“We are all culpable,” Matt Nelson said before lighting himself on fire. This is the third such incident in a year.
This is a mentally ill person who was driven to an extreme and felt there was nothing better to do than take his own life.
There is no message that should be said other than to urge anyone who is feeling similar distress needs to know that there are people who love them and no matter what there is always a better alternative.
By condoning it for political purposes you give an out for the mentally ill to commit “legitimate” suicide, or worse to being manipulated into doing so. This is not a slippert slope, it is a hard line that many in these comments have crossed - which is why it needs to be said that there is a better path and there are resources.
This isn’t true.
I am a rape survivor who hasn’t dated anyone in a very long time. The person who hurt me was not prosecuted. I don’t like being touched anymore. I am probably going to kill myself within a few years. I don’t think this is a mental health issue that I want to die; I think this is a valid choice, and no, I don’t want big pharma drugs, religion, or people talking to me to try to make me feel better. I just ultimately want to die and just meed to get my affairs in order.
The person who lit himself on fire and me are not the same. He wasn’t someone who wanted to die, he was someone who wanted people to realize the level of suffering that Palestinians are experiencing.
He didn’t want to kill other people to make his point because he wasn’t violent. He was willing to die himself however. That’s self-sacrifice. More people are noticing what is going on because of what he did. It was not pointless or meaningless.
There are people who commit suicide because of temporary mental health issues, those that end things due to persistent despair, which are not a mental health issues but valid feelings, and neither of these things are the same as self-immolation as political protest.
I know it makes people in society FEEL better to say that people who choose actions that lead to their own death are all mental and just should have called a hotline so they could be locked up by police and force fed or injected with psychiatric medication until big pharma made everything better, but reality isn’t always fairy tales and happy endings. Gross simplifications that push drugs and involuntary hospitalization are an extreme illogical form of reductionism like flat-earthers who deny climate change but feel better as a result.
Gross simplifications that push drugs and involuntary hospitalization are an extreme
Yes agreed. We have mental illness due to fascism and authoritarianism, it doesn’t help to then dial that up to 100000 via forced institutionalization
You can be in your right mind and kill yourself, I truly believe this. Whether he was in particular, idk. But we allow 18 year olds to sign up for the military and don’t medicalize them, so society has some concept of this.
Personally, I have deep respect for people who protest in this way.
I think the only counter argument really is that if you protest like that, you can’t protest again in the future, usually.
I would hope that he could have done more net good with the remaining 80 years of his life if he had dedicated it to the causes he believes in.
They also run the risk of there being zero coverage when it happens, which makes it a regrettable decision. I didnt hear about the second person who did this, just the first and third.
I know you specifically said you did not want people talking to you to make you feel better, but what kind of rotten society would we live in if everyone just turned a blind eye? isn’t precisely that behaviour what drove this man to self-immolate?
I can’t really be of much help to you beyond maybe chatting, and I have not been in your shoes, but if some rando on the internet can care about you, definitely someone from a closer circle will too. And maybe you don’t need someone actively trying to make you feel better, but someone with whom you can be honest and sincere about how you feel. You don’t have to carry that burden alone, even if it sometimes feels like its the only way.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that choices and opinions tend to change with time… if you let them, and you, as well as people around you, nudge them in the right direction.
About the self-sacrifice, I find the situation that drove him to do that utterly horrific and unacceptable, but the act itself I can not bring myself to support. Yes, it worked and it had an impact, but at what cost? was it really worth the price he paid? couldn’t he have made a huge impact (even if lesser) without paying such a heavy price? We can’t really tell, but the saddest part is that, now, we will never be able to.
Forming bonds with others, relying on them, supporting others and getting help is what makes us a community, and that is a core aspect of being human. Sharing our lives with others is nothing to be ashamed of, quite the contrary, it is something that defines us.
