Whatever else we can say about it, these sorts of suicides are different from suicides of despair; they feel different; they don't provoke-- in me, at least-- the same horror and revulsion.
In the end, I don't have a conclusion or an answer. I just want to think about the question.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 02:56 pm (UTC)My own thinking isn't that far from yours. Suicide strikes me as grotesque-- but then, suicide in my time and place has a very different meaning from that of Seneca's. In modern America, suicide is nearly always a desperate act by a person undergoing some kind of internal torment. I suppose the archetypal modern example is Kurt Cobain-- or maybe I'm showing my age. Given the sort of background we share, I'm sure you've lost friends to this sort of suicide, as I have.
What about a different type of suicide, such as Cato's? Would that feel different? Are there any modern examples of it? The only one that comes to mind is Salvador Allende. What if Donald Trump committed suicide on the White House lawn, rather than submit to Joe Biden?
Hmm. I'm now remembering the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves to protest the Vietnam War. Whatever else we can say about it, these sorts of suicides are different from suicides of despair; they feel different; they don't provoke-- in me, at least-- the same horror and revulsion.
In the end, I don't have a conclusion or an answer. I just want to think about the question.