A Philosophy of Mortality and Suicide

Try to see death as being the same as eye color in terms of how our biological cells evolved to decay, except, death is a biological trait that evolved not to enhance the survival of the individual but of a group. Death, by its very nature, was a mutation that was adopted by what we know as ‘life’ the same way any other trait is passed on. From its very inception, there’s no escaping it, death is the ultimate governor of the ego.

It's different than other evolution because it puts the very concept of natural selection under the microscope. Death is evidence of God in evolution.

How else can one explain why ‘cell death’ has been so prolific when it seems to go against proliferation? It’s not as simple as an increase in genetic variety of members though that does occur; increased variation alone isn’t a satisfactory explanation for how death can become advantageous to a group.

It’s not as simple as an increase in genetic variety of members, though that does occur; increased variation alone isn’t a satisfactory explanation for how death can become advantageous to a group.

A measure for population control, limited space, and resources provides more commonsensical understandings of why death is vital to life as we know it. ‘Life’ did not invent death but it has exploited death’s utility.

With this understanding of the origin of ‘natural death,’ we can find parallels in human society to the irrationality of death such-as war (... and suicide.) In both, we justify the killing of human beings. War is justified on a national scale as well as on the individual level and both are common occurrences that have become accepted as a part of life though we wish that they were not.

I think suicidal thoughts are caused by a confusion of emotions resulting from misplacing them. For example, when one bites into a fast-food cheeseburger as he’s thinking about an episode of road rage that just occurred they’re allowing anger to replace pleasure. The resulting suicide takes place after many incidences of emotional confusion which create physical changes in the structures of the brain.. The individual begins to crave their dominant emotion, anger, sadness, grief, and they lose satisfaction with their present reality. Preoccupied with their inner experience, they’re experiencing schizophrenic-like states while engaging in things that are ordinarily pleasurable, and reality grows burdensome.

There is always something about wanting to end one’s life that is wholly irrational, violently selfish, and paradoxically selfless...
Keep in mind these are my thoughts and I claim absolution if my understandings are fallacious

Thanks for the reply! First off, the reason for this post was inspired by the lack of study available on suicide in my psychology coursework. I'd like to say that you're reasonable retorts have inspired me to do some research on these extracurricular thoughts which I have put off and did not do prior to writing this. That being said, here's some nonsense I found to substantiate the claim made just now about the weakness of psychology's understand of suicide:

"A further complication is that current psychological evidence suggests that suicide is often an ambivalent act in which individuals who wish to die must nevertheless overcome the ordinary human fear of death (Cholbi 2011, 31–34, Joiner 2010, 62–70). Given this ambivalence, it may be difficult to determine precisely whether an act that poses an apparently lethal threat to the agent who performs it was in fact an act in which death was intended. When a person dies in such circumstances, it may prove difficult whether to classify the death as resulting from suicide (i.e., intentional self-killing) or as accidental. Such cases might indicate the need for a third category besides intentional suicide and accidental death(Cholbi 2007). "

"While studying suicide in college, we basically completely skipped the topic and there seemed to be an acute anxiety associated with it as one of the last seeming misunderstood, nearly taboo realities of the field. Granted, I was only taking beginning level psych courses and it is a very touchy subject, nonetheless, the above statement is ripe with bullshit. Let me know if elaboration is needed there. The field has come a long way in the last 2o years but still has a long way to go. My thoughts on suicide attempt to represent, granted through 'language theory' which I think is touching on the roots of psychology with Freudian type theory but in the modern world where we've been to map the brain and are beginning to understand how behavior influences different structures. I'd classify my ideas on suicide as more philosophy, like a religious examination of one's own personal thoughts, self-psychology if you will... "
[Cholbi, Michael. "Suicide." Stanford University. Stanford University, 18 May 2004. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.]

The second topic I brought up which I have to say is one of the most interesting things that I've neglected in my extracurricular curiosity. What you're referring to is cell mitosis and what I have made mention of is cell apoptosis or 'cell death.' Though, the way you mentioned it was that through the duplication of a cell during mitosis, two are created and one is destroyed. As cool a theory that is as to where the beginning of death truly was, well frankly, reproduction is not death and there's no death occurring there. I'm not even going to say I disagree with you, lets leave it at a difference of philosophical perception and maybe you want to read up on cell apoptosis.

Topic number three has to do with the concept of God and that would require much discussion but I can provide some more insights on the subject. Where I mentioned it I was using the term to identify what appears to me to be a unified consciousness capable of mutation which as you pointedly mentioned is the defining characteristic of life as we understand it. I came to this conclusion by rationalizing through my amateur understandings of natural selection that death, by its very nature, is not advantageous to the individual except through the greater advantage afforded their species and their young. By suggesting that this turns natural selection on his head is suggesting that there is an activity above the level of the biological individual taking place in evolution.

Let me clarify one thing, creativity is a process of creation and destruction, I was never intending to prove the existence of god because I already believe that god both does exist and does not exist as a concept. If aliens came to earth tomorrow I would view them as god the way that I view myself as god of this world as a human being. These are my views, beliefs, and feelings on that subject. I'm not simply trying to identify a physical presence outside the individual organism but more closely an instinctual awareness of one's species, place in the world, which is unconscious, spiritual, and motivated the mutation of apoptosis. Before apoptosis cells reproduced and never died, we've witnessed this occurring in lobsters and other organisms who have small telomerase strands, another subject I don't know enough about (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomerase) but lets just say that we're aware of the mechanisms to theoretically turn off cell death.

You may think I'm contradicting myself when I say that death IS advantageous to variety because it is but only a certain kind of variety. I'm not sure how to explain this with an analogy but it's like more of the new less of the old... I'm thinking in terms of combinations of combinations, the longer we can reproduce, the more complex the combinations while through death's influence on evolution, the complexity of the combinations is sacrificed for a greater variety. In these terms death is referring to the 'cell apoptosis' which leads to the end of a human's reproduction cycle not their life though it's clear that a human life is much more than what we leave behind genetically. I hope that does something for you. Furthermore in my philosophy of death it is an altruistic event, always and though there's violence in suicide, there's still an element of altruism as death is still involved. It evolved into being and to quote the bullshit 'intro philosophy' class God talk about supreme beings that means its "all good."

I'm not up on my forum lingo so IDK if "Hey Ho" means something but let me say that I wasn't trying to justify war merely understand it as if I was an alien being who had never experienced in their lifetime war between their species. Suicide, on the other hand I feel that people only truly contemplate one time... Perhaps that's a stark statement but that was my experience with it, trying to truly contemplate death and as far as that is universal in suicide, the contemplation of death, is about as far as psychology has come on understanding it from what I have seen.

Rereading old forum, thought I'd comment about your late father.

You mistook what is meant by death and applied it quite literally to the passing of your father. That is the death of the human organism. Death has already occurred on the cellular level as part of the aging process.

This should add the missing empathy you were looking for and could not find.