Saw an interesting post yesterday from a member making the claim that ‘the depressed’ according to ‘scientific reasoning’ have a more realistic view of life than those who do not suffer from it.

Not venturing an opinion on this per say… I’m always sceptical of claims of this nature (irrespective of the credentials of those asserting the conclusion)… I personally believe that there are far too many variables and differences in suffering for that to be a universal case.. but gah, without having any citation of the study, I can’t draw proper conclusions.

It did get me thinking though… a pet project that to this point I have not had the motivation nor courage to buckle down, research and write – an essay of sorts.

One that looks at the rational of suicide, not so much promoting it, but that puts logic to what we keep being told is illogical. Would be drawing quite heavily on critical thinking (school of thought) and other philosophical elements.

Had quite a scary encounter with these notions while at University… was not exactly well hinged at the time (could be argued that I’m in that position now), and made an unforeseen mistake in choosing critical psychology as an option towards my course. Challenged point to me and opened the door to far too many unanswerable questions for me at that time.

Much older now… perhaps not wiser, but I do have the ability to qualify and organise my thoughts in a balanced way that was unattainable back then. One of my problems is that I have deep seated beliefs, both on an intellectual level and baser instinct level… and I want them challenged, I want to confront them… try to unseat them.

But therein lies my concern that I wanted to broach and ask opinions on: Responsibility to self and others. For myself, to focus attention on this and write down in depth and in detail my reasoning… could I be opening myself up to a world of pain? – in essence reinforcing my outlook on life and putting into a logical context my thoughts on lack of point, futility etc.

Then responsibility to others… who would I get into discourse with? I want to be challenged on a taboo subject… but in a way that isn’t whimsical, isn’t from postulation by another that has little knowledge of the core material. To find that discourse, could mean opening it up to as many people as I can… but it could be very triggering, could put thoughts into another that they hadn’t considered… it could be dangerous and I’d be responsible for that… couldn’t live with myself if I set off another.

Sorry if this all seems pretty daft… but to me it revolves around the fixation I’ve had with suicidal thoughts that stem back to childhood. I want to put them to bed somehow… and till now I’ve been playing one man tennis.

I know that one answer could be to write it for my T (not even mentioned this to her)… but I’d be very sceptical towards the reception I’d receive on that level… + the time and money wasted for her to need to read it.