Existentialism and Le Suicide

According to British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the idea of exchange or justifying an activity fits within his concept of pleasure and pain. For instance, going out for a morning run can be looked at “was it worth the time?” Perhaps another way of looking at it is to reframe it and call it a pleasurable activity. According to this philosopher, the aim of life was to have pleasure. Activities can be assessed by employing a simple plus or minus on a balance sheet. Hopefully, there will be more pleasure or pluses than pain or minuses during a lifetime. One can conclude that if the amount of pleasure was greater than the action of pain, the activity was worth doing. One can then add up all of life activities to determine “whether life was worth living.” A second question can conclude whether or not one’s life “was a failure,” or was a “success.” There is too much suicide behavior in our country, and motives for suicide are highly complex. Revenge, murder-suicide and melancholy, are some suicide motives. Emil Durkheim in Le Suicide wrote about “anomie” as a major cause of suicide .Anomie translated means or refers to the destruction of traditional social bonds. In other words, all genuine social life interaction has been violated. He believed that people living in the modern political state are “a disorganized dust of individuals” and that was written in 1897. Just think if he was alive today and what he might write about our political state? We know that alcoholism, drugs and opioids, and other escape mechanisms are symptoms of boredom and monotony of life. Further, thinking and feeling that life is a failure correlates with strategies of escape. This idea “Suicides are up. Is This an Existential Crisis?” was found in the June 24, 2018 edition of The New York Times. It was stated, in the article, that there has been a 25% increase in suicides since 1999 across most ethnic and age groups; despite the fact that more people are seeking treatment for depression and anxiety. To Be Continued