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Title: Despair Author: CrimethInc. Date: January 1, 2004 Language: en Topics: Mental Health, suicide, Life, death Source: Retrieved on 7th November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2004/01/01/despair
and all the people who are alive would kill themselves!”
If there is a social stratum below the exploited underclass, a
demographic that suffers most from the absurdities of our society, it is
the suicides. The suicidal class — every minute, a few more hit the
pavement. Who is more dispossessed than them? They are only recognized
when they absent themselves; only their blood speaks on their behalf.
They know better than anyone else what must change about this world, and
yet in despair of ever changing it they avenge themselves upon the only
victims in easy reach — giving a new meaning to the saying that those
who make half a revolution dig their own graves.
Imagine a person feeling that his life is out of his control to such an
extent that he can only regain possession of it by murdering himself!
Can a society really be free and healthy if people will go to such
lengths to escape?
So like theft and adultery, suicide is forbidden, an unspeakable
abomination. Self-satisfied den mothers who have never grappled with
debilitating depression feel entitled to sneer at the cowardice of those
who make the difficult decision to end their lives. Even the terminally
ill are not to choose for themselves when and how they pass away — there
are laws against it, as if the living could legislate for those crossing
over into death! What does it say of a civilization that it not only
forbids its denizens to kill themselves but does not even permit the
question of whether life is worth living?
Yet we commit a little suicide every moment we deny ourselves the lives
we wish to live. Wholesale suicide is off-limits, but most settle
willingly enough for death on the installment plan, whittling their
lives away hour by hour. No matter how unfulfilling life is, they dare
not back out, for God is waiting on the other side to punish them for
shirking their earthly duties — God, that is, or else Public Opinion,
which He has deputized in His absence.
Meanwhile, if a young man joins the military and mindlessly obeys orders
that lead to his senseless death, his conduct is courageous and
praiseworthy. Suicide, like Disaster, is perfectly acceptable so long as
it occurs on the terms of the powers that be; you can die in their
hands, but not of your own. The ones who shoot or hang themselves are
daring heretics, like the upstart mystics who claim to receive divine
guidance that bypasses the Pope: if self-destruction is the order of the
day, they’re determined to have a firsthand relationship with it,
whatever anyone else says. In rejecting both living death and the
sovereignty of the authorities over their lives, they are only one step
away from rejecting death and domination altogether: Neither death nor
taxes!
But again, like theft, adultery, and other pressure valves, suicide is
isolating — indeed, it is the most isolating act bar none. While it
returns an instant of autonomy to an individual, it can only prevent
people from establishing collective ownership of their lives. Those who
dig their own graves make only half a revolution. If no one could steal,
if no one could cheat, if no one could end his life, yet all the
tensions that run through our society today remained — picture the
massive upheavals that would ensue!
If all those who have killed themselves could compare notes at some
grand convention center in the hereafter, what would they be able to
tell us? Perhaps they would be capable of succoring one another where no
one else could; perhaps they would regret that, rather than destroying
themselves, they didn’t launch a revolutionary organization comprised of
those who have nothing to lose; perhaps it would seem strange to them
that it had felt so much easier to do violence to themselves than to
respond to the violence done to them.
It’s too late, of course — their lives are fixed in eternity, set apart
like flies trapped in amber. But there is still time to find those who
are currently contemplating suicide, to encourage them to speak freely
about their feelings and do our best to make a world no one will wish to
leave.
Life is not simply a trap, a sentence. This occurs to everyone at least
once. We have an option that makes us freer than the gods, just as every
employee is freer than every boss: we can quit. One can savor this idea
in every extremity; it provides consolation when nothing else can.
Nothing obligates us to live — therefore, if we have the courage for it,
at every moment life can become a tabula rasa, a space in which anything
is possible and everything can be risked.
With such freedom, we can only be slaves if we choose to be. Slavery is
for those who still believe that their masters control the domain of
death as well as life — not for us. For us, there is only the unknown.
It may be awful, it may be salvation, it may be nothingness, but it is
unknowable, in life as well as death. Frontiers to be crossed, new
worlds to explore, abysses to be risked — yes, the possibility of joy,
of the realization of your most cherished desires, and risk, risk too.
The risk of finally confronting fear, daring the unknown, looking the
ugliness of life in the face — of, one way or another, quitting the job
of existing.
For most of our contemporaries, life itself is a job, a desperate
struggle to juggle a thousand obligations — including the saddest
imperative of all, enjoying oneself. These unfortunates forget the
lightness of life, the weightlessness of every moment, every situation,
in the face of nonexistence.
We can choose not to live. So there is no reason not to open oneself to,
to risk everything for, a life of joy. There is always the option of
putting an end to things — one may as well play for high stakes if one
chooses to exist. After all, the worst that could happen is already
assured.
There is no reason to get up in the morning, then, but to live. No boss,
no law, no god can take from you the possibility of saying No.
All this is useless, and not news, to the suicide, who has already
disconnected from life and wills death simply to finalize the
arrangement, to put an end to the inconvenience of feeling one thing and
living another. Once you’re that exhausted and demoralized, no mere
mental exercise can change your mind; suicide bombers, contrary to idle
speculation, must act from a tremendous investment in this world to be
capable of going to such lengths to die at others’ expense. Your average
suicidal person can barely vacuum her apartment, let alone carry out an
elaborate mission.
But imagine if people lived as though they might die at any moment, so
every day it was as if they were born again! Imagine if no one let life
become a job for himself or anyone else in the first place! Then how
many people would kill themselves? People commit suicide when it is
harder for them to picture breaking off their commitments than ceasing
to exist — here again are our customs and investments, become cancerous
and inorganic, riding us to early graves.
If we were brave or reckless enough for it, our despair could afford us
supernatural powers. Imagine being able to act without fear of the
repercussions, to choose the unknown over the intolerably familiar, to
withdraw from unhealthy obligations and relationships the moment you
recognize them for what they are. It takes a ruthless mercy to discard
sentimentality and remember all the things that never happened and still
might never happen, all the dreams that never came true — to acknowledge
that we can’t wait forever, there’s not enough time for that.
Let the past go. All the old battles you’re still fighting, all your
denial and defense mechanisms, all the addictions and inertia you’ve
accumulated and all the fears that bind you to them. This is going to be
the hardest thing you ever live through — but let them go, let them die,
have courage through the silent moments in the void as you wait,
trembling, for your new life to be born. It will be.
Despair. It’s our only hope.