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A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

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Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#151

Post by tekromancr »

bentcorner wrote: post #62
rrradical wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be a better use of his life to work to make sure that sort of accident never happens again? Maybe he changes the culture that led to his incompetence. Maybe he tutors young architects and teaches them to learn from his mistake. I think someone that makes such a huge mistake is actually in a very powerful position to salvage something from it.

You're probably right, but personally if I was in that situation I don't think I'd be able to go through the mental hoops required to forgive myself. Every morning, I'd wake up and remember what I'd done. The pain would be unimaginable.

This is how I like to think that people who design software for weapons systems live.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#152

Post by [deleted] »

bentcorner wrote: post #62
rrradical wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be a better use of his life to work to make sure that sort of accident never happens again? Maybe he changes the culture that led to his incompetence. Maybe he tutors young architects and teaches them to learn from his mistake. I think someone that makes such a huge mistake is actually in a very powerful position to salvage something from it.

You're probably right, but personally if I was in that situation I don't think I'd be able to go through the mental hoops required to forgive myself. Every morning, I'd wake up and remember what I'd done. The pain would be unimaginable.

[deleted]

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#153

Post by cristianpascu »

lilsunnybee wrote: post #145
ionised wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope you'd agree with me when I say that love is more natural to human beings than fear. I wouldn't agree with that. Fear is one of the most basic instincts. A core emotion to most species along with joy, sadness, anxiety and anger. Love, while most are certainly capable of it, isn't among those core emotions.

Living in fear is a wretched state though, yet many many religious doctrines are based in fear, condemnation, hate, for anyone outside of their church or religion. If you believe that victims of suicide are consigned to hellfire for all eternity, you might as well go to their funerals and preach to all of the friends and family who loved them that their loved one will suffer eternally from now on. Victims of rape, vi…

>> It's people trying to assuage their own fear of the unknown, and guilt for their wrongdoings, by subscribing to a cosmology that of course they will be forgiven for their crimes and attain everlasting happiness and utopia, but everyone else is damned.

This is such an extreme and ignorant simplification. You speak as if religious doctrines have been developed by shoe shop owners feeling guilty for selling expensive stuff to poor women.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#154

Post by lmm »

audiodude wrote: post #100
cphuntington97 wrote: post #78

>The constant screaming and the running, along with chronic exhaustion, produce in him a state of low-level panic, which is also a state of acute focus. It is as if his thinking mind, his doubting and critical and interpreting mind, had shut down and been replaced by a simpler mechanism that serves the body. This is extreme, however, it strikes me as a mild version of operating a steam locomotive. While undertaking t…

Sounds like a moderately fun video game?

Train Simulator is, in practice, mostly about micromanaging your steam levels.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#155

Post by lmm »

coldtea wrote: post #149
cphuntington97 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are things any different anywhere else? Our hunting-gathering days are over. We used to chop down wood for the fire; now, we go to work, and push a button on the wall to stay warm. To work is to live in modern society.

> Our hunting-gathering days are over. We used to chop down wood for the fire; now, we go to work, and push a button on the wall to stay warm. Well, billions of people still chop down wood for the fire. Including tons of people in the west -- in villages in eastern europe for example.

> people in the west -- in villages in eastern europe

Um...

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#156

Post by lmm »

ranran876 wrote: post #35
dragontamer wrote: post #12

The Hikikomori has become a standard anime trope. Starting in 2009 in Anohana, the main character is a recovering Hikikomori (who went through quite a depressing story that caused him to withdraw from society). This last spring, there were at least three major animes revolving around the concept. "Nanana's burried treasure", "No Game No Life", and "Mekakucity actors" all have title characters who are Hikikomoris. Hik…

Just to contrast your experience, I had a very interesting two month working near Tokyo. The whole time I was there I didn't see any anime, or hikkimori and the whole thing didn't resemble anime at all (though.. granted, I'm not an expert in the genre). The only places you saw anything anime related was at gambling establishments and certain districts of Tokyo. I think on the whole, that subculture is looked down upo…

I found that when I went to Yakushima I saw a lot more of the things you see in anime (even just stuff like the shapes of the buses) compared to Tokyo. I suspect that just like with novels or movies, a lot of the time creators set things in the world they grew up in as kids, so the world you see through media is the world as it was 20 years ago rather than now. Tokyo changes rapidly, whereas the countryside is similar to how it was.

Is the anime-fan subculture really looked down on in the US? Here in Europe it seems to be growing a lot, part of a general status upgrade for "nerdy" interests.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#157

Post by lmm »

tekromancr wrote: post #151
bentcorner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right, but personally if I was in that situation I don't think I'd be able to go through the mental hoops required to forgive myself. Every morning, I'd wake up and remember what I'd done. The pain would be unimaginable.

This is how I like to think that people who design software for weapons systems live.

Really?

I've written guidance code. A missile that doesn't go where you point it is a deadweight loss; while it might be best if they weren't fired at all, it's better they hit their intended targets than random (probably civilian) victims.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#158

Post by lilsunnybee »

Loughla wrote: post #22

The only thing I can't get over is how work focused all of the letters are. Sure, they all have family struggles, but they're less concerned about the particular struggles and more concerned about how that impacts their work. This article is phrased as if the entire Japanese culture is based on a disproportionate work-life balance to the extreme.

I agree with the other replier that expressed doubt as to whether things are really any different anywhere else. Your life might involve other elements, but for the vast vast majority of humanity, work/career/income is a very significant, necessary foundation for anything else to be possible. Without work you are left to wither and die, with either no or very very limited resources provided to you.

This is quite evident in how we treat the disabled when they are judged unable to work; serious disability in the US with no work history? Try living on the maximum $674 per month SSI payment(1), with no guaranteed section 8 housing (wait list is closed in many states for years at a time), and let's see how good of a life you can live, with no family support, trust funds, or anything like that.

That's not even taking into account the countless perennial homeless people that we let languish on the streets, because we'd never pay to have them accurately diagnosed, or directly allocate any funds so that they aren't living a life of abject poverty, filth, and neglect.

But of course suicide is still illegal for everyone, disability or not, abject poverty or not, likelihood of improved quality of life or not. We pay lip service to being a moral, caring society, saying you shouldn't ever kill yourself because there are other options, but then again we'd never break out our checkbook or trouble ourselves to ensure those options actually exist. Such societal realities would look despicable if they weren't so peachy by comparison to much much worse atrocities humans have committed throughout history.

There are a few standouts in Western Europe and elsewhere, where it seems people actually take issue with poverty, neglect, and misery, but that is far from common worldwide, where indifference and schadenfreude are the norm.

Sorry for the rant.

Edit: forgot the citation

(1) http://www.disabilitybenefitscenter.org/disability_benefits....

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#159

Post by tekromancr »

lmm wrote: post #157
tekromancr wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I like to think that people who design software for weapons systems live.

Really? I've written guidance code. A missile that doesn't go where you point it is a deadweight loss; while it might be best if they weren't fired at all, it's better they hit their intended targets than random (probably civilian) victims.

Absolutely, but If no one could reliably aim their bombs, would they fire them?

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#160

Post by lilsunnybee »

mililani wrote: post #66

I didn't like some of what was wrote. Suffering shouldn't be praised, and suicide shouldn't be look as being weak. Some people just can't cope with the harshness that is life. Some people can't cope with the harshness of their mental illnesses. Some people just can't cope with the pain that is caused by terminal illnesses. To say that suffering is good, is to trivialize these people's plight.

Any of us would commit suicide under the right circumstances. It looks weak and selfish when you have never had to walk in that person's shoes, but if you ever get there yourself, to lose all joy and humor, to be in seemingly constant pain and misery, to have all of your hope and faith dwindle to nothing, with no help in sight, only then can you really fully understand what it's like seeing no other way out.

If you want to help prevent suicide, rather than limiting methods and consigning many people to continued torment and suffering, how about advocate for improving some of the societal problems that contribute to people losing all hope?

Poverty is a huge driver, along with inadequate physical and mental healthcare. Homelessness, or being faced with it, is demoralizing and inspires hopelessness. Some of the hardest-to-remedy but most hard-hitting issues are always going to be domestic physical, sexual and emotional abuse and bullying.

How about we try to improve other peoples lives and quality-of-life rather than sealing off the exits and trapping them in it? If we are ever going to have a truly compassionate society we need legalized assisted euthanasia, available to everyone after a waiting period, confidential counseling and a finite period of treatment. We all need to be honest with ourselves, stop the judgements, and provide the same options that we would want available if we were in somebody else's shoes.

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