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From: davidl@tekig5.UUCP (David Levadie)
Newsgroups: net.suicide
Subject: Re: misc. ramblings
Message-ID: <237@tekig5.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Sep-85 23:17:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekig5.237
Posted: Tue Sep 17 23:17:43 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Sep-85 06:27:47 EDT
References: <199@ikonas.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 36

Your problem is that like the vast majority of civilized humans, you have
been socialized from birth, to the point where you gather your self-esteem
from, and measure your worth by, the opinions of other people.  I.e., if
no one cares for you, and everyone disapproves of you, and you have no
friends, you are worthless and your life is of no value.  Such feelings
have no basis whatsoever in reason; they are entirely conditioned
reflexes which society, in the form of Mommy, school, and other degenerate
institutions, inculcates in children and adults as a mechanism for enforcing
"civilized" behaviour.  Ask yourself:  Why do people who have committed a
crime and gotten away with it, turn themselves in?  Because they feel
guilty and want to be punished.  Why do they feel this way?  Because they've
been TAUGHT to.  If you commit a crime and don't feel guilty, society
deems you a "sociopath" - actually, what has happened is that the
socialization process of inculcating guilt didn't work.  In your case, as
in the case of most suicides, society with its despicable mechanisms for
destroying self-esteem and making people feel worthless without social
approval, can actually kill innocent people - and there is no redress.

It is possible to desocialize yourself to the point where you aren't
self-destructive.  You can learn, through desperate but rewarding struggle,
not to care whether anyone approves of you, and to measure your worth by your
own standards, which should be higher than anyone else's anyway. Furthermore,
you already know how to stay out of trouble, so you don't need to worry about
being imprisoned for sociopathic behaviour.  I hate lecturing people,
but I hate this maneating civilization even worse, and am even more sick
of its impersonal murders - and somebody out there seems like they're asking
for help, so I'm writing this with the idea that perhaps it will prevent
another of "society"'s murders.  My good fortune was to have been subjected
to, and therefore learned to be indifferent to, society's rejection and
disapproval early in my childhood, before the socialization process had
taken hold, so that I could learn to deal with it before it could produce
guilt - or suicide.

You didn't need a reason to be born - why should you need a reason, or a
justification, or an excuse, for going on living?  How can you ever be worth
any more, or less, than you were at birth?