On Euthanasia and Suicide-Bombers

I previously defined suicide as “the successful act of deliberately killing oneself.” Some questioned how it could possibly be anything else, and that question I will now answer by providing a different definition:

Suicide is the choice to kill one’s body with the objective being that of killing one’s body.

This is a more convoluted definition than the other one, and the distinctions are significant, because in further exploring the topic I have to ask: are cases of “suicide bombing” or “euthanasia out of desperation” really suicide?

If a man (let’s call him Aiden) is in so much pain that he seeks his own death, is he really seeking suicide—or is he only seeking to stop the pain, with death being the cost he is willing to pay?

If a woman (let’s call her Sophia) wants to defend her friends and family, and is ordered to do so by someone she regards as a legitimate spiritual leader, is she really seeking suicide or is she a political radical who is willing to ensure her political goals at any cost?

I am not adding quotation marks to the last two paragraphs to make them rhetorical questions, where the answer is “obviously” no—I regard them as legitimate questions.

I would like to start by looking at the case of Aiden. Aiden has been diagnosed with a disease that [is terminal / isn’t terminal] and causes him an excruciating amount of pain every moment of every day. As one of the people responding to my previous essay asked me, “How many DECADES of endless mental anguish will you put up with before you decide it's just not going to get better?”

Yet, based on what I know and do not know, I cannot help but feel that whether mental anguish will “get better” or not simply isn’t relevant. Death does not make things better. If after life there is only oblivion, oblivion cannot be said to be “better” than endless pain. This line of thought is itself full of presuppositions that are part of a particular cosmogony: that pain is bad because pain is bad, that pain is bad because it is the worst of all things, that pain is bad because it hurts. I don’t like pain, I don’t like sadness, I don’t like pain, and in that sense it is “bad” to me too. But, even if pain does not ever “get better” – is that to say then that feeling nothing is “better” than pain? I do not believe that it is.

Aiden does not have to believe in the afterlife to commit suicide. Aiden does not have to believe in anything to commit suicide. Aiden can commit suicide for any number of reasons. Aiden might not care what he is running to—it might be that Aiden is running away from his pain. Once again we return to the “escape” metaphor, as seen in countless variants, including the Schopenhauer version I briefly discussed in the previous essay. Admittedly, if Aiden is so blinded by pain, my words are likely to have no impact on him. If Aiden is blinded by pain, then it may very well fall to a doctor or some other caregiver to decide whether to help him in his pleas to “escape the pain.” Drugs can only go so far, after all. We do not have illimitable dominion over the human body, we cannot turn pain on and off like a light switch. Should a doctor have the right to kill a man who seeks it? Should a man be denied the right to have a doctor kill him if he seeks death?

I do believe that doctor-assisted death is something that should be available to someone who desires it. Man often needs instruments to carry out his will; one man who wants to kill himself uses a gun. Yet a doctor is not a gun—a doctor is sworn to protect the man he takes care of and his body. A doctor has a will of his own.

If I sought death, if I was in pain, then it’s entirely possible I would greatly appreciate something as seen in “Soylent Green.” No, I am not referring to the consumption of Soylent Green, but instead to the scene where Sol (Edward G. Robinson) is killed by his own request. He walks into a room, is assisted into a bed, and has the opportunity to listen to soothing music and watch a short film that he finds pleasant while a substance kills him mostly painlessly. Yet, the ritual need not even be so elaborate. The bottom line, even if it were in a grotesque, painful manner, I would not want to be denied my right to die. I do not know of anything wrong with suicide. And I do not feel it is right to deny that right to Aiden.

The implications of this do not go unnoticed. Far more people, after all, attempt and fail to kill themselves then actually do so. For those that do not really seek death but instead want attention, or want love, or for whom the attempt to commit suicide is something they generally will regret—would not a doctor helping, with his superior skill, make it so that those that don’t “really” want to kill themselves would be killed?

I am not wholly satisfied with the answer countries whom currently support doctor assisted death give to this question. Generally, those who propose doctor-assisted death do so with the requirement that such assistance only be given if a subject is already terminally ill. This seems like a policy that comes more out of deference to the doctors and their Hippocratic Oath than it is out of deference to those who seek death.

Doctors have means of killing which ensure a more painless death than anything one can achieve without access to certain chemicals. Although not universal, men tend to try to make things quick and immediate, hoping the pain will be over before they really have to suffer, whereas women will take their chances with sometimes slower means that will have hopefully less pain. Sleeping pills are a very difficult means, since the body might automatically reject them, leaving permanent organ damage if the attempt is not successful. Other means take long enough that one might change their mind half-way through. There are few sure-fire methods of death, and many of the methods available, if the attempt is not successful, will leave a person in incredible pain and far more “invalid” than they were before.

But I am also hard-pressed to say that there is anything “right” or “good” or “correct” about suicide for anyone, ever, just as I do not believe it is “wrong” or “bad” or “incorrect,” at least in any sort of universal or abstract sense. I know I have a body, I know my body feels pain, and I value my body and my life. I know that death will destroy my body and that the process of dying might be quite painful. But death is the question I raise at the moment, not “dying” which itself implies death as an endpoint. I cannot make an appeal against suicide on the grounds that there is some sort of reason not linked in the body, and in the mind of the individual, that it is wrong.

This is not to say that you cannot, or should not, convince a person not to commit suicide. People are talked down, and for many—to them, they made the right choice. They reconciled themselves to their life. For me, it is good and right to live, to be happy and to live well, and had I been “talked down from the ledge” earlier in my life I would be thankful to the person who did so now.


Sophia is a very different case than Aiden. It seems that Sophia does not think about her death, even though a bomb is strapped to her chest and she is about to kill a dozen people in an attack that she believes is in defense of her home. Perhaps she wants to be a hero. My description of her might make you believe she is a terrorist. What I would like to emphasize about her condition is that she is a person willing to sacrifice her life for something.

What are the grounds on which someone should, or will, value their own life and body less than an abstraction, a promise, a hope, or a belief? A US soldier captured may be temped to destroy themselves rather than risk confessing something under duress. Is it suicide if a man jumps on Sophia as her bomb explodes in the hope it will dampen the blast? In the first definition, yes—his actions caused his death, it was suicide. In the second definition, it is not—it is sacrifice.

One of the most difficult cases of suicide to confront on an abstract bases are the newish vein of media suicides, assaults on schools and other locales as an assault on their peers, as an assault on “society.” They know that their attack will not kill enough people to make any sort of lasting change. But, they hope that the media reporting of their violence will result in change.

In trying to understand the crimes and the causes that have been committed, some measure of the goals of such people is achieved. Their words and actions are reproduced digitally for all to see, even when broadcast media tries to avoid doing so. Killers post threats or videos online. Some send packages to media outlets.

How do we respond to such tragedies? We may very much feel that they are wrong. I do not believe that random acts of violence can be justified. I do believe that there are a multitude of ways to say that such things are “wrong.” Yet, for the purposes of this essay, I must ask whether it is the “suicide” element of murder-suicide that we are outraged at? I do not think it is.

After the first essay, one person asked me what I would say to someone like Robert Hawkins, the Westroads Mall shooter.

Before committing his crime, Hawkins attended therapy, took medication, and was hospitalized for depression by the time he was 6 years old. He'd already cost the state 265,000 dollars.

I cannot presume that I would have been able to see the future if I had known him. I might have known he was depressed, as neighbors of him said, “troubled.” Nor would I have trusted words alone to be enough if I confronted him as he was holding the gun. And what would I say to him now? I myself would have little to say to him now. Before he’d decided to end it all, I might have tried to socialize with him, tried being friends. But, considering he’d threatened to kill his mother-in-law, I also must admit that if I felt threatened I could not have helped him by being his friend. I cannot be friends with someone who I cannot trust not to hurt me, and I would not put forward an insincere friendship. And we cannot say that his lack of friendship, that those around him, caused his spree.

Hawkins was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, mood disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and parent-child relationship problems. His physiological problems most likely had a large part in forming his death impulses.

But, if we are to drift into hypothetical situations, when would I have talked to him? Let’s say that he wrote his suicide note, but before he’d gotten access to guns he’d been stopped and hospitalized. Based on his final note alone, one might I have said? Even then, I would have difficulty. There might not be a perfect response, but if I did have that chance, then I might say something like this, and it might be more effective than an accusation of some sure afterlife, like Hell:

Dear Robert,

Many people feel isolated from one time or another, and many of us feel compelled to destroy out of this sense of isolation. I remember there have been many times I have had this feeling. There are many times when I too have felt like a burden on those around me. But, I realized that I should live, that I should create. You too should live. You should eat delicious food and sleep in warm beds, and when you wake, you should walk out into the sunlight and talk to people you like talking to, you should do what you enjoy doing, and you should try to remember all that is good in your life.

Your life is meaningful to you and many others. You can live for something, and when you die, you can choose to die for something. You encourage others to remember the good times you had together, but perhaps you yourself should remember the good times you have had, and imagine the good times you can yet have, the places you can go, the things you can do, the people you can meet. There is much in your life that you have not yet done.

You love your parents, but you should know that your parents want you to love yourself.

If you doubt the sincerity of your friends, or the desire of your friends to see you live, then you should know that any bridge you have burned can be rebuilt. New and better opportunities can be found.

The people you see on the street are good people who live their lives as best as they can. There is nothing good or interesting about a man or woman being killed for no reason. It is harder to create and protect than it is to destroy, but it is better.

You will not become famous for destroying the lives of a few people for no reason. You will be pitied, hated, for a brief while, mourned by those you love, and then you will be forgotten. If you want to be famous, you should try to find goodness in this world and to create it.

If you choose not to live, though, then that choice should come from you and your actions should only reflect that choice. Do not destroy the lives of others for no reason. You may feel the right to take your own life. If so, do not feel compelled to strip that right from others for no reason.