Not exactly spam...

But... Well, I really don't know what this is.

Someone I know thinks suicide is unthinkable and bashes those who talka about it but he smokes and stuff. So he's basically killing himself. Slowly, but surely.

Am I the only one who finds something wrong with this?​

 

He's choosing to exchange years of his life for the pleasure he gets from smoking. There is a fundamental difference between trading away life for the sake of enjoyment, and intentionally ending one's life for the sake of ending it.

That's not to say that I approve of his viewpoint or smoking, but I don't find it to be particularly hypocritical.

 

This. Even if he's killing himself slowly, he's just shortening his life. He could get lung cancer and die faster, but a cigarette won't kill him on the spot (unless it's some freak accident) and I doubt he would smoke a cigarette willingly if he knew that cigarette would kill him right then. He's still getting pleasure from it, too.
Suicide is different.

 

I can't really find smoking as a form of suicide. He knows that smoking will eventually lead him to his death (most likely, if he doesn't get in any kind of accident) but he still chooses to do it. Suicide is something that all humans are capabile of thinking (Death Note ftw!) because everyone goes through stress or trama. My family also bashes about those who think about killing themselves when they don't realize that I have wanted to die numerous times in the past. Sometimes pain and stress just accumulate into one big cluster of depression that just takes over them. However, suicide is doing something because you want to kill yourself. If someone did actually take up smoking for that, it would take years for them to develope heart problems or cancers. However, if it were someone like me, with a medical condition, the lapse in time could be shorter. So, although your friend is kind of a jerk, he's not hypocritcal.

 

The problem with that logic is that nobody ends his life the sake of ending it.
Contemplating to kill yourself to evade the misery in your life isn't quite so different from exchanging life for pleasure. In the end, those who commit suicide also exchange their life for "pleasure" (or rather, the termination of suffering, but the difference is irrelevant). Although the two are indeed quite different, the hypocrisy remains. It's both a manner of exchanging quantity of life for quality. Suicide is merely a more drastic transaction.
One could argue that there are plenty of better options than killing yourself, but one could counter that argument by saying that there plenty of ways to achieve peace of mind other than smoking too.

 

Suicide is ending life for the sake of escaping from misery. I cannot acknowledge that as improving one's quality of life in any way, primarily because it removes one's life entirely.

 

Smoking is a slow way to kill your self. Really slow. But smokers take please in each instance of inhaling and exhaling that smoke. Suicide is pretty much just the extremely more drastic form of this. Killing your self right on the spot to relieve the pain of life and to hopefully feel the pleasure of what comes once you die; no pain. Whether not you actually feel that, or anything at all, after you die is unknown. But both acts are harmful to the body yet both are done ultimately for some form of pleasure. Is your friend hypocritical? Yes, in a certain sense if you really want to look at it that way but is he basically mocking suicide while holding a gun to his skull? Not really. But this honestly all depends on how you look at it, and the truth is most people won't compare smoking to suicide so most people wouldn't see your friend as being a hypocrite.

You can't really argue that he who commits suicide doesn't take please in knowing they don't have to live a life they hate anymore, and a smoker obviously takes pleasure in smoking. Both bad for the body (Though in extremely varied degrees) and both considered pleasurable in some form.

 

They may get pleasure from entertaining notions of suicide, but their quality of life does not improve by committing suicide. Suicide itself doesn't give them pleasure.

 

It doesn't matter whether their quality of life actually improves upon death (which indeed it doesn't). What matters is how they perceive it. A person with suicidal thoughts sees their quality of life as "below zero" and would prefer death (the "zero" value) over continuing anywhere below it. My point still stands. The term "quality of life" was an unfortunate choice of expression, but it ought to have been clear what I meant by it.

 

Not necessarily to escape misery. Some cultists believe suicide is the journey to a better plain of existence, whilst some schizophrenics have delusions and hallucinations that indicate them that hurting or cutting themselves will fulfill a purpose they need.
Suicide isn't as straight cut as many people believe. Technically we're all dying either slowly, quickly, quiet, painfully. It's how will deal with things and the choices that we make that dictates what life is worth living for. Smoking I personally dislike since it's a substance that only creates problems such as illness, addiction, death and so on merely for feeling good? I know several other ways to achieve that with not nearly as many side-effects. Suicide I have problems with since I find it as a give up when there are usually far worse off people in the world. However I understand the position to be in that suicide is a viable option, and as such am lenient on people.

 

I do see where you're coming from but I think for it to be hypocritical smoking would have to be classed as suicide. I think it's more wrong that he bashes people for it and doesn't sympathise with the person in need.

 

The difference is in where the pleasure comes from. The smoker decides to smoke, and willingly exchanges years of his life. The suicidal person decides to kill himself, and acts to intentionally cut his life short.

If smoking didn't damage him, the smoker would still smoke. If suicide didn't kill him, the sucidal person wouldn't do it. That's what I mean by ending one's life for the sake of ending it.

 

That doesn't mean the suicidal person won't still try though. It's like when people try to commit suicide by ODing on prescription drugs. They know that there isn't a 100% chance of death (less than 50% if I recall the statistic correctly) but they still try. You may not understand this, but there are also people who attempt suicide on the [flawed] rationale of, "If God intends for me to survive, I will survive and my life will improve."

I also note, with a bit of humor, that you're talking about the "fact" that if killing yourself didn't kill you, you wouldn't try to kill yourself. Doesn't that seems just a little off to you?

 

Exactly my point. Suicide is based around the notion of killing oneself. People do it for the effect of dying. This makes it fundamentally different to smoking, where the death is slow, and an unwanted side effect.

 

Even so, I can see why people see it as hypocritical. You are still choosing a certain option above a healthier alternative that can have the same effect.
To those who are suicidal, death is not a goal but a means: a manner to leave one's problems behind. Granted, it's not an unwanted side effect. A suicidal person would not commit the act if it didn't rid him of his misery (through death). However, he would not commit it if he saw any other alternative.

I would frown if a smoker chastised a suicidal person when I was nearby.
The factors suicide is often resented for are:
1) The lack of respect for one's own life
2) The esteemed availability of alternatives
3) The irreversibility
4) The grief one causes to their friends and family
Correct me if I've forgotten any, but I think I covered most of them.
Well now...
Suicide is a drastic, irreversible decision that spits on life to which there may be better alternatives. It causes a lot of grief towards the people you love.
Smoking is a less drastic yet equally irreversible decision that spits on life to which there are many alternatives. You might not cause as much grief (unless you die prematurely from your self-induced lung cancer), but you do annoy AND harm the ones close to you.

While I don't want to generalise all smokers nor all suicidals, I can see a certain degree of hypocrisy if a smoker bashes someone with suicidal thoughts.
Yes, the two are different. But what matters is how they are different. In this case, they show enough similarities for the hypocrisy argument to be valid.

 

Essentially this. It is hypocritical to judge someone for anything that they do with their lives, unless they are just plain wrong about what it brings them, or are doing it out of some misplaced faith in an outcome. Even if they are right, if there is no way for them to know that they are right, then it would be foolish for them to act on such a belief. This is particularly true if it is so permanent as suicide seems to be. For instance, if someone commits suicide because they believe that they will be reincarnated or become a god or something like that, and would regret it if they were wrong, then the suicide is completely baseless. However, if one seeks to commit suicide simply to see what will happen after death or to escape something in this life, then they are just doing what they want with their own existence, and no one could say that they are wrong in that. It would be the same if someone who hated their life started chastising someone else for enjoying theirs. Of course, you should always try to expand another's view of things, but deriding them after the fact because they do not have the same emotional base as you is hypocritical in itself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and that kind of thing. You need not mention smoking to figure that out.

 

There is a big difference between slowly killing yourself , he may not want to die , but smoking is something he needs , like me , i have somewhat a ADHD table addiction , i want to stop taking them but can't , in this case he might want to stop or maybe not

But , he has his own opinions on suicide , he thinks or probably hates the thought of someone ending there own life willingly and intentionally , him smoking has nothing in comparison to suicide

Smoking and killing your self and commiting suicide are two different things.

 

I agree with what basically everyone said.

I believe smoking is a very slow way of killing yourself. You see, he is unintentionally killing himself little by little with each inhale. But he doesn't realize this is a form of suicide, so I can see where you're coming from with him bashing suicide and all.

Basically, whether your friend realzies or not, he's commiting a very slow form of unintentional suicide.

 

isn't it suicide only if it's intentional?

 

This is true, however pretty much every person who smokes cigarettes or cigars knows it will at least have a hand in their death.

How would you know this? Have you ever contemplated suicide? Have you ever thought you'd be better off not living? Have you committed suicide and come back to tell the tale of how much pleasure you didn't receive?

Everyone thing we do is in service of ourselves, it's a natural human thing. You're not gonna pick to walk through needles when you can walk through flowers, because the latter is more pleasurable. If someone hates their life and doesn't want to live it, do you really think they take no pleasure in ending their life and thus knowing they don't have to live it anymore?