Read a great post this morning from a blog called ‘Strange Loops’. I’m always tentative in writing about suicide because I’m afraid someone will think that I’m contemplating suicide. Which I’m most certainly not. The idea of suicide itself though is fascinating, particularly because it seems to be a gift specific to human beings.
While the post is worth a read, its the quotes the author chooses that are most interesting:
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” –Camus
“Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.” – Georg Lichtenberg
There Is But One Truly Serious Philosophical Problem
Andy Zink, our resident scientist and an assistant professor of biology at San Francisco State University, dropped me a note saying that humans are not the only species that commit suicide:
From Andy:
maybe we are unique because we do not do it for adaptive reasons….
here is one example
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v328/n6133/abs/328797b0.html
also, the use of suicide (threats) or depression as bargaining for resources in humans – check out this guys work
http://anthro.vancouver.wsu.edu/faculty/hagen