Suicide

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem,” Albert Camus wrote, “and that is suicide.” How to explain why, among the only species capable of pondering its own demise, whose desperate attempts to forestall mortality have spawned both armies and branches of medicine in a perpetual search for the Fountain of Youth, there are those who, by their own hand, would choose death over life?

...

Little wonder, then, that most of us have come to regard suicide with an element of resignation, even as a particularly brutal form of social Darwinism: perhaps through luck or medication or family intervention some suicidal individuals can be identified and saved, but in the larger scheme of things, there will always be those driven to take their own lives, and there’s really not much that we can do about it. The sheer numbers would seem to support this idea: in 2005, approximately 32,000 Americans committed suicide, or nearly twice the number of those killed by homicide.

-- Scott Anderson for The New York Times

Previously, whenever I heard a passing reference to Camus' notion, I always interpreted it in a more romantic vein, as in why does one not commit suicide, as a being who is capable of pondering it while living in a cold and indifferent world that is usually hostile to our self-interests, and that in dealing with that question, you focus and refine what it is you value life for.

Suicide

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem,” Albert Camus wrote, “and that is suicide.” How to explain why, among the only species capable of pondering its own demise, whose desperate attempts to forestall mortality have spawned both armies and branches of medicine in a perpetual search for the Fountain of Youth, there are those who, by their own hand, would choose death over life?

...

Little wonder, then, that most of us have come to regard suicide with an element of resignation, even as a particularly brutal form of social Darwinism: perhaps through luck or medication or family intervention some suicidal individuals can be identified and saved, but in the larger scheme of things, there will always be those driven to take their own lives, and there’s really not much that we can do about it. The sheer numbers would seem to support this idea: in 2005, approximately 32,000 Americans committed suicide, or nearly twice the number of those killed by homicide.

-- Scott Anderson for The New York Times

Previously, whenever I heard a passing reference to Camus' notion, I always interpreted it in a more romantic vein, as in why does one not commit suicide, as a being who is capable of pondering it while living in a cold and indifferent world that is usually hostile to our self-interests, and that in dealing with that question, you focus and refine what it is you value life for.