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I agree. I'm saying the existence of positive or permissive suicide messaging increases suicide rate. This is absurd (best term I could find, not trying to be insulting). Is a 14 year old having a temper tantrum and who wants to kill themself experiencing unbearable suffering? Have you heard of the Werther Effect? I didn't know about the name until I started engaging on this topic, but I already understood it. Maybe this is something fundamental you need to understand about this topic. The opposite of the Werther Effect is the Papageno effect, which shows that creating space to acknowledge and discuss suicide while emphasizing coping and making it through is associated with lower suicide rates. But that's not what's going on here. Also, if "permission" helps, then it also harms. You can't say permissive messaging doesn't emotionally impact the majority (because if someone is going to do it, they're going to do it anyway) and then say it does impact the minority. Everyone already knows there's an end. It's just a matter of making the decision. Of all the people who are contemplating the decision, a very small minority should hear the permissive messaging, because to broadcast permissive messaging to the majority is common-sense reckless, and there's no paradox to resolve here.

I agree, but we're dealing with some complex mental gymnastics and self-deception here. Leo's and his supporters on this claim not tightening up on the death/suicide rhetoric makes space and provides compassion for the stuck minority. This is their justification. My thinking was that by highlighting the prevalence of the majority, the cost-benefit would become clear, because it's just common sense. But Leo's supporters on this can't see it. I've since realized no argument would work to change Leo's behavior because this isn't really about making space for the stuck minority. It's about being free to make any statement you want. Figured this out from my armchair, lol. If it were truly about compassion, you'd be like "oh shit, yeah, that makes sense, I definitely shouldn't be saying things like this: "Only one way to find out" in a forum post titled "suicide consequences" where members are venting frustration and desire to suicide and asking questions about the afterlife. Everyone here should be able to look at this and call it reckless and irresponsible. And given the patterns, deduce his rhetoric on this topic is not about compassion. A compassionate person would not act like this.

Does it really matter what the percentages are? If even one individual can be saved by a less lax position on suicide then it's worth it. The problem is it's not 100 percent one way or the other. So there is a dilemma for guys like Leo who teach over you tube. The audience could be anyone. Notice with his retreat there is heavy screening. You can't do that here so you should be much more careful in what you put out since you can't regulate the audience. But ask yourself why he doesn’t just accept anyone for his retreat but he will teach his deepest stuff to anyone. Well..until a certain video was pulled. So he gets it... It's a matter of keeping to that standard.

If you're good at generating and evaluating inputs, inference is fun. If you're not so good at it, maybe you're reluctant. Maybe I can lift your fear (jab + hypothesis + genuinely wanting you to see something you don't) around being wrong and improve your epistemology: "Inference" is not a bad word. It's the most natural thing a mind does. You can label "this is inference, this is not" all you want. But it's not making you any more rigorous. At the end of the day, what matters is not an inference label, but: is the reasoning sound? Being able to generate inputs and objectively evaluate them is what matters. These are two different faculties. You need both. And what is the point of doing all this anyway? To arrive somewhere. To upgrade a hypothesis into a conclusion you'll actually stand on such that it can be acted from. That's the whole point. I didn't give you my entire method for arriving at the 99% ballpark. I gave you something that I thought you might be able to use to generate more questions or ideas that which, upon verification, could lead you somewhere. Here's more what my process actually looked like: First, I ask myself "how prevalent does the majority seem to me?" And I realize that I've encountered the truly stuck minority maybe once or twice and the majority hundreds or thousands of times (direct experience). This generates a hypothesis: the stuck group is a very small minority. It's not proven, but now I have an input to work with. From here, I considered the prevalence of pharma TV commercials that name suicide as a side effect of medications a large share of the population is on, rising suicides across several demographics - including kids, addiction, marital misery, financial and legal crisis, and a few other things I'm forgetting. These are all people NOT in the minority, and their prevalence is massive. So, this is where convergence starts to take shape. Then, I try to resolve it: If I picked 10 suicidal people, how likely is one to be in the stuck group? Not likely. 20? No. 50? Maybe one. That puts me at 98%. Then, I consider the sheer volume of the majority some more and realize it's possible the number is 1 in 500, 1 in 1000, or even 1 in 10,000, but I stay conservative and keep the ballpark estimate at 99% because I don't need the exact decimal to prove my point. As long as the majority significantly outnumbers the stuck minority, then broadcasting permission-messaging at volume to a receptive audience harms more than it helps. Notice I didn't reference any studies here, yet I was still able to arrive at the right answer on my own. You can verify it yourself by having your AI tools attempt to come up with a ballpark number. They'll arrive very close to mine but likely through a different method. If you're going to criticize someone's method, you should probably have one of your own that you can use to point exactly to where their reasoning breaks. And to save people from having to explicate their entire sense-making process, how bout you come in good faith and do some of the verification process yourself, rather than just claim their processes are shit. Also, it would be super cool if you'd stop peacocking epistemic virtue. You love letting people know when they're making "assumptions and inferences", which is fine if they're not backed by much, but it's annoying and comes across like social positioning when you sidestep their reasoning while offering nothing and calling their processes shit while not being able to explain why. I've laid my entire process bare here. If you can show me how it generated a false conclusion, I'd love to hear it. Gonna be hard to do since I'm not wrong, lol.

“The evolution of souls involves a transition from imperfection to perfection based upon overcoming many difficult body assignments during their task-oriented lives.” (Newton 2013, 48) “Most errant souls are able to solve their own problems of contamination. The price we pay for our misdeeds and the rewards received for good conduct revolve around the laws of karma. Perpetrators of harm to others will do penance by setting themselves up as future victims in a karmic cycle of justice.” (Newton 2013, 51) “At the end of every life, rather than having a monster waiting to devour our souls, _we_ serve as our most severe critic in front of teacher-guides. This is why karma is both just and merciful. With the help of our spiritual counselors and peers we decide on the proper mode of justice for our conduct.” (Newton 2013, 52) “The test of reincarnation for a soul coming to Earth is the conquering of fear in a human body. A soul grows by trying to overcome all negative emotions connected to fear through perseverance in many lifetimes, often returning to the spirit world bruised or hurt, ….” (Newton 2013, 63) “The only purpose for being in this world is to discover our freedom. The only purpose to come here is to get rid of all the limitations. And where are the limitations? In the mind. I'm afraid I can't. I'm guilty. I don't deserve it. I'm angry. Apathy. The whole purpose of being here is to rid ourselves of all these mentations that are deeply programmed and are the accumulation of many, many millions of years. Millions of lifetimes. And yet when you release at the bottom line you can go free in a matter of months.” (“Lester Levenson, Hale Dwoskin - Lester Levenson (Sedona Method) Magnum Opus PDF-Lester Levenson _ Sedona Method (2024)”, 23) “And you can spend far more millenniums in the astral than you do here because it's an easier way of life. […] But if you understand what the ego is you can go all the way from the lowest realm that we are in now back to the highest by eliminating the ego sense [“Saṃsāra ends when a being attains nirvāṇa, which is the extinction of desire and acquisition of true insight into the nature of reality as impermanent and non-self.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saṃsāra_(Buddhism); https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/truth_of_rebirth.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruits_of_the_noble_path]. When we lose all of our ego sense we are fully realized. We go all the way. We return to being the all. The opportunity the opportunity to do this exists more in this realm than any other realm because it is so difficult that the incentive is greatest in this realm. As life gets easier the incentive to grow gets less.” (Sedona Method) Magnum Opus PDF-Lester Levenson _ Sedona Method (2024)”, 427) “I have said souls do have the freedom to choose when, where, and who they want to be in their physical lives.” (Newton 2013, 203) “Souls who become involved in these tragedies are not caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with a capricious God looking the other way. Every soul has a motive for the events in which it chooses to participate.” (Newton 2013, 219) “Of course, but it wasn't an accident-it was supposed to happen [“Karma is the law of compensation. Whatever a man soweth, …” “Karma is destiny as it determines exactly what happens in this life. We can do nothing in regard to all actions happening. Whatever has been destined to be done by us will be done by us.” “If all our action is karmic and predestined, then our will that directs that action must necessarily be predestined. However, we can conquer karma and destiny. There is a free will, — to identify with our body, or to identify with our real Self.” (Lester 1962, 64–65)].” (Newton 2013, 227) “The idea that each of us voluntarily agreed to be the children of a given set of parents before we came into this life is a difficult concept for some people to accept. Although the average person has experienced love from his or her parents, many of us have unresolved, hurtful memories of those near to us who should have offered protection and did not. We grow up thinking of ourselves as victims of biological parents and family members whom we inherited without any choice in the matter. This assumption is wrong.” (Newton 2013, 246) “Q: We have two children and they’re really different. They desired to be our children and we desired them, right? Lester: Yes. We often choose parents who have characteristics similar to ours so that we can have a constant lesson in front of our eyes. This is why we find parents so difficult sometimes. If there’s anything that I see in you that annoys me, it’s because I have it in me. If I didn’t have it in me, I couldn’t even see it in you.” (Levenson 1993, 236) The knowledge of past lives is the first of the Buddha’s three knowledges on the night of his awakening. ““When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two… five, ten… fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, many eons of cosmic contraction, many eons of cosmic expansion, many eons of cosmic contraction & expansion: ‘There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose here.’ Thus I remembered my manifold past lives in their modes & details. “This was the first knowledge I attained in the first watch of the night. Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose—as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, & resolute. But the pleasant feeling that arose in this way did not invade my mind or remain.” (https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/OnThePath/Section0007.html) “Q: Still, getting rid of your body isn’t going to help much though, is it? Lester: I’m not suggesting you do that. Until you consciously leave your body, if you forcibly got rid of your body, you would just come back again through the womb and wait twenty or so years while growing up, before starting again to learn that you’re not the body. So forcibly dropping the body would be a very wrong thing to do.” (Lester 1993, chap. 36, 364) “Dr. N: When a person kills himself on Earth does this mean they will receive some sort of punishment as a spirit? S: No, no, there is no such thing here as punishment-that's an Earth condition. Clodees will be disappointed that I bailed out early and didn't have the courage to face my difficulties. By choosing to die as I did means I have to come back later and deal with the same thing all over again in a different life. I just wasted a lot of time by checking out early.” (Newton 2013, 58) https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/truth_of_rebirth.html “Reincarnation doesn't help you if in your next incarnation you still don’t know who you are.” (Tolle 2003, 52) “Physical suicide, killing the body, doesn’t solve the issue, since the body wasn’t you in the first place. You don’t kill your ego just because you stop one particular object from moving. The clear mind sees that even though the body stopped, the mind didn’t, and so there is still work to do, until there isn’t.” (Katie and Mitchell 2017, 135–136) “My cousin once called me at two in the morning, very depressed, and said that he was holding a loaded pistol to his head and the hammer was cocked. He said that if I didn’t give him one good reason why he should stay alive, he would blow his head off. I waited for a long time. I really wanted to give him a reason, and no good reason came to me. I waited and waited, with him on the other end of the phone line. Finally, I told him that I couldn’t find one.” (Katie and Mitchell 2021, 345) “Getting back to the quote, Lester told me we set up our next physical life between lives so that we can overcome mistakes we made last time and to satisfy desires.” (Seretan 2008, “Is everything preordained .doc”) “__Astral Plane –__ The place where we all go to after death if not Free. There we are in a “rubber body” as Lester told me, meaning it cannot be hurt like in the physical world. We see long lost friends and family from former lives. If we have any unfulfilled desires remaining, we karmically must return to the physical plane to experience them.” (Seretan 2004, _Lester and Me, My Unforgettable Conversations With American Master, Lester Levenson_, 57) “As long as there's one desire in us for something in this physical world, we'll come back into this physical world to try to fulfill it.” (“Lester Levenson, Hale Dwoskin - Lester Levenson (Sedona Method) Magnum Opus PDF-Lester Levenson _ Sedona Method (2024).pdf”, 60) ““When a being sets this body aside and has not yet attained another body, I say that it is craving-sustained. Craving (= taṇhā; “Craving or excessive or inappropriate desire”), Vaccha, is its sustenance at that time.” — SN 44:9” (Thanissaro Bhikkhu 2024, “The Paradox of Becoming”, 14 June 2026, https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/ParadoxOfBecoming/Section0007.html, 19) See also `The Michael Newton connection` (https://mega.nz/folder/h5pG3Dia#6K7_dyn22-W5dR9C2MauHg), https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/113610-trump-is-god/?page=3#comment-1751305.

@bazera I am wired to be in the middle of hundreds, thousands and perhaps millions of people. Leading them, affecting them directly, impacting them positively. Watching in real time as I see people’s faces filled up with smiles, and hearts filled with love. And their bodies relax into divinity. I don’t want to say this because I come accross arrogant and superior but honestly, I do deep down feel like I was born a couple hundreds years too early. And I also do tear up from that existential pain fairly often. I even think of suicide sometimes. (Don’t worry, it’s healthy for all of us to think of it sometimes). I would be so happy living in the year 2200, assuming humanity keeps evolving. Just the fact that people would be dancing, and singing on the streets (not performing, not trying to survive, but to authentically share beauty and love) would already make it much more joyful. It’s hard to live in a world where selfishness runs rampant, while you yourself highly value selflessness and try your best to improve at it everyday. In our modern times, we have become so individualistically selfish, that everyone is suffering at a collective level. It’s especially hard when you have so much to give, but people think it’s weird or even threatening, because they cannot receive so much beauty and light. - - - - - Thanks for discussing with me tho, brother. And everyone else too. This is the type of conversation that fills my soul. With normies, I would perhaps discuss 5% of the depth we discussed here, and we could go way deeper! They (my friends and family) don’t even understand what it means when I say that I don’t find anyone to connect deeply with, and that it pains me. They literally think on the level of: ”ohhh you will find once you bump into someone who is also into dancing and doing gymnastic, commercial yoga!” I don’t think I will be finding the people I am looking for, anytime soon. They are extremely rare. Even at the peak of Leo’s popularity, we only got a small handful of people gathered here, in all of the international internet. And many of them are trolls. - - - - - I am reminded of a girl I recently dated. In a way, I prefer a complete airhaid to a ”normal intelligent” person. I recently dated a 23 year old girl, whose mental age got stuck at very low for some reason. The level of our discussion was literally: ”what is your favourite public transportation bus?” Here in Helsinki, we have one of the best public transportations, so most people use it as their main way of transportation. I felt bad for her, as I can see that her lack of maturity and intelligence will cause so many issues and so much pain for her, but while hanging out with her, it was almost like meditation. Zero depth was talked. Literally zero. Just being present. With most girls, I don’t talk depth either most of the time, but at least sometimes conversations get a bit deeper. But with this girl, it was baby talk for 100% of the time, all the time, and she was so happy! So either it is really intelligent and conscious girls, or complete 100% airheads, that are playful, feminine, humble and know their place! There are many idiots out there, who think they are wise!

Of course. I laugh at them so loud that they'd be right to ban me, or maybe they should just commit suicide. The reason they call myself a dangerous criminal is that, a few years ago, my business was growing weed. During the COVID lockdown, I'd drive along those empty, post-apocalyptic highways with the car loaded with weed, stopping at police checkpoints and showing them a certificate a friend had arranged for me stating that I was an ophthalmology laser technician working at a hospital. They'd wave me through, and I'd drive off laughing with evil laugh bwahahaha. I did that twice a week and made a good business The truth is, I loved that job, but the production ,and approached it like an engineer. Later I switched the whole operation over to CBD, which was completely legal and still profitable. Before that, I'd spent about seven years living on sailboats, sailing thousands and thousands of miles. My idea was always to learn enough to eventually build a business around it. At one point I sailed from Venezuela to Spain across the North Atlantic, about 50 days at open sea beginning spring, (stops in Jamaica, Cuba, etc but 20 days no stop from Bermuda) with my ex-girlfriend. She was already my ex by then; we'd broken up about two years earlier, we didn't have sex, we were simply friends. Apparently she didn't think I was psychotic, because on a very old boat, after spending two months repairing it in Venezuela before heading into the North Atlantic with 8 m waves and that, every mistake can easily turn into a funny situation . Before that I ran a dating platform, but entirely over the phone, talking . In reality, it was basically a top-tier telephone sexual fantasy pervert max level , no workers, all free perverts, but the money rained. (That's how I ended up spending seven years sailing) Alongside all of that, I was always deeply into rock climbing and hang gliding under demanding conditions, as a form of mental and physical training, same than serious boxing . But I also was too much into party, drugs, sex. My psyche was unbalanced, but I totally knew where I was from teen, and where I wanted to arrive Before that, I owned a small company installing call centers and office data networks, working with two technicians and an administrative assistant (I was 26) Before that I spent nine months as a salesman for a similar company. Before that I sold houses for four months . Before that I spent eight months in the army (wtf). Before that I worked nine months as a construction laborer. Before that I worked in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant. And before that I lived with my fifty-year-old alcoholic narcissist father and his thirty-five-year-old wealthy, depressed wife, who financially supported him. Before that I lived with my mother, who was Turkish, who didn't even know sex existed until she was 19 y.o but who was deep Now I want to go back to boats. CBD is fine, but you only live once. My plan is to find aluminum sailboats in very bad condition in the Caribbean, boats worth around $300,000 once restored, bring them back to Spain, give them a premium refit, and sell them to someone who's retired and wants to sail around the world. I've already bought and sold fourteen boats at a profit except 2 of them, cheap sailboats, max 30k. The only problem is that I need a hot girlfriend with whom I have an absolute deep connection to come with me. I've told the gods that I'm not going to have sex again until she appears. So maybe I'll end up as a monk. But this decision make my life much more clean, huge difference. Looking for sex is toxic. Then, the fact that my profoundly mentally retarded psychologist sister tells everyone I have paranoid psychosis, even though I gave her the opportunity to study psychology, and has spent years telling to the more or less thirty members of my family (conservative religious) that I'm a terrible criminal and that she's afraid I'll kill her (her narcissist ego maybe she meant), is for me an extraordinary exercise in observing attachment to the clan and the need for social acceptance (honestly was a big challenge very unbalancing) . I genuinely thank her for that. Maybe one day she'll recover from her vulnerable narcissism, and I'll be able to tell her. Until that, just the facts will talk. Freedom and life. Let's die with an open heart.

Sorry to hear . You are a living breathing soul ..so am I ..so I totally feel your pain. and mad respect for opening up . please utilize the healthcare section and the mental health issues section for this situation. Don’t come at it from “if solipsism is true then my suicide won’t hurt others because there are no others “ ..stop looking for excuses to justify killing your self . That’s spiritual bypassing and obviously is completely off even for you let alone others . Write down your physical & emotional problems and make threads in the sections I mentioned. You are completely anonymous. Nobody will recognize you. I hope you are already doing something about it like I would not wait two seconds to go speak to a specialist. I was suicidal at some point in the past and most people were but they just want to sound like they are tough and unshakable but all of that is lies and ego..you are completely vulnerable..you might go to bed tonight and never wake up again ..so live in alignment with the truth ..that is you are vulnerable. So allow yourself to be vulnerable. Cry ..express emotions.. I hope there are people In your life who you can do that with ..that’s all I can suggest for you.

I totally disagree . The suggestion seems to be that Leo should soften his views or totally lie about them to avoid the possibility that someone might misuse his words and kill themselves . Leo’s words alone can never cause another person to take their own life. Leo’s work is fundamentally about pursuing and communicating “ The Truth” (or at least what he thinks is the truth )..not muddying his message to avoid every possible misunderstanding. If the subject of death or suicide arises then it should be discussed honestly and rigorously rather than avoided or distorted out of fear of how a small minority of people might interpret it. You want him to straight away lie about his honest opinion on suicide just so that no one will kill himself ? Nope . It’s none of his business that a lot of people are suicidal here. A spirituality forum is NOT a psychiatric hospital.Its purpose is to explore ideas including difficult and controversial ones. That doesn’t mean people should be reckless or insensitive.. but it does mean that discussions cannot be silenced by the most vulnerable possible audience. Otherwise meaningful inquiry becomes nearly impossible. The forum already makes this distinction clear. It includes guidelines and disclaimers stating that it is a place for discussion..not a substitute for professional mental health care. Someone going on some forum and reading a guy saying “death is love “ and then kill himself is such a cartoonish thing to believe. Who would actually do that ? Do you think people lack basic common sense or reasoning? People who kill themselves do that because they are not seeing any hope or light at the end of the tunnel of their daily hellish suffering.

Yes, and this is why I raised the case of my Aunt who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. If anyone knows anything about this disease - it is a terminal death sentence. A slow irreversible decline (think Steven Hawking - suffered from a form of MND and very long lived). My aunt has been given 18 months based on her rate of decline. It is very, very confronting to see how quickly she is fading. Unfortunately, she fell prey to many alternative health treatments (grifters) who sold her on cures with no evidence. Burned through immense amounts of cash for it to amount to nothing. She is investigating assisted suicide.

Permission is not promotion. No one would even consider suicide unless they're going through unbearable suffering. And when things gets real, people will do what they have to do, regardless of my opinion or anyone's opinion. Permission also helps. In many cases, the sense of freedom and agency can be the wall between life and death. Would you rather know that there is an end to the suffering? Or believe that you're eternally stuck?

Here we are discussing armchair suicide when there are people buried under 20 slabs of concrete in Venezuela that will most likely never be saved.

I think there is a beauty is allowing people the freedom to do what they want with their bodies and lives. Who is to say that someone cannot be the decider of something like that? Some countries that are developed actually have programs where you can "opt out" in a safe and professionally monitored way with dignity and no shame. Imagine how terrifying it must be do already want to committ suicide then having to figure out a way to do it all by yourself knowing your family and friends are going to hate you for doing it. They do it over a period of months so that it is clear that you are sure about this decision, you do workshops, excercises, talk therapy, but eventually you get to "commit suicide" I also think of people in horrific medical or mental conditions who just want it to stop and have no hope of getting better. Why is suffering through that better than death?

I never said it does. And I never implied it did. How could I even have implied that when I don't even think it? There is a lot of interesting mental gymnastics going on here. This is a different thing. Although it looks like the reasoning is trying to prop up the position I'm arguing against. I'm talking about the megaphone and prevalence of suicide-permission messaging. Would you agree that suicide-permission messaging broadcast at volume to a receptive audience pushes the number up? Because this is mostly what I'm talking about. If you agree with that, then you mostly agree with my position and then it just comes down to a cost-benefit weighting. (Normally I would use the term "analysis" but I don't want to get berated for not running this thing through an actual peer-reviewed process.) Of course it would be helpful for suicidal people to discuss it. Keeping that sort of thing bottled up isn't good. If Leo or anyone else wants to have a one-on-one with a suicidal person and let them discuss it, that's great. I've done it several times myself. I've never told anyone confiding in me about suicide not to do it because I have enough wits to know that's useless. I work it out with them. But yes, I agree, one-on-one interpersonal exchanges where you take the taboo out of it is very healthy. Do the cost-benefit honestly and let me know what you think.

I mean that if you understand my argument, which demonstrates why it's a terrible idea for an influential person to make a habit out of saying things like "Humans have the right to commit suicide.", then you'd see you're contributing to the harm of far more than you're helping. Someone actually concerned with compassion would take this seriously and would need to either say how my argument (which to me seems like common sense) is flawed, or would need to call for an adjustment - realize the error.

@Joshe Suicide is not a philosophical inquiry. It's a torturing experience. You cannot reason someone out of suicide. It never works. But you can understand and contain them and allow their expression of suffering a space to exist, so they can feel safe again, which might lower the chances that they would actually go through with it. It's paradoxical like that.

By this, I meant that they're receptive to reasons for or against. If they're weighing suicide daily, or once a week, or once a month, when they come across Leo or any other influencer who gives them reasons for or against, they're "receptive" to suicidal messaging. The looking can be active or passive.

Imagine 100 people contemplating suicide. Roughly how many are in the exceptional-cases category? Possibly not even 1. You might have to go up to 1000 before you even get one. I myself have seen more than 100 cases of people contemplating suicide and not a single one of them fit the exceptional-cases category. So yes, it wasn't meant to be precise number, but it wasn't pulled out of thin air either. I'd say the 99% is a reasonable ballpark. 95 seems too low. Given the size difference, it doesn't make sense to publicly cater to the exceptional-cases category because you'd do more harm than good, which people seem to be having a difficult time grasping. --- There's too much variation/uniqueness for me to conceptualize suicidal ideation on a spectrum. But nonetheless, the examples you highlighted wouldn't fit in the exceptional-cases category.

There's no evidence supporting this claim. Maybe it was simply rhetorical. I would argue that most people who consider/think about suicide are not simply looking for "reasons to go through with it." Suicidal thinking exists on a spectrum. Some people have a persistent desire to die. But then also many experience intense ambivalence; they want the pain to end and want to live if things could improve.

I agree with you. My point is about communication. 99% of the time, people contemplating suicide are not the people you described - they're just people going through a rough patch and looking for reasons to go through with it or not. Imagine someone pops up a thread saying they want to off themselves and then a bunch of people are like "don't do it bruh, suicide is never the answer" and then some epistemic genius chimes in "well, actually, if the person is suffering enough, it can be the right answer." How is that not reckless and weird? Also, imagine a respected leader said "suicide is sometimes the right answer" 225 times to a community that regularly deals with suicidal thoughts. How is this not reckless and weird? The alternative is to just never say it - keep it to yourself to avoid inadvertently contributing to immense suffering.

Is All Life Worth Living I wrote this in a previous post and I still stand by it. I also caught myself thinking of the book Breasts and Eggs that I read a few weeks ago. There is a part of the book that really lingers with me as I am contemplating the question of parenthood for myself. For context sake, the book is written in first person with the main character, Natsuko, who is contemplating on getting sperm donor so she can have baby since she's in her mid 30s without a partner. She met some people at this sperm donor convention where people who were conceived via sperm donation were talking about the ethics of such a practice and how it impacted their lived experience. She met and became friends with Aizawa, a doctor and someone who was conceived via sperm donation, and Yuriko is Aizawa's ex-girlfriend who was also concevied via sperm donation. Part of the reason why Aizawa and Yuriko became close is because when Aizawa found out he was a product of sperm donation and had no clue who his father was, it blew up his entire life. The person he was engaged to previously broke up with him because she didn't want to have a kid and have the kid not know who his paternal grandfather was. He started viewing himself and all his family dynamics differently, He dealt with a lot of stigma surrounding this issue as this was Japan in the early 2000s and basically, he personally had a breakdown over who he thought he was, what was real etc. Yuriko shared her experiences with also being conceived via sperm donation and she explained that her mom had her via sperm donation and her father (not biological, just married to her mom) repeated raped her growing up. In a way, finding out she was conceived via sperm donation was freeing because at least wasn't her biological father who molested her all those years. That's what she told Aizawa. She's telling all of this to Natsuko and expanded on this story, telling her that not only did her father molest her, but he also pimped her out multiple times in her childhood. It wasn't just in her home, but in her father's car by the river near a park. She illustrated how she remembered every moment of those instances, from the shapes of the clouds to the children her age playing in a park near by as she was getting raped by multiple men. This goes on for a few pages and then Yuriko starts talking about the ethics of having children period. p. 350- 351 Then Yuriko talks about Aizawa's experience in the children's ward of the hospital he worked at. p. 352-353 I think about the forest metaphor often as I'm writing in this journal. I think about how the decision to bring life into this world is a gamble whether it has to do with your current circumstances, how the world changes over time, what kind of kid you get, their temperment, how you experience parenthood, the chance of disabilities etc. I think the odds are better for some more than others. But even if the odds are good, it's still a gamble. And like the book said, no one thinks they're drawing the short straw. And I think what the forest metaphor means to me, is not how good the odds are as a basis of how ethical making this bet is, but if the bet being made is ethical at all. You can make the arguement that Yuriko's circumstance is due to bad parents and that it could have been avoided. Another story that I find myself thinking of is the accounts of a pair of sisters who survived the Nagasaki atomic bomb. I had to watch the documentary for a class and I can't find it right now but basically, the sisters were the only ones in their family who survived the bomb. They both had life threatening injuries and saw the horrific impact of all the people dying around them. At the time, they were only children. Once they go to their 20s, the older sibling committed suicide. She couldn't take the pain of her life experiences and the trauma that came with it, even though her physical injuries long healed. The sister who continued living who is now roughly in her late 60s, early 70s, said that some people see her living as a testament to her bravery and resilience, that even though she went through something like this, that she decided to continue living and that she still saw life worth living. But she clarifies this and says that she's not brave or resilient. This event bled into every ounce of her life. If anything, her sister who took her life was the brave one because she could face death and see that as an resolve from the pain. She didn't continue living because life was worth living. She continued living because she wasn't brave enough to die. And yes, I understand that the atomic bombing is a very extreme example. But my point is that things completly out of your control, even if you have taken every precaution to hedge the bets in your favor, can create a situation for your kid that would make their life no longer worth living. And in that case, was it worth having them in the first place? Again, you're not betting on your life, you're betting on another person's life.

Sorry but what’s the argument for that? Euthanasia can be morally justified in cases of hopeless unbearable suffering. It’s easy to underestimate the kinds of suffering that exist in this world until you witness them firsthand. If someone as intelligent and self-aware as Leo contemplated suicide because of some stomach or digestive problems imagine what people with far more devastating conditions might endure. Think of elderly people who are completely disabled and have lost all independence or those who are incontinent and require constant care. Think of someone who has lost both arms or legs in a war or someone who survived a fire but suffered catastrophic burns over most of their body.ther are also children born with extremely rare and severe genetic disorders like two heads stuck in one body Go spend some time in a hospital’s emergency room or intensive care unit. You’ll see that unimaginable suffering is a reality for many people. euthanasia can be morally valid in certain extreme cases where there is no realistic hope of recovery and the suffering is unbearable.

@Zenterus To me, it seems like you are the only few here who actually understands what it takes to go out there to meet random people. Being 100% authentic is social suicide in most social situations (especially if you are deep into spirituality and self-actualization). As you said, you will alienate 99%+ people. And overall, I agree with you. That is what must be done. That’s why I also don’t optimize my IG for max stage orange girls. I have slow art, and art that requires you to be able to feel deep. I write pholosophical texts. Texts that asks you to reflect on your selfishness and biases. All this is to screen for the few rare individuals who actually resonates. So I agree with you. That being said, it is hard to accept that and be so alone. Which is what I am struggling with. I am being vulnerable and humble by admitting all this here, yet I get attacked with ”you think you are superior, better than others”, which I find weird. Kinda disappointing to be honest. Also, this thread wasn’t just about me, as I made it very clear, yet many of you are just making this about me and my ”superiority complex”.

There is evidence to support the claim that open, responsible conversations about suicide are generally more protective in the long run, over silence or non allowance. Blanket bans on these sorts of topics can lead to possibilities of inducing shame, isolation and mistakenly creating beliefs we are not allowed to speak on these topics. The evidence does NOT show talking about suicide always prevents suicide, or that any discussion is beneficial. A lot of this topic is tightly woven into questions around sovereignty/agency, personal responsibility and ethics. Terminal health diagnosis that cement us into a slowly declining quality of life often lead to suicidal thoughts as a possible solution. I know my relative who was recently diagnosed with MND is seriously considering assisted suicide. At the end of the day it's always how, by whom, and in what context suicide is talked about.

I once had a bad trip that was so bad, I literally almost committed suicide. I had asked God to teach me why evil existed in the world and why anyone would want to commit suicide since life is so precious. God responded by answering my query by hallucinating Satan and Satan tormented me by hallucinating situations that showed me that I had no control over my life. Basically I lost control over my mind, and got to find out what Insanity is. Since your mind is the Universe you can literally hallucinate events like people doing things, technology doing things for example I went out for a drive and I hallucinated my GPS refusing to work and I got completely lost and couldn't get home. Also since I was hallucinating Satan, Satan would hit me with painful sensations in my body and then laugh and mock me that it had control over my life and my life was ruined. So in my anger and defiance I drove to a gun pawn shop (found it by chance) and walked in and asked for the cheapest gun and bullets. The store owner lied and said he was out of ammunition. When I walked in, it was like they KNEW I wanted to kill myself without them knowing. Anyway I eventually was able to get to the hospital and get some anti-psychotics. I now know why someone would commit suicide. First of all you cannot blame ANYONE for that decision. The only reason a person commits suicide is because they believe they have zero control in this world of survival to create a life for themselves that they can at least tolerate. No matter who you are, you are NOT above suicide. All that has happened in your situation is life hasn't gotten bad enough for you that you think it isn't worth living. With that said, I don't regret the experience I had because it taught me ALOT.