Sports writer kills himself, leaves behind website describing how and why

chaos

chaos

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Tuco_sl said:
Do you consider old age as something being fundamentally wrong?
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No, but if someone's reaction to the prospect of old age was "better kill myself" I would consider that as a sign of something fundamentally wrong.
 
Kaige

Kaige

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I can understand the fear of getting old. I respect death and its one of the things I truly believe in, but senility unnerves me.

I lived with my grandmother until some of the last days of her life. I remember having to run downstairs sometimes in the middle of the night to help her up, since she would fall. When I'd ask her why she was wandering around that late, she'd say she couldn't sleep and didn't want to wake my grandfather. He'd been dead for 10 years.

We were doing a job to add housing to a retirement community for a while, and seeing a lot of the retirees go about their daily lives put some things in perspective. I remember one incident where an old guy had pulled his car out of a parking spot and left without even realizing he had been scraping against another car. He didn't know until he came back from the supermarket and we told him.

What truly gave me chills was when we'd work on the addition to the dementia ward on the other side of the community. We'd of course have to walk through the main building to reach the wing we were working on, and you'd see some of the dementia patients. It was pretty creepy seeing seniors sitting there staring blankly when you'd pass them. One time I saw through the window of their gathering room and a nurse had a bunch of them gathered in a circle while she was singing and clapping. They were just completely out of it.

One of the guys that worked there told us a story about how he had knocked over a TV in a patient's rooms that she was watching. He said he turned right around and apologized, only to realize she hadn't moved whatsoever, she was still just staring like before, as if the TV was still there and nothing had happened.


So yeah, I hope I get struck by lightning or something before I get senile.
 
fanaskin

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"being senile" isn't exactly an inevitability that happens to everyone, if you give up on life in the marxist sense and lose a reason for being, if you stop doing activities that challenge your brain and body, stop reading, stop learning, stop doing daily physical activities you are going to "lose it" no matter what, alot of the "result" when people look at the elderly is a result of a lifetime of habits as well. The village in Italy where I come from I noticed there's a high amount of 80+ year olds mentally fit still and witty. Also phsyically fit and didn't require any help to get through their days not even walkers and canes, they still maintain farms and do everything themselves and it helps keeps them sharp.

For the majority of cases it's not a given that you are going to turn into a vegetable, you have toUse it or lose it.


Living isn't just existing, You're body reacts to the stimuli you give it, if you sit on your ass watching tv(it rots your brain) all day and do nothing you WILL turn senile.
 
OneofOne

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Aren't you the guy who gargles with peroxide to cure brain cancer or some shit? Newsflash - there's a lot of different reasons people get various kinds of dementia, pretty much all of them have shit all to do with "use it or lose it". Yes it certainly helps... some people. Not the "vast majority of cases".
 
BrutulTM

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fanaskin_sl said:
Living isn't just existing, You're body reacts to the stimuli you give it, if you sit on your ass watching tv(it rots your brain) all day and do nothing you WILL turn senile.
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I believe that this is true. I have watched it happen to my grandparents and some neighbors. This is why I don't ever plan to retire from working completely.
 
fanaskin

fanaskin

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OneofOne_sl said:
Aren't you the guy who gargles with peroxide to cure brain cancer or some shit? Newsflash - there's a lot of different reasons people get various kinds of dementia, pretty much all of them have shit all to do with "use it or lose it". Yes it certainly helps... some people. Not the "vast majority of cases".
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It basically everyone, it effects every person if you exercise your brain or not as you grow old (throughout your whole life it effects your mental capacity)

There's this perception I've noticed that people say "your brain doesn't make any new neurons". Well that's a negative way to look at it because it's not just the number of neurons in your brain, it's also the neural connections that are made between them that shape your state of mind. That is done on a daily basis(temporary connections are made during the day and finalized when you sleep at night), if over an extended period of time as you grow old you aren't challenging your brain and only making relatively few neural connections your mind will be more susceptible to dementia, In the same manner that large cities fall apart if you don't constantly rebuild them or any super complex thing really, you have to constantly repair upkeep and maintain it, especially the older it gets.

There is also a physical aspect to it as well, keeping fit in old age is imperitive to a healthy brain

Mind Games: How to Prevent Dementia, Eat + Run

Studies associate dementia with high blood pressure and dyslipidemia (high levels of the "bad" cholesterol variants). In particular, there appears to be a strong association between Alzheimer's and insulin resistance, a state associated with obesity and diabetes risk. Some experts have argued this link is so strong that Alzheimer's should be considered "type 3 diabetes."



Don't get me wrong there are people with unpreventable diseases but there are many ways individuals make things a lot worse for themselves.
 
khalid

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My problem with "promoting" suicide or making it easier is that I was at one point in my life been completely on the edge of it. Yet I got through it and now my life is pretty awesome and it is sometimes hard for me to even think back at how I could have been so depressed and thought life was so hopeless. Suicide is irrevocable and outside of the completely terminally ill, we should discourage it as much as possible.
 
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Tuco_sl said:
Do you consider old age as something being fundamentally wrong?
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Not sure how old you are Tuco but yeah, I absolutely DO consider old age as fundamentally wrong. I'm saying that and I'm just in my mid-40s and easily two deviations to the good in terms of health and fitness.

Getting old sucks balls. The only thing worse is not getting old.
 
Tuco

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Northerner_sl said:
Not sure how old you are Tuco but yeah, I absolutely DO consider old age as fundamentally wrong. I'm saying that and I'm just in my mid-40s and easily two deviations to the good in terms of health and fitness.

Getting old sucks balls. The only thing worse is not getting old.
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I'm still young but I agree with you. The question was a challenge to Chaos.

The follow up question was to ask him to define what could be fundamentally wrong with someone to make it acceptable for them to commit suicide and how it differs from typical symptoms of old age. Of course there's 'wrong' as in depression and 'wrong' as in debilitating disease. The nuance of the argument was a little too clever for me to make.

In my opinion a rational, sane and level headed person can come to the conclusion that suicide is preferable to many typical symptoms of old age.
 
Tanoomba

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Tuco_sl said:
In my opinion a rational, sane and level headed person can come to the conclusion that suicide is preferable to many typical symptoms of old age.
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Of course. Generally it's the family and friends of someone who commits suicide who suffer the most (and it can be especially traumatizing for children). That's probably the single most important factor in convincing an otherwise suicidal person not to commit suicide. In Martin's case it wasn't really an issue. No wife, no kids, no nieces or nephews, and an incredibly in-depth explanation he put a lot of work into for any family or friends who wanted to understand his point of view. He didn't abandon or bring undue suffering to anyone and he's not depriving society of his most productive years. If anything he's ensuring that he will not become a burden to society and leaving this world while he can still claim to be on top, satisfied with what he had accomplished, accepting that there would always be things he would have wanted to see happen no matter how old he got, and minimizing the pain and suffering of both himself and everyone he knew. I can't imagine why anyone anywhere would have a problem with this.
 
chaos

chaos

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Tuco_sl said:
I'm still young but I agree with you. The question was a challenge to Chaos.

The follow up question was to ask him to define what could be fundamentally wrong with someone to make it acceptable for them to commit suicide and how it differs from typical symptoms of old age. Of course there's 'wrong' as in depression and 'wrong' as in debilitating disease. The nuance of the argument was a little too clever for me to make.

In my opinion a rational, sane and level headed person can come to the conclusion that suicide is preferable to many typical symptoms of old age.
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In answer to your follow-up question, there is nothing that a rational, sane person could do to convince me they are completely rational and level-headed and think killing themselves is an option. In my mind, if you think that way then something is wrong with you. Which yes, I would count a debilitating disease as part of that.

Before I joined the Navy I worked for my uncle, getting paid by the state doing home health care. He was a quadriplegic, he had some use of his arms and upper body but had broken his neck in a car crash. His life was not something I would envy. At all. I went off to the military and he died under mysterious circumstances. Meaning he killed himself with the assistance of either his mother or some chick he met online, no one really knows what happened but I am pretty sure that is what happened. If that is what happened, I don't fault him or judge him for that at all. It will be hard for his son to come to terms with as he gets older, but this dude's life was quite difficult to say the least. Now to compare that to just getting old, to me it isn't even a comparison. I should mention, this dude tried more than 10 years of therapy and surgeries and shit before he tried to get the old band together. He didn't just go "Well I'm paralyzed, time to die." The idea of killing yourself because of what might be seems perverse to me, and shallow, and a great disrespect not only to your friends and family, but to others who would kill for your white people problems.
 
Tanoomba

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chaos_sl said:
The idea of killing yourself because of what might be seems perverse to me, and shallow, and a great disrespect not only to your friends and family, but to others who would kill for your white people problems.
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Why perverse? Who decided we are all obliged to live the maximum number of days possible? Why isn't it shallow to pretend death doesn't exist until you're forced to deal with it? As for friends and family, Manley didn't leave behind any children or people who needed him. Those who knew him are welcome (and in many cases personally invited) to read his detailed explanation. He could not have been more respectful.

You make it sound like because he had an apparently good life, that somehow gives him a debt he could only pay off by living as long as possible. Other people had shittier lives, sure, and other people had better lives. His life was his alone, though, and it's not for any of us to judge how he chose to end it.
 
Deathwing

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I would actually think the person that doesn't consider suicide an option is the irrational person. When you completely eliminate(nice "black friend", btw, quadriplegic that suffered through a decade of therapy, quite common!) it as an option, you're not thinking straight. There are thousands of context-specific situations where suicide might be an option.

You're basically pulling the same shit as the "lose your job" thread.
 
Mahes

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Chaos,

What is actually the difference between committing suicide and dying of "Natural" causes? Both involves the thing that inevitably happens to every human being on this planet. The only difference is control. A person does not control when they naturally or expectantly die. Some people believe that control is the best thing about life. Having a choice to end our own life as we want to, should be the right of every human being on this planet. A person has the right to run into a raging fire to attempt to save a person. We can jump into the path of a bullet to protect the president, but we are unable to exit life as we choose in a painless and fulfilling way?

I am sorry that you think you should have the power to control another person by saying they cannot end their life. I am not sure what gives you this power but it is highly representative of why I cannot stand religion. If religion is indeed the foundation from which you think your power derives I would just say " Fuck you and the god you think protects you". I am still typing after having said this so I assume your god is powerless, or that your motive is self centered and egotistic. My friends, my real friends,respect my decisions and while I am certain they would want reason and cause, in the end they would help me if it were my choice. Judging a person's mental capacity is also another form of control and power.

We have no power over having been born. We have a limited power over what happens in our life. If a person chooses to end their life at least they have the opportunity to have that freedom of choice.
 
chaos

chaos

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Deathwing_sl said:
I would actually think the person that doesn't consider suicide an option is the irrational person. When you completely eliminate(nice "black friend", btw, quadriplegic that suffered through a decade of therapy, quite common!) it as an option, you're not thinking straight. There are thousands of context-specific situations where suicide might be an option.

You're basically pulling the same shit as the "lose your job" thread.
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I'm not "pulling" anything, and how the fuck is my personal story invalid in a thread filled with people sharing personal stories? Especially a story which was told to specifically indicate a situation I WOULD consider suicide in?

You're being a dick, brah.
 
chaos

chaos

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Tanoomba_sl said:
Why perverse? Who decided we are all obliged to live the maximum number of days possible? Why isn't it shallow to pretend death doesn't exist until you're forced to deal with it? As for friends and family, Manley didn't leave behind any children or people who needed him. Those who knew him are welcome (and in many cases personally invited) to read his detailed explanation. He could not have been more respectful.

You make it sound like because he had an apparently good life, that somehow gives him a debt he could only pay off by living as long as possible. Other people had shittier lives, sure, and other people had better lives. His life was his alone, though, and it's not for any of us to judge how he chose to end it.
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I'll judge, I'll judge all fuckin day.

Not really, I don't really care. He did what he wanted. If it was someone I was close to, I would be destroyed at them doing something like this. But I don't know this guy, the quote you pulled from me was talking about on a whole, not necessarily this guy. I disagree when you say his life is his alone, that isn't true for any of us. We share our lives with family and friends. Sure, the choice is his, but that doesn't mean it won't impact who knows how many other people. And I don't consider leaving a website explaining that getting old sucks to be "respectful" of those people. But if his people are good with it then that is their business.
 
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