When someone is bemoaning existence, saying he wishes he weren't alive, often a bystander will say: Well if you hate life so much, why don't you just kill yourself?
No matter how depressed or ill you are, the process of going from living to not living is not a comfortable one. Wishing you were kaput isn't the same as having the resolve to do something about it. Plenty of people wish to be thin, but they don't wish to go through the pain of diet and exercise. Thus, they remain plump. Getting slim is rough, and I'd say the evidence shows that the desire for self-preservation (staying alive) trumps even the desire to be slim (though listening to the song "Stayin' Alive" will make killing yourself much easier).
To off yourself, you have to first overcome the psychological hurdle, which means coming to grips with ceasing to exist. Much harder than ABC, 123, or falling off a log. Yes, the universe existed for billions of years before you came along, but you had the good fortune of not being alive to know that you didn't exist. Still with me? Great. Once you are alive and conscious of it, the tendency is to try to keep living no matter what. Life has always been brutal, and not so long ago, it was a helluva lot more brutal than it is today; much more disease, much less food, much more death all around you meaning much more grief. Yet suicide remained uncommon. Obviously, the self-preservation instinct is almost indomitable, so it takes a humongous amount of will to push past it.
Assuming you can put all that aside long to enough plan an exit, you then have to face the disagreeable nuts and bolts of suicide. Talk about irksome. You have to picture yourself with your neck in the noose, hopping off the chair and being jerkily choked to death (Ask anyone who's been jerkily strangled with a rope if they enjoyed it. Rarely will they say "I can take it or leave it."). And you have to picture the potential horror of hanging there and suddenly wishing you could get your legs back to the chair. Imagine trying and failing...it is enough to turn a goth chick into a cheerleader.
Jumping off a building...also a tall order. You have to overcome the mental image of a long, agonizing freefall (picture a rollercoaster made in the Soviet Union), followed by the possibility of not immediately dying upon smacking the pavement. Jumping off the high dive scares most people. Imagine jumping from a much greater height, only in this scenario you're landing on sidewalk rather than water, and in doing so you won't be impressing any hot chicks who might sleep with you later. Advantage: high dive.
Even something which is presumed to be painless (or "instant") like a gunshot to the head requires actually putting gun to temple and having to swallow your steadfast self-preservation instinct. To do so means trying to comprehend oblivion, which is pretty much beyond comprehension. If you try to bypass this horrible inner debate by rushing the gun to your head, you may misfire and merely end up with an eyebrow trim.
Knowing how hardwired we are to try to survive at all costs, it is quite simplistic to just say, "Hey man, if you're unhappy, why don't you kill yourself then?" And considering how grisly these various suicide scenarios are, it is no wonder that most people take the easy way out (i.e., continue to live).
Showing posts with label self-help books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-help books. Show all posts
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Sunday, November 4, 2012
The Inconvenient Truth About Jealousy
Self-help books are worthless, the people who read them are hopeless, and the authors who write them are shameless.
Self-help books about relationships are the worst. Much like economics books, they espouse advice and theory while conveniently ignoring that the situations they're discussing involve human actors.
A typical one size fits all nugget from these tomes: Jealousy results from low self-esteem.
You could just as easily argue the reverse, that the reason some people don't experience jealousy is because their self-esteem is so low they don't think they deserve the person they're with. Therefore, they don't feel jealousy. It's odd that the self-help/psychobabble coven has taken this stance on jealousy. After all, every other exit sign on the self-help highway reads "You're not doing _____ because you don't think you deserve _____."
But not jealousy. For some reason that brand of self-preservation automatically signifies "low self-esteem."
What if you're just really in love and have visions of the agony you'd feel if you lost that person? It's crazy to have concerns about that? People take elaborate steps to avoid disaster in other parts of life. They buy flood insurance in areas that seldom flood. But in your love life it is a sign of low self-esteem to sometimes imagine a worst-case scenario?
[Obviously, I'm talking about jealously in moderation. If the word jealous automatically makes you think Raging Bull, you're already too deep in the Oprah-Dr. Phil abyss to contribute to humanity and I forbid you to read further.]
Sometimes jealousy comes from being realistic. Sometimes you know your significant other could have done a lot better than you, and you don't want to lose your lucky break. That lucky break could very well be the only good thing in your life. So is it irrational to have some anxiety about losing something you were lucky to catch in the first place? If anything, by being realistic about your lover's superior appeal, you are practicing self-actualization, an exercise most self-help parrots recommend.
Let's say you're a stunning couple, a couple comprised of two knockouts...a little jealousy still makes sense. After all, if your partner is a stunner, you know that other people are going to be even more dogged and ruthless in their attempts to seduce that person (being a stunner yourself, you'll have experience with this). Knowing this is the case, is it so neurotic to be a little vigilant? When you have an Aston Martin in your garage, you take steps to protect it.
Another reason being a little suspicious doesn't necessarily mean you have low self-esteem: infidelity is on the rise. Traditional monogamy is taking a beating here in the dying West. Who is to say your mate isn't going to be a trend follower? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
William Shakespeare, who may have coined the expression "green-eyed jealousy," wrote Othello, probably the most enduring take on jealousy. It contains quotes like:
Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.
But really, a more useful Shakespeare quote about jealousy would be:
For love, thou know'st, is full of jealousy.
That's from The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Haven't heard of it, have you? Exactly. Ironic, considering The Two Gentleman of Verona sounds like a bad self-help call-in show.
Self-help books about relationships are the worst. Much like economics books, they espouse advice and theory while conveniently ignoring that the situations they're discussing involve human actors.
A typical one size fits all nugget from these tomes: Jealousy results from low self-esteem.
You could just as easily argue the reverse, that the reason some people don't experience jealousy is because their self-esteem is so low they don't think they deserve the person they're with. Therefore, they don't feel jealousy. It's odd that the self-help/psychobabble coven has taken this stance on jealousy. After all, every other exit sign on the self-help highway reads "You're not doing _____ because you don't think you deserve _____."
But not jealousy. For some reason that brand of self-preservation automatically signifies "low self-esteem."
What if you're just really in love and have visions of the agony you'd feel if you lost that person? It's crazy to have concerns about that? People take elaborate steps to avoid disaster in other parts of life. They buy flood insurance in areas that seldom flood. But in your love life it is a sign of low self-esteem to sometimes imagine a worst-case scenario?
[Obviously, I'm talking about jealously in moderation. If the word jealous automatically makes you think Raging Bull, you're already too deep in the Oprah-Dr. Phil abyss to contribute to humanity and I forbid you to read further.]
Sometimes jealousy comes from being realistic. Sometimes you know your significant other could have done a lot better than you, and you don't want to lose your lucky break. That lucky break could very well be the only good thing in your life. So is it irrational to have some anxiety about losing something you were lucky to catch in the first place? If anything, by being realistic about your lover's superior appeal, you are practicing self-actualization, an exercise most self-help parrots recommend.
Let's say you're a stunning couple, a couple comprised of two knockouts...a little jealousy still makes sense. After all, if your partner is a stunner, you know that other people are going to be even more dogged and ruthless in their attempts to seduce that person (being a stunner yourself, you'll have experience with this). Knowing this is the case, is it so neurotic to be a little vigilant? When you have an Aston Martin in your garage, you take steps to protect it.
Another reason being a little suspicious doesn't necessarily mean you have low self-esteem: infidelity is on the rise. Traditional monogamy is taking a beating here in the dying West. Who is to say your mate isn't going to be a trend follower? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
William Shakespeare, who may have coined the expression "green-eyed jealousy," wrote Othello, probably the most enduring take on jealousy. It contains quotes like:
Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.
But really, a more useful Shakespeare quote about jealousy would be:
For love, thou know'st, is full of jealousy.
That's from The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Haven't heard of it, have you? Exactly. Ironic, considering The Two Gentleman of Verona sounds like a bad self-help call-in show.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)