Look. Just eat the bread. It’s fine.
RIP Anthony
Yes I suppose, since I don’t have a clue what you’re saying.
Edit: I mean no, not really. I don’t understand your point, but I’m not invested enough in this conversation to keep it going if it’s making people upset.
People who suffer from depression don’t seek out and harm other people in the sense of “they try to inflict abuse, either physical or psychological, on other people”. An actual stigma has been attached to the disease with casual suggestions that they do. Those suggestions are always vile when they appear, and they tend to appear in places that should know better (e.g. news paper articles discussion shooters being on anti-depressants).
The problem isn’t your level of investment in the conversation, or making people upset.
The problem might just be in communication but you lashed out pretty aggressively. I didn’t suggest someone with depression hurting or killing someone else, I said someone with a mental health problem. It was not an example of something else a depressed person would do, it was an unspecific example of someone suffering from an illness harming someone else as a result and how difficult it can be to reconcile the horror they’re experiencing and the horror they inflict.
I bumped into Anthony Bourdain about 12 years ago at a… wait for it… Gamestop! (And you thought you couldn’t like him any more than you already did.) I remember saying hi and telling him I was a big fan and then saying to Fred, the manager as he was ringing up Bourdain’s purchase, “This guy ate a rattlesnake! Bones and all!” Or maybe it was a cobra. I forget.
He also ate unwashed warthog anus so as not to offend his hosts. Guys like that don’t come around too often.
Yes, I am aware that you were making a pointless aside and not literally saying “no, see what about this situation in comparison”. The fact that the stigma I detailed exists makes the aside even weirder. But you keep doing you.
You think there’s an empathy problem? I also think there’s an empathy problem. Except it started way before the reactions to Guap. The thing is, I get that there are going to be varied reactions and some of them will be frustration, anger, or even hostility. @triggercut put it eloquently, as did a friend of mine in another space yesterday. I am with you in that people who are angry or frustrated need to be able to talk about feeling that. I would like to think we could do it without “selfish” hot takes. But it takes all kinds and this is going to be a charged discussion, no matter what.
I thought about how to say this on the way to eat lunch at Waffle House. We can be angry and talk about feeling angry and do all of this without saying some of the things he said (I’m not printing even a paraphrase because he removed the post, which was the right call). Needless to say, the problem wasn’t that he was angry, or that he felt Bourdain was selfish. It was the stuff after. Because those things are objectively terrible things to say. Those comments don’t deserve empathy, even if he himself does. Am I being the asshole in pointing this out? I don’t know. I don’t care. If I’m the asshole, I’m the asshole.
Yes I do.
I am glad Guap removed his post because our community is clearly not a safe place to share that kind of experience. if we have people who put up requirements in doing so, like some sort of checklist that says go ahead and share your pain but don’t do so in a way that makes me mad, then yeah there’s an empathy problem. There is nothing rational, or ordinary, about approaching the irrational nature of an act of suicide, and to demand that of someone is just cruel.
edit: I am going to mourn for him in his family my way. Others can make false assumptions about what they think I know about depression or suicide, more than I’ve already hinted at, but I certainly won’t be sharing that here to judge.
I hope the rest of you can mourn in whatever solidarity you require.
I guess one other thing that I’m going to probably not phrase as delicately as I intend – because I don’t intend to single anyone out here. It is very common for a person who takes their own life as a result of chronic depression to be accused of being “selfish”, and then that person’s family and children’s ages are mentioned. It may have happened in this thread, but I don’t know, I haven’t read it all. Again, though, it’s a very common reaction and it wouldn’t be unexpected. And I don’t think it makes anyone a bad person if they express that emotion. I just disagree and find some bother with it.
And what bothers me about that sentiment is that on some level, you’re telling those loved ones, family and friends how they should feel about the suicide. “Do not grieve with mourning; feel anger at the selfish act” is the undercurrent non-solicited advice to that sentiment. And as someone who has been on the recipient side of that kind of message before…it is unhelpful. I know the person who decided to end their life better than the person offering the the “Selfish” take. I know what pain they were ending. I know how I’ll carry their memory.
I think that part of this depends on how “voluntary” you think suicide is.
Of course the physical act itself is always voluntary.
But I do not think the suicide as a whole should really be considered voluntary in any sense of the word. It is literally our biological imperative, as animals, to want to survive. To have a mind in so much pain, distress, etc. as to literally override that biological imperative to me says in itself that there is something so gravely wrong that we can only have pity for the person, in the same way we would for any other involuntary illness or act. It is an act of desperation that people who believe they have meaningful choices or options do not take, by definition.
We have fortunately moved beyond the point (mostly) of being critical of people for making bad choices for situations that end up in rape, for example. We don’t suggest that the person really should have done more to avoid it, because imagine the impact on all of her loved ones of having to deal with all that shit. We have fortunately attempted to move beyond questioning the sufferer’s “role” in what happened, and we instead just acknowledge the suffering and pain. Or at least that’s where I think we want to be.
It would be nice if we could do the same thing for depression and suicide. Yes, we hope people make healthy decisions. Yes, there is a very real and painful impact on survivors other than the person directly affected. But we can acknowledge that there is a painful impact on those around the person without having to label or judge the person who actually suffered the most pain.
Beautifully put, SlyFrog.
I don’t think all suicides are motivated in the same fashion. There are teens who will kill themselves over a single broken relationship, and there are otherwise successful people like Bourdain who end their lives in what appears to be entirely out of the blue.
Categorising all suicides as selfish seems rather unfair. I am sure that there are people who struggle who suicide who feel that their deaths would be better for everyone. This would include physically sick people who are otherwise entirely sane but are a significant drain on the emotions and monies of their families and loved ones.
You always bring such a remarkable perspective and voice that I would readily read anything you want to put together.
Thanks for the compliment, but I’ll pass. I really have noting to add that hasn’t been said already. And I’m not sure that I’m comfortable passing on personal information in this thread. Perhaps at another time and place.
I don’t consider “don’t be inhuman” to be “a restriction on the way people can mourn”. I don’t find your idea of what is considered to be empathy clear. I reject your idea of what a safe space is.
Good day.
Not all suicides are committed by people suffering from depression. But this specific suicide was committed by someone who was. I think a discussion along the lines of what exactly counts as suicide, and of it’s causes, is worthwhile but it’s also probably for another time and space.
Just an addendum to say that Parts Unknown will be leaving Netflix in a couple of days, unless something changes.
Cherry-picking five episodes: S2E1 Jerusalem, S2E9 Detroit, S3E3 Lyon, S4E6 Iran, and S8E1 Hanoi. S4E7 Massachusetts is excellent too, but possibly harder to watch with hindsight.
I watched the Copenhagen episode of season two the night before they found him and I thought it was pretty great. I thought the crazy stuff they were doing there was fascinating.
Well that sucks.