Thursday, August 31, 2006

Suicidle Tendencies: A Look At The Social Views of Suicide

Most everyone has experienced suicide in there lives at least once. Some are more closely linked than others, but more than likely you know someone who has taken their own life.

Whether it be from depression, mounting pressure from work or the teasing of the cruel, uncaring people of the world, everyone has there own reason for taking their life.

It would seem that grief and sadness would be the most prevalent emotions in the moment someone finds out someone close to them have killed themselves, but it seems far too often that those emotions are trumped with thoughts of ignorant proportion.

Everyone looks at suicide a different way, but in most cases society tends to chastise those who take their own life. Society aside, families of the dead are going to not criticize there dead loved one. They are going to wish that it didn’t happen and wish that they would have came to them for help, but they are not going to think badly of them for doing it. Society on the other hand tends to look at it with a negative scope that has no need to really exist.

Now the big question is this. Why does society tend to look at people who commit suicide in a negative connotation?

The first thought that comes to me is religious beliefs. Catholics don't even let people who have committed suicide have a funeral in a catholic church for it is considered a mortal sin to take your own life. As if you are spiting god for taking your life without his permission and cutting in line to the afterlife.

The second, and probably most prevalent, thought that comes to my mind is that of the social perception of death itself. Don’t get the words twisted, people usually don’t live to die, but it is the perception that death is a bad thing. Death is a part of everyone’s life and most people don't wish to grasp that concept. So when someone takes there own life society tends to act of the victim and perceive the person no longer here to defend themselves as the criminal, in a sense.

How can someone disregard someone’s life on the simple basis of them not dying from some freak accident or naturally? Society needs to come to grips with a couple of facts.

First, how do you know what was wrong with the people who took there life? How do you know that you wouldn't take your life if you were in there shoes? People tend to judge from a distance without really learning what they need to make a valid judgment.

Second, keep your nose out of other peoples business and keep your thoughts to yourself. Do you think the parents of a teenager who just killed himself want to hear about how weak minded and pathetic their dead child was? Not likely.

Suicide might not be the best available option for whoever chooses that path, but it’s their path to walk down. Those who choose to walk down that path deserve the same tranquility we get when we are forced down our own dusty trail to the afterlife.

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