Who is more selfish- me or the suicude jumper?

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My wife just called asked me to check the traffic on I-75 as it was unusually bad for 9:00AM. Well, there was no report so we concluded it must be something that had just occurred.

As we were about to hang up she completely freaked out because she had just passed by a guy that had jumped off the overpass, had been hit by a car and was missing his arm. I thought she had just been involved in a terrible accident which had me freaking out.

My question:Is it jealous to call the suicide jumper a complete a-hole and selfish for this act? My reasoning:

1. The person who hit the jumper and the people that pass by are affected for life. My wife is pulled over right now and I am sure is starting to have a panic attack. I am sure I will have to go pick her up.

2. Not only are these people mentally affected by the jumper, there is probably damage to the people's cars.

Yes suicide is selfish, but this has to be one of the most selfish ways to kill one self and it pisses me off.
 
If someone was being tortured mercilessly by his/her captor and eventually decided to take their own life to ease the suffering, Would you call them selfish? That is what suicide is in a nutshell IMO. The disturbing image your spouse saw is terrible but nothing compared to the hell the deceased experienced before dying. Both of you should be thankful you don't have to suffer the way that person suffered. The only selfishness I see here is yours.

I don't mean to be harsh but you asked.
 
No tin all instances, but I'm inclined to believe that many of those who commit suicide actually do it for the selfish purpose of inflicting permanent guilt on others.


A sort of "See what you made/drove me to do??!" kind of thing.

In those instances, yes, it is absolutely a selfish feat.
 
I think the OP is suggesting that it is selfish to commit suicide by jumping from an overpass onto a congested highway - thus endangering the lives and property of others.
Which I would have to agree with.
 
Yeah, I don't think he was suggesting that the act of suicide alone is inherently selfish. The method in which he chose to do it, jumping off a bridge into the middle of rush hour traffic and effing up everybody else's day/life, was extremely selfish.
 
I'm sorry that the trials of one troubled soul inconvenienced your wife. I hope she's somehow able to recover.
 
Before you kill yourself, just think "would I want to clean this up?" Adjust your method accordingly.
 
It all may be a moot point as it appears that the man who jumped was a woman. And she was not suicidal, but suffering from some form of mental delusions or other conditions. This according to the Dallas Morning News.

That said, every suicide victim has a different story. Those who do it to inflict guilt, or those who take others with them in the process, have no words to accurately describe their cowardice. But some are just sad ends to sad situations. My grandfather committed suicide. For twenty years he lived with a terrible loneliness after his wife of 50 years died. They were teenagers when they got married and he quite simply missed her more than he could take. We were not expecting it, but when he did it we were not surprised. And we certainly don't think he was selfish. He waited for nature to take its course as long as he could bear. So we should not be to judgmental. We should instead be thankful we don't fully understand the pain, or experience conditions so unbearable, that would make us come to the conclusion that dying is better.
 
A high percentage of suicides involve people that are mentally ill. You cant honestly say how you would handle their situation as you've never experienced visions that arent there, heard voices telling you to do things, lived in darkness and despair, etc.

Much like the example above of someone being tortured and ending their own suffer, you dont know what you would do until its you being tortured.
 
First of all, it's a little hard to conjure up a lot of sympathy is you were posting on Hornfans instead of talking to your wife.

Second, people who commit suicide are almost uniformly mentally ill. If you've ever encountered someone who has truly lost the will to live, it's really striking. They just don't see any way that their life will ever be even a tiny bit happy. So, is it selfish? Maybe, but I think it's pretty clear that if someone is so ill that they consider suicide they probably shouldn't be held to the same standards of empathy as the rest of us.
 
On TV they had a story of an attempted suicide. It was a female model whose boyfriend had dumped her for being shallow and selfish and her mother was on her case. So she jumped into her Porsche (or some similar expensive sports car) and goes tearing through town at 100+ mph and intentionally rams a car at a stop light going that fast, hoping to die. She admits all of this. Of course all 4 people in the car are killed, but the model lives, just horribly disfigured. That is one of the most screwed up stories I have ever seen. Hard to feel sorry for her. Those she killed were all nice guys, some with families. She gets prosecuted for murder, then tries to lie her way out. Her confession had been detailed and videotaped. So she gets to be a disfigured model in prison, instead of a rich good looking model. One with blood on her hands.
 
because I believe Jesus died for me so that i could live, i choose life. everything happens for a reason. i think suicide is selfish and cowardly. losing a loved one is very hard, but that loved one doesn't want you moping around the rest of your life. they want you to be happy. you'll be with them again.

i was suicidal at a young age. i remember sitting in my parents closet with my dad's gun he kept on the top shelf and putting it in my mouth.

my dog, only a puppy at the time, walked into the closet. she turned her head and eyes were all watery. i'd never thought so long and hard about anything in my life. i pictured my funeral and all i could see was my mom just bawling her eyes out and my dad crying with her and holding her. it made me cry and i couldn't do that to them.

i've gone through depressions a few times since then, but suicide is something i'll never have a thought process about again. i know more about my life and why i'm here than i did as a kid.
 
Some of you people are totally off in my opinion.

Read stories about suicide clusters and the like. It isn't all (or even many times most) mentally ill people.

There was an island where virtually nobody ever committed suicide. Then, one dude does it and all of a sudden everyone (like 10% is doing it). Also, a football team in maine had a rash like this. I believe the article was in, of all cases, SI.

And suicide is a selfish act in so many cases. The one or two times I actually thought about it (only for a nanosecond and never took any steps) the fantasy was more about how people who had done me wrong would feel so bad.
 
Just remembered. It was Malcolm Gladwells book (an awesome read- as was his latest outlyers) THE Tipping Point.

Read the chapter on suicide
 
i agree with you Wulaw....of COURSE it is selfish for someone to commit suicide in the way you described. even if they are mentally ill, they have committed an incredibly selfish act. that doesn't mean i don't feel very sad for them and for their loved ones, but your question was whether they were selfish to commit suicide. i would say in many cases suicide is purely selfish, but in the case you described it is overwhelmingly selfish.

that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't have compassion on such people, just that they are selfish to commit suicide in such a way.
 
I don't disagree about compassion, it's just that I question the idea of mentally ill people being the predominant suicide people. I think that the suicide clusters would dispute that.
 
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