"The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week." –Voltaire
"Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible."—Kay Redfield Jamison
All too commonly, when suicide, known as the act of voluntarily taking one’s own life becomes a news item, the populace would suppose the root cause to two posits: either the victim was in despair or he was trying to redeem his honor—or what was left of it.
Regardless, today’s people who suffered from depression or suddenly bombarded with a critical situation prefaced the suicide with notes expressing their deepest desires to conclude life’s harsh realities. And as one expert puts it, a suicide is similar to “treating a cold with a nuclear bomb.”
Emile Durkheim, a famous French sociologist cited during his glorious years the four basic types of suicide.
Fatalistic suicide—this refers to the consequence of inflicting too much emphasis on “societal regulation” constitutionally restricting one’s freedom. Victims of fatalistic suicide felt they had no conceivable life as it was often characterized by “pervasive oppression.”
Egoistic suicide—this scenario occurs when an individual lacks integration into society or when there is too much individualism. People who committed egoistic suicide were loners maintaining neither dependency on nor connection with their community during their lifetime.
Anomic suicide—the term anomie was borrowed from Jean-Marie Guyau, a French philosopher, and Emile used it to mean a “condition where social and or moral norms are confused, unclear, or simply not present,” which could result to deviant behavior like suicide.
Altruistic suicide—from the word altruism, Emile accentuated suicide with value orientation and social behavior or altruistic regard for others. It is a suicide done in honor; in taking account of the interests and welfare of other individuals or members of community or groups.
A perfect example of altruistic suicide was manifest in World War II when Japanese Kamikaze pilots along with religious extremists blew themselves up, resulting in death of their enemies as well.
In a world divided by cultural differences, suicide is understood from different perceptions with varied motivations. It is a term even people of ancient times were not estranged from.
A news article from The Harvard Mental Health Letter adumbrated culture to “influence the likelihood of suicide.”
Many view suicide as a crime, like in Christendom, especially by the 6th and 7th centuries when Roman Catholic Church issued excommunication order against those who committed suicide, thereby, denying them of funeral rites.
The same notion holds true even at the present.
There was also a time in history when attempted suicide reaped death penalty, as was the case in the 19th century England, when a certain Englishman was hanged for attempting to cut his throat, and thus, had the authorities to complete what the man failed to do.
Some perceive suicide as a coward’s escape such as in Hungary where the locals resort to suicide as easily as changing underwear for virtually any reason, all too often leads to ending a predicament.
In Asia, in the south, specifically in India, where Sutee—a religious custom in which a widow throws herself into the funeral pyre of her husband—which is supposedly abolished by the government, is still not extinct by itself. Such is betokened in how Indians in modern era react whenever a widow practices the culture:glorifying the tragedy.
In East Asia, particularly in Japan, suicide has an extremely different point of view; it never condemns suicide. In fact, its culture is marked by “highly ritualized and institutionalized form of self-disembowelment.”
Known by its term seppuku (or hara—kiri in referring to suicide in a speech and is performed by civilians), it had its roots in feudal Japan from 1192 to 1868. To its citizens, seppuku or technically cutting one’s belly was a suicidal art. An artful act in which the person felt honored in its commission.
Banzai is the term applied to members of Samurai as part of its military tradition and which is governed by code of conduct, upholding particularly virtues such as loyalty, honor, obedience, duty, filial piety, and self sacrifice.
In the book Bushido—The Soul of Japan, the author, Inazo Nitobe wrote:
“An invention of the middle ages, [seppuku] was a process by which warriors could expiate their crimes, apologise for errors, escape from disgrace, redeem their friends, or prove their sincerity.”
It has a similar connotation to the time of Silla (one of the three ancient kingdoms of the modern Korea) where, the Hwarangs—an elite military organization— would wear makeup and perform a massive ceremonial banzai with a dagger expressing protest and withdrawal of support from the ruling monarch.
A similar concept still remains true until today.
The American Medical Association Encyclopedia of Medicine says “suicide is a result from a person’s reaction to a perceived overwhelming problem.”
In an Awake! magazine, there’s an article entitled “Why People Give Up on Life,” where a psychiatry professor of John Hopkins University of School Medicine, Kay Redfield Jamison was quoted saying: “much of the decision to die is in the construing of events.”
Today, when a person faces humiliation or feels his dignity and honor had been stripped of him, a seppuku is the ultimate solution. And such is regardless of the presence or absence of the guilt.
To many, whether the situation is militaristic like the ancient samurai or non-political, suicide allows the person to redeem the honor he lost in trying to save others.
To most, it is deemed honorable to sacrifice one’s life in upholding the code of conduct, however that conduct is viewed.
References:
Awake! publications
Bushido—The Soul of Japan
The Harvard Mental Health Letter
Wikipedia
Sociology Index
And more from www.google.com SE
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