I don't think there's anything else to say.
- https://foundational-research.org/
- http://www.effectivealtruism.org/about-ea
- https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/
- https://goodblock.gladly.io/
- https://www.plannedparenthood.org/
- http://www.hedweb.com/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/wildanimalsuffering/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/animalwelfarescience
- https://www.reddit.com/r/likeus
- https://www.reddit.com/r/effectivealtruism
- https://www.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/ (mostly angsty teenagers but mentioned due to philosophical relevance)
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ControlProblem
- http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/
- https://80000hours.org/
- http://www.givewell.org/
- https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
My thoughts exactly.
ReplyDeleteWhy not set up a blogroll though?
Good idea, I'll look into it.
DeleteWhy is suicide usually looked upon as a desperate and forbidden act? Can't we accept that in addition to poverty, loneliness, alienation, ill health life in world that is sometimes personally pointless means that death is a relief? I believe the right to die, in a time and place (and wishfully peacefully without violence) is a basic human right. What is the rationale, apart from knee-jerk emotional reactions and societal norms, that suicide is inherently wrong?
ReplyDeleteWe seem so terribly afraid of it...
We look for "factors" that contribute...
One would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to understand that in addition to money troubles or loss or grief...that there are places in people's hearts and souls that are not open to others to analyze or tabulate or study. And these "places" are not subject to life coaches, or the endless American drumbeat of "tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow" or cheer-up drugs.
Sometimes it is just time to end life.
Sometimes the struggle to pretend that all will be well becomes absurd and burdensome. I think we need to do our best to love, understand and help all around us but allow them to opt out, when they no longer feel able to endure
I agree Amanda, the stigma against suicide ought to be relaxed.
DeleteThe aspects of suicide that stir us so deeply, in addition to the experience of loss, are found in its suddenness and finality. Few acts, if any, carry the weight or profoundness of this sad statement of despair.
ReplyDeleteOne more point:
ReplyDeletePeople might think suicide would be an option, but most great philosophers, council against it, seeing suicide as “a form of aggression and quite specifically an assertion of self-will.”
In suicide there is NO escape from suffering, but the aggravation of it, as the suicide must anxiously will him or herself to commit the act in the first place. And once dead, the will that was manifest in the body is reunited with the primal, universal will once more to become objectified to suffer yet again.
The only real escape comes through turning against the will to life through asceticism. In this, a person ceases to desire altogether, and like in Buddhism and Hinduism, becomes reconciled with the impermanent nature of the universe. But this cannot be accomplished through willing it to be. The will to life must evaporate through an understanding of the ultimate nothingness of our world. When we come to realize that no-thing is ultimately real or important, then the chains that bind us are slackened and we find ourselves melting away into the buzzing backdrop that is the universe, feeling no separation, no distinction between ourselves and all the other manifestations that arise out of the noumena. We realize that everything is, at its foundation, one. Once this is understood, then there is no need for further painful striving.