- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
“We are all culpable,” Matt Nelson said before lighting himself on fire. This is the third such incident in a year.
“We are all culpable,” Matt Nelson said before lighting himself on fire. This is the third such incident in a year.
It seems to me you are missing the point.
This is a political suicide. I cannot say that I am for this approach but what I see is a form of protest (and maybe what I think about it is another topic). What is striking to me is that this US-backed Genocide is taking place for almost a year, and due to despair americans are even killing themselves as a form of protest.
And of course there are other forms of protesting. People try to influence politicians in so many ways so the US stops providing guns and arguments attempting to justify it.
This is a mentally ill person who was driven to an extreme and felt there was nothing better to do than take his own life.
There is no message that should be said other than to urge anyone who is feeling similar distress needs to know that there are people who love them and no matter what there is always a better alternative.
By condoning it for political purposes you give an out for the mentally ill to commit “legitimate” suicide, or worse to being manipulated into doing so. This is not a slippert slope, it is a hard line that many in these comments have crossed - which is why it needs to be said that there is a better path and there are resources.
This isn’t true.
I am a rape survivor who hasn’t dated anyone in a very long time. The person who hurt me was not prosecuted. I don’t like being touched anymore. I am probably going to kill myself within a few years. I don’t think this is a mental health issue that I want to die; I think this is a valid choice, and no, I don’t want big pharma drugs, religion, or people talking to me to try to make me feel better. I just ultimately want to die and just meed to get my affairs in order.
The person who lit himself on fire and me are not the same. He wasn’t someone who wanted to die, he was someone who wanted people to realize the level of suffering that Palestinians are experiencing.
He didn’t want to kill other people to make his point because he wasn’t violent. He was willing to die himself however. That’s self-sacrifice. More people are noticing what is going on because of what he did. It was not pointless or meaningless.
There are people who commit suicide because of temporary mental health issues, those that end things due to persistent despair, which are not a mental health issues but valid feelings, and neither of these things are the same as self-immolation as political protest.
I know it makes people in society FEEL better to say that people who choose actions that lead to their own death are all mental and just should have called a hotline so they could be locked up by police and force fed or injected with psychiatric medication until big pharma made everything better, but reality isn’t always fairy tales and happy endings. Gross simplifications that push drugs and involuntary hospitalization are an extreme illogical form of reductionism like flat-earthers who deny climate change but feel better as a result.