On Suicide:
Aug. 1st, 2002 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflyFrom Conversations with God, an uncommon dialogue; Book Three by Neale Donald Walsch (and God).
Why is there such a taboo against the ending of one's life?
You mean it's not wrong to kill yourself?
The question cannot be answered to your satisfaction, because the question itself contains two false concepts; it is based on two false assumptions; it contains two errors.
The first assumption is that there is such a thing as "right" and "wrong". The second false assumption is that killing is possible. Your question itself, therefore, disintegrates the moment it is dissected.
"Right" and "wrong" are philosophical polarities in a human value system which have nothing to do with the Ultimate Reality -- A point which I have made repeatedly throughout this dialogue. They are, furthermore, not even constant constructs within your own system, but rather, values which keep shifting from time to time.
You are doing the shifting, changing your mind about these values as it suits you (which rightly you should, as evolving beings), yet insisting at each step along the way that you haven't done this, and that it is your unchanging values which form the core of your society's integrity. You have thus built your society on a paradox. You keep changing your values, all the while proclaiming that it is unchanging values which you... well, value!
The answer to the problems presented by the paradox is not to throw cold water on the sand in an attempt to make it concrete, but to celebrate the shifting of the sand. Celebrate its beauty while it holds itself in the shape of your castle, but then also celebrate the new form and shape it takes as the tide comes in.
Celebrate the shifting sands as they form the new mountains you would climb, and atop which -- and with which -- you will build your new castles. Yet understand that these mountains and these castles are momuments to change, not to permanence.
Glorify what you are today, yet do not condemn what you were yesterday, nor preclude what you could become tomorrow.
Understand that "right" and "wrong" are figments of your imagination, and that "okay" and "not okay" are merely announcements of your latest preferences and imaginings.
For example, on this question fo ending one's life, it is the current imagining of the majority of people on your planet that it is "not okay" to do that.
Similarly, many of you still insist that it is not okay to assist another who wishes to end his or her life.
In both cases you say this should be "against the law." You have come to this conclusion, presumably, because the ending of the life occures relatively quickly. Actions which end a life over a somewhat longer period of times are not against the law, even though they achieve the same result.
Thus, if a person in your society kills himself with a gun, his family members lose insurance benefits. If he does so with cigarettes, they do not.
If a doctor assists you in your suicide, it is called manslaughter, while if a tobacoo company does, it is called commerce.
With you, it seems to be merely a question of time. The legality of self-destruction -- the "rightness" or the "wrongness" of it -- seems to have as much to do with how quickly the deed is done, as well as who is doing it. The faster the death, the more "wrong" it seems to be. The slower the death, the more it slips in "okayness".
Interestingly, this is the exact opposite of what a truly humane society would conclude. By any reasonable definition of what you would call "humane", the shorter the death, the better. Yet your society punishes those who would seek to do the humane thing, and rewards those who would do the insane.
It is insane to think that endless suffering is what God requires, and that a quick, humane end to the suffering is "wrong".
"Punish the humane, reward the insane."
This is a motto which only a society of beings with limited understanding could embrace.
So you poison your system by inhaling cacinogens, you poison your system by eating food treated with chemicals that over the long run kill you, and you poison your system by breathing air which you have continually polluted. You poison your system in a hundred different ways over a thousand different moments and you do this knowing that thse substances are no good for you. But because it takes a longer time for them to kill you, you commmit suicide with impunity.
If you poison yourself with something that works faster, you are said to have done something against moral law.
Now I tell you this: It is no more immoral to kill yourself quickly than to kill yourself slowly.
Why is there such a taboo against the ending of one's life?
You mean it's not wrong to kill yourself?
The question cannot be answered to your satisfaction, because the question itself contains two false concepts; it is based on two false assumptions; it contains two errors.
The first assumption is that there is such a thing as "right" and "wrong". The second false assumption is that killing is possible. Your question itself, therefore, disintegrates the moment it is dissected.
"Right" and "wrong" are philosophical polarities in a human value system which have nothing to do with the Ultimate Reality -- A point which I have made repeatedly throughout this dialogue. They are, furthermore, not even constant constructs within your own system, but rather, values which keep shifting from time to time.
You are doing the shifting, changing your mind about these values as it suits you (which rightly you should, as evolving beings), yet insisting at each step along the way that you haven't done this, and that it is your unchanging values which form the core of your society's integrity. You have thus built your society on a paradox. You keep changing your values, all the while proclaiming that it is unchanging values which you... well, value!
The answer to the problems presented by the paradox is not to throw cold water on the sand in an attempt to make it concrete, but to celebrate the shifting of the sand. Celebrate its beauty while it holds itself in the shape of your castle, but then also celebrate the new form and shape it takes as the tide comes in.
Celebrate the shifting sands as they form the new mountains you would climb, and atop which -- and with which -- you will build your new castles. Yet understand that these mountains and these castles are momuments to change, not to permanence.
Glorify what you are today, yet do not condemn what you were yesterday, nor preclude what you could become tomorrow.
Understand that "right" and "wrong" are figments of your imagination, and that "okay" and "not okay" are merely announcements of your latest preferences and imaginings.
For example, on this question fo ending one's life, it is the current imagining of the majority of people on your planet that it is "not okay" to do that.
Similarly, many of you still insist that it is not okay to assist another who wishes to end his or her life.
In both cases you say this should be "against the law." You have come to this conclusion, presumably, because the ending of the life occures relatively quickly. Actions which end a life over a somewhat longer period of times are not against the law, even though they achieve the same result.
Thus, if a person in your society kills himself with a gun, his family members lose insurance benefits. If he does so with cigarettes, they do not.
If a doctor assists you in your suicide, it is called manslaughter, while if a tobacoo company does, it is called commerce.
With you, it seems to be merely a question of time. The legality of self-destruction -- the "rightness" or the "wrongness" of it -- seems to have as much to do with how quickly the deed is done, as well as who is doing it. The faster the death, the more "wrong" it seems to be. The slower the death, the more it slips in "okayness".
Interestingly, this is the exact opposite of what a truly humane society would conclude. By any reasonable definition of what you would call "humane", the shorter the death, the better. Yet your society punishes those who would seek to do the humane thing, and rewards those who would do the insane.
It is insane to think that endless suffering is what God requires, and that a quick, humane end to the suffering is "wrong".
"Punish the humane, reward the insane."
This is a motto which only a society of beings with limited understanding could embrace.
So you poison your system by inhaling cacinogens, you poison your system by eating food treated with chemicals that over the long run kill you, and you poison your system by breathing air which you have continually polluted. You poison your system in a hundred different ways over a thousand different moments and you do this knowing that thse substances are no good for you. But because it takes a longer time for them to kill you, you commmit suicide with impunity.
If you poison yourself with something that works faster, you are said to have done something against moral law.
Now I tell you this: It is no more immoral to kill yourself quickly than to kill yourself slowly.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2002-08-02 02:15 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-08-02 03:00 am (UTC)I still haven't read the first one. I've read Book Two, and Friendship with God, and I'm reading Book Three. I need to get ahold of One, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-08-03 04:17 am (UTC)They helped me define my own beliefs as well. It was wonderful to find something that articulated what I believed and expanded my views.
Once you read book one, you'll see a lot of Justin quotes featuring lines from the books in interviews.
Re:
Date: 2002-08-03 10:40 am (UTC)*dies*