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girlfriend situation (pg. 54)
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| Lira |
Ready, set, go!
1. What is selfishness? Two competing definitions:
According to the psychologist and primatologist Frans de Waal on the book "How Morality Evolved", Selfishness implies the intention to serve oneself, hence knowledge of what one stands to gain from a particular behavior . Based on this definition alone, a survivor that hides all his food so no one else can benefit from his reserves is selfish because he knows that there's the possibility of giving away some of the nutrients he needs to survive and not getting anything back. He is thus making sure his survival is guaranteed by keeping as much food on him as possible. However, the same survivor could share his food expecting to get some sort of reward back, thus ensuring his survival even if his supplies come to an end. I'll call this sort of broad selfishness... well, selfishness.
Now, there's also ethical egoism, which according to the philosopher Richard Kraut, states that "human beings seek to maximise their own good". This would lead us to the same trap I mentioned above, in which the survivor could share his food out of selfishness. And an ethical egoist can choose to cooperate with others in order to promote his own good. However, Kraut points out, he cannot approve of this behaviour if it is to be judged altruistically, because "altruism requires benefiting others merely for their sake, whereas the egoist insists that one's ultimate goal must be solely one's own good". Thanks to the marvels of language, I'm going to call selfishness in this strict sense "egoism".
From now on, by selflessness I mean the opposite of selfishness, and by altruism I mean the opposite of egoism.
2. What is suicide?
We need to reach a consensus here: what on Earth do we mean by suicide? If we're to reach an agreement, we must make sure we're talking about the same thing. I'm choosing as a premise Durkheim's definition of suicide as "all causes of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result" (that's from a book called, rather conveniently, "Suicide: A Study in Sociology").
We're all using taking this definition for granted, reason why we all (except you, thus far) agree that Vivid Boy's grandmother did indeed commit suicide: her negative act (i.e. starving herself to death) was a suicidal act, the context notwithstanding.
Therefore, a person that shoots himself to death commits suicide; someone that jumps in front of a train, whether or not he's doing that in order to save someone else, commits suicide; and a person that stops taking his medication knowing that this will bring their demise is also committing suicide.
3. The selfish suicide paradox
Apparently, you seem to limit suicide to all scenarios that resemble your uncle's death in a way you can recognise, so I'm not going to bother coming up with all possible examples, and I'm going to start from the following hypothesis:
Maxwell has been depressed because his girlfriend broke up with him after she found out he had an affair with a classmate. He's in his early twenties, has no children, but he comes from a functional family. His parents are still married and they give him all the support he could ever need.
He one day buys a gun and ends himself on a whim. His parents, upon learning about his death, become themselves depressed and the sadness is so overwhelming that they fail to live the successful life they had been living up until this point.
Now, the questions here are:
- Is he being selfish? Is he being selfless?
- Are his parents being selfish? Are they being selfless?
3.a. Is he being selfish?
Remember those definitions above? We could use them now:
According to Waal's definition of a selfish person, he seeks to serve himself, and acts in order to gain something from a particular behaviour. Now, we could interpret Maxwell's act in two very different ways as we do not have access to his inner mental life: (i) he killed himself because he thought his pain would end, and (ii) he killed himself because he felt he deserved to be punished.
According to (i) you could indeed say his suicide was selfish given his belief that it would cease his pain. However, according to (ii) his death was not selfish because he's not gaining anything by committing suicide - quite on the contrary, he's making his situation even worse! In no way you could say he's trying to maximise his own good, as he's either (i) trying to get rid of his pain by ceasing to exist or (ii) trying to inflict even more pain on himself by ending himself. Therefore, even if you consider his suicide to be a selfish act, you can't do it without some serious reservations.
Is he being selfless? Is he being altruistic? This is where the whole thing gets interesting:
According to our definition above, to be selfless means to serve others. Can you say he meant to serve others in any way? Well, that's hardly the case if he meant to end his pain. However, if he did that to punish himself, he could have done it out of selflessness because he meant to serve his ex-girlfriend: he would have hurt her and he'd now right his wrongs so to speak, so he'd be doing it to end her pain. As for altruism, here's an interesting assymetry. I said earlier that he wasn't trying to maximise his own good previously because he wouldn't be able to reap the benefits of his death (because of his death). But if he decided to punish himself to make it even with his ex, then it is also altruistic because he is trying to maximise her own good, and she's going to reap the benefits in this twisted way of thinking. So it could be both selfless and altruistic in its intention, regardless of the actual consequences.
Being altruistic doesn't always mean you're going to get it right, such is life.
3.b. Are his parents selfish?
This is what we're trying to argue with you. According to the previous definition of selfishness, it implies the intention to serve oneself. Can you serve yourself through others? If I keep a friend around simply because this friend gives me candy, you could well say I'm being selfish. In this case, the parents would want to keep Maxwell around because his existence would serve them. If Maxwell struggled against depression throughout his life, things would look even worse for them: they'd want to keep him around because it'd make them feel better even though this would make Maxwell all the more miserable. They'd be trying to maximise their own good by keeping him alive even if he doesn't want it for himself - therefore, they're also being egoists.
Are they being selfless? Well, they can't be selfless if it implies they should serve Maxwell in any way because he's... well, dead! Are they being altruistic? Well, how can they maximise Maxwell's own good? They can't!
4. What can we conclude from this?
A. Everyone is selfish.
If the parents think Maxwell's suicide was a selfish act despite all the other possibilities, and it was indeed a selfish act, they're all being selfish because they wanted to keep him alive against his will in order to serve their own good, not his, and he did it to serve himself too.
B. The parents are selfish.
If the parents think Maxwell's suicide was a selfish act despite all the other possibilities, and it wasn't a selfish act, they're being selfish because they wanted to keep him alive against his will in order to serve their own good, not his, and he didn't do it to serve himself..
C. Maxwell alone is selfish.
If the parents don't think Maxwell's suicide was a selfish act because all the other possibilities, but it was a selfish act, they're not being selfless either, because they can't do anything for him. In this case, Maxwell was selfish because it ended his pain, but that's all there is to it.
D. No one is selfish.
If the parents don't think Maxwell's suicide was a selfish act because all the other possibilities, and it wasn't indeed a selfish act... well, the parents should be able to move on being aware of the fact that there's nothing the can do because it was Maxwell's choice to cope with the situation in a way that he thought would be both selfless and altruistic, even if he failed to achieve the results he wanted.
In the end, we can safely conclude that:
- Not all suicides are inherently selfish, not even Maxwell's;
- Forcing someone to live when they don't want to, however, is inherently selfish.
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by jennypie
Yeah? I'll be waiting. With one eye open. |
Gripping your pillow tight? |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| quote: | Originally posted by Sushipunk
So I'm typing this with one hand :( |
Not exactly new for you on TA though, now is it? :p |
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| idoru |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
Hai guise! Can I ruin the fun? |
:mad: |
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| Lira |
:stongue:
My hand was itching, sorry :p |
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| Sushipunk |
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
Not exactly new for you on TA though, now is it? :p |
:stongue: |
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| Silky Johnson |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
Gripping your pillow tight? |
Yeah. :( |
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| ModernNosferatu |
| just close this thread ALREADY |
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| Sushipunk |
| quote: | Originally posted by ModernNosferatu
just close this thread ALREADY |
I'm having trouble CONTROLLING THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE. |
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| Silky Johnson |
| quote: | Originally posted by ModernNosferatu
just close this thread ALREADY |
What? Shut the up, we're having fun. You're like that stupid bitch in my class who answers questions from a ing hour ago. You irrelevant piece of . |
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| ModernNosferatu |
| quote: | Originally posted by jennypie
What? Shut the up, we're having fun. You're like that stupid bitch in my class who answers questions from a ing hour ago. You irrelevant piece of . |
Jenny as her best...what a shocker. I will unsubscribe from it:haha: |
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| Silky Johnson |
| YOU KNOW DAMN RIGHT. |
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