Тег: suicide

Suicides among veterans or why war is unnatural for humans

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Some might argue that there have always been wars in human history, and therefore it is a completely natural phenomenon. Many arguments can be made as to why this is not the case, but one of the most telling is the prevalence of suicide among veterans. In September 2019, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs published a report stating that at least 60,000 veterans committed suicide between 2008 and 2017. According to statistics, nearly two dozen veterans commit suicide every day in the US, and according to some claims, more Iraq War veterans have committed suicide than died on the battlefield. An extremely high suicide rate can also be observed among veterans of Afghanistan.

Moreover, it is not even necessary to take the US as an example. There is recent data that since November 2020, at least 26 Azerbaijani veterans of the second Karabakh war have committed suicide. In 2018, in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, one of the representatives of the veterans’ affairs committee reported thousands of suicides among participants in the battles in Donbas. As for Russia, there are data that in 2004, more than 1,000 suicide attempts were recorded among those who had been to Chechnya. Surely, the list of suicides among veterans even only in the countries and conflicts we have considered is far from over. And the list of psychologically traumatized veterans who did not decide to commit suicide will be dozens of times larger. And it is frightening to imagine how many psychiatric losses, besides the direct cases of death in battle, await us on both sides after the end of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Military experts have long known that the average healthy individual possesses a strong internal resistance to killing, and only less than 2% of people are able to do it easily. But in war, a person is forced to try to suppress their violence inhibitor and commit killings, because otherwise they will not be able to cope with the task at hand, will fail their comrades, and will ultimately contribute to defeat in battle. These two contradictory factors—the necessity to kill and the inability to kill—together are the main cause of psychological trauma on the battlefield. Even among those who were able to kill in war, such traumas are not uncommon, because after realizing what they have done, they cannot come to terms with it and suffer for the rest of their lives. Definitely, war is absolutely unnatural for human beings.

Is incitement to suicide/aiding suicide a crime?

Rachok

In the simplest case, we have a picture like this. A person commits suicide and leaves a note: in my death, I ask you to blame so-and-so, because he behaved toward me in such-and-such a way. This is, in essence, the same as if a person went to the square in front of a tyrant’s palace and committed self-immolation as a protest against his policies. He could have carried out a terrorist attack or an assassination attempt, but he preferred this form of expressing his opinion.

For everyone else, this is a strong argument to investigate exactly what the person the suicide asked to be blamed for their death had done. The relatives and friends of the deceased, of course, will be particularly interested in this. An interesting case could arise with an insurance company. Generally speaking, suicide is not an insurable event. But if the heir of the suicide sues the person named in the suicide note and presents the court with sufficient evidence of violence by the defendant toward the suicide, the court may find the accused truly guilty of unintentional homicide, and in this case, there are grounds to claim insurance. Indeed, is there a great difference between the situations “beat severely, the beaten person died from the blows” and “systematically beat, the beaten person committed suicide”? However, I do not think that under ancap, such complex situations will be codified in advance; most likely, the court will make a decision on the merits in each specific case.

In a situation where there is no explicit accusation from the suicide, it is much harder to prove that driving to suicide took place, but if those who cared about the deceased manage this, the task reduces to the previous one.

As for assisting suicide, I already had a post about a girl who ordered her own murder. Anyone has the right to ask for help in such a delicate matter, but to protect oneself from claims by the deceased’s relatives, measures must be taken to ensure the full legal purity of the contract. It would be most logical if such a service were provided by professionals—for example, doctors performing euthanasia.

As for suicide booths on every corner—that is a hyperbole, of course. It is unlikely that the service would be so in demand.

A girl ordered her own murder.

It is interesting to consider this case from the perspective of ancap. At the same time, the parents are against it, and are already upset that the guy was sentenced to 48 years (which brings up the question of the victims; it turns out there is a conflict). And others claim that the girl could have been saved, and that she needed psychological help.

анонимный вопрос

I have already covered the topic of euthanasia in quite some detail. In itself, there is nothing criminal about a killing requested by the person being killed, but in order to prove the voluntary nature of the transaction and the capacity of the client, it is advisable to carry out certain legal procedures. From the circumstances of the case under consideration, it is clear only that there was indeed a request, but the awareness of the actions remains unproven.

Of course, in the absence of a state, it would be much easier for the girl to appear at a clinic accompanied by a notary, so that the latter could record her clearly expressed intention and the results of an examination by a psychologist confirming that she is of sound mind and memory, after which she would receive her lethal injection of heroin from a doctor and pass away peacefully with a blissful smile on her face. If the prediction from the song—that under ancap, we probably won’t need to die at all—does not come true, then personally, I expect to end my life in exactly this way in my old age.

In the case under consideration, there are too many circumstances that are very difficult to imagine when ancap is all around and there are no bans on euthanasia. I will start inventing how such a thing could happen, and you will respond by claiming that ancap is sheer cannibalism; well, screw you.

Well, there is no need to hire the first guy you meet on the street when there are doctors. There is no need to hide the fact of the killing if everything happened by agreement, and this can be easily confirmed. And finally, the parents have no right to demand retribution from a conscientious executor of a legally flawless contract.

Now, if you want me to consider specifically the case linked, where the state is still around, but for some reason my non-deciding opinion is important to you, then okay. I consider the perpetrator of the killing a jerk who didn’t step away from this slippery subject, although he had every opportunity to do so. If he was driven by curiosity, then I would be wary of such curious people—maybe next time he’ll decide to be curious with a knife in my guts. If he thought such things were fucking romantic, then he could have taken a second dose of heroin, and it would have been a double suicide in a beautiful Japanese style. If he just needed money, there are many more ethical ways to earn a living. Nevertheless, this is all, of course, not a reason for a half-century prison sentence; community service in a morgue would be quite sufficient.

I don’t want naturalistic images, just a beautiful tyan in the forest!