“We are all culpable,” Matt Nelson said before lighting himself on fire. This is the third such incident in a year.
People make plenty of excuses for why they kill themselves. Plenty of scared and lonely people have complete manifestos on why they are actually winning by ending their own lives.
The end result is still someone killed themselves and left a hole in the lives of everyone who cared about them. And it should not be celebrated.
I think Matt Nelson is a hero. His death was not one of fear and loneliness. It was the ultimate act of empathy, compassion, and humanity.
I’m going to celebrate his heroic deed, and I encourage everyone to do the same.
I will take advantage of his death to spread understanding, empathy, and a hopeful end to the genocide.
He tried to die for a purpose, why are you so intent on stripping his death of that purpose? You are the one who dishonors the dead.
Self-immolation as a form of protest has millennia of history behind it, especially in Buddhism and Hinduism. Ancient Greeks have records of it. The Indus Valley have records of it. Ancient Chinese have records of it. Tibetan monks set themselves on fire in order to protest for an independent Tibet. Norman Morris set himself on fire at the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War.
Please don’t reduce an active form of protest against someone’s oppression as someone simply “killing themselves” and “shouldn’t be celebrated”. It’s a pretty narrow and callous world view that may reflect your experience, but not of wider human history.
I mean, taking the conquered as slaves also has a lot of history behind it. So does ritualistic sacrifice to get your way (hmmm).
But hey, that is a good enough reason. So please let me know who I should cheer for and call a hero for making the world a better place by killing themselves. Just like I need to know who should be property of others and who shouldn’t
Or maybe, just maybe, we can realize that it is massively fucked up to celebrate suicide just because it might be politically advantageous even though, time and time again, it isn’t even that?
Yeah, this is a pretty westernized and infantilizing view. Way to take someone’s autonomy and compare it to -checks notes- slavery and involuntary human sacrifice.
Please read some eastern philosophy and history before making comments like this. Suicide isn’t stigmatized outside of Abrahamic viewpoints.
They provided a statement. Seeing as you’re alive and commenting, I think it’s safe to assume you aren’t them and, therefore, aren’t able to speak on what was happening in their head leading up to this. So how about we take this person at their word and stop making ignorant ass comments that disrespect someone who showed more bravery and resolve than anybody in this thread ever will? People can do with their lives as they please. You don’t have to agree with it but you also shouldn’t be a dick about it
How is ensuring his message is heard celebrating suicide? Are you saying it’s better if we ignore this message that he felt so strongly about as to literally end his life? What in God’s name are you trying to say? He ended his life in an act of protest against the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The idea that we should not respond to that is genuinely offensive. Your description of him as scared and lonely without even knowing him is also genuinely offensive.
I have lost friends to suicide. I myself have been suicidal. I don’t know anyone who ended their lives by committing acts of self immolation in front of a genocidal colonial nation’s consulate.
What about the Vietnamese monks who self immolated in protest of the persecution of buddhists in South Vietnam? Thích Quảng Đức was one of them. His action is regarded as heroic. It would be offensive to suggest that his message in death not be remembered. It would also be offensive to suggest that he killed himself for some other reason. As though there’s no conceivable motivation someone could have for taking their own life other than mental health problems.
So that means we need to rent a billboard to make sure everyone knows Little Johnny Smith killed himself because Amy Jo wouldn’t go to the prom with him?
There is a reason that news outlets have increasingly made it a point to not publish suicide letters. Whether they be individuals slitting their own throats or kids committing suicide by cop. It just leads to people who can find a political use for their death glorifying it… as we are seeing in this thread.
As for people who have commit suicide to advance a political or military agenda of an organization: We glorify Thích Quảng Đức even though, to quote wikipedia
Quảng Đức’s act increased international pressure on Diệm and led him to announce reforms with the intention of mollifying the Buddhists. However, the promised reforms were not implemented, leading to a deterioration in the dispute
Do we also glorify Japanese Kamikaze pilots in World War 2? What about child soldiers so manipulated that they are willing to die for a warlord?
Suicide is NEVER the answer*. And all glorifying it and calling people “heroes” for killing themselves does is give scared and lonely people an excuse. They aren’t ending their own lives, they are dying for something more important, yeah…
And anyone whose immediate reaction is “how can I use this death to my own advantage”… they are a fucking monster.
*: Well, outside of euthanasia for medical reasons but that is a much more complicated topic that requires a lot of discussion on the proper way to ensure someone is ending it because of quality of life and not because they are lonely or angry.
So that means we need to rent a billboard to make sure everyone knows Little Johnny Smith killed himself because Amy Jo wouldn’t go to the prom with him?
He’s protesting genocide in the loudest way he could imagine. Degrading his action as something so shallow is disgusting.
This is offensively uninformed and misguided. Giving your very life to protest the way your people are being oppressed, how your people are being slaughtered, is maybe one of the most heroic things you can do. It’s wrong that these people felt they had to give their lives. Not that they did. If we lived in a just world, people wouldn’t have to martyr themselves to draw attention to genocide.
The suicide letter you’re referencing in the first paragraph has literally nothing to do with the subject of this post or my previous comment. You’re trying to conflate suicidal attempts and ideation from mental health problems with martyrdom. They’re not the same thing. And I know that you know that, and you conflating self-immolation to protest genocide with suicide over peer rejection is disgusting on both sides.
“To advance a political or military agenda of an organization” is such a wild misunderstanding of why Thích Quảng Đức died that I’m almost convinced you skimmed the article just to find out if what he did was effective without even glancing at why he did it. If you’re going to look him up, I gave his name so you could do, have the decency to learn why he died.
His self-immolation was actually a defining moment at the end of the Diệm government. Him and his peers were absolutely successful in drawing international attention to what was being done to buddhists in South Vietnam, and the picture taken of him burning is one of the most famous pictures ever taken.
Nobody is saying that you should necessarily CELEBRATE his suicide. However. In a society and a government system that is failing to respond to its public on nearly every level. You have 2 options for what to do to stop something that needs to be stopped in the here and now not in 10-15 years. You can commit acts of terror and use force of arks to disrupt your government internally. Maybe get a gang together with firearms and disrupt arms shipments by attacking manufacturing plants or sabotaging arms convoys. Or kill yourself in an act of protest to get more public attention and pressure to the issue. Or you can bitch and whine and make noise like many of us do. Do I recommend anybody else engage in what that man just did? No. But I’m not going to dishonor and disrespect the entire life of a human being for desperately trying to draw attention to a noble cause. Its tragic what he did. But do not discredit and dismiss the life of another so callously.
