on suicide

Before being colonized and crucified by the imperial powers of Europe, Native Americans had never heard of suicide. But with the imposition of European ways, came European customs and habits. And one of those "habits" - for it occurred with enough regularity that it must have seemed like a habit to anyone wholly unfamiliar with the practice - was suicide. Indeed, even the Christian religion boasted of a God who had come to earth to save humanity in a sacrificial act of suicide unto himself.

It was seeing the poverty and misery that trailed in the wake of those European conquerors that taught the Native Americans of just how sensible such a practice could be.  And this was because it was seen as simply a mercy killing of oneself, to save oneself from the agonies of slavery, which included but were not limited to, forced impoverishment.  For the agonies of such slavery were often as bad but far longer lasting than any other fatal form of cancer or disease.

In fact, impoverishment has always been a form of invisible bondage, and one of the cruelest forms of slavery men had ever designed for themselves. For it is a bondage by which the "poor" are believed to be indebted, and thus always in perpetual service, to the "rich." This bondage, of course, is underwritten by the belief that the rich are more intelligent and moral, and thus the more deserving, of their fortunes. And its shackles are as strong as the minds that are addicted to believing that such a "system" is not only necessary, but just, which compels the masses to therefore love it like their God, "with all their hearts, and all their souls" (Matt 22:37).

We did this, of course, by convincing ourselves that "the poor" were "something we would always have with us," as Jesus proclaimed; as if even God himself desires that a majority of His beloved "children" must show their love for Him by living in a world in which most of humanity must suffer in misery their whole lives upon that man made cross of poverty.  Poverty, from this perspective, is something even God cannot do away with.

This brings us to modern day America itself, where the practice of suicide is still very much honored in society, with the numbers being depressed only thanks to the profit motives of pharmaceutical companies who have addicted half the country to opioids and amphetamines (by convincing them they're simply depressed or suffering from ADHD), with the other half imprisoned and enslaved for being addicted to weaker versions of the same things. (Their crime, it should be noted, was not their addiction, but that their actions had help to 'depress' the profit margins of publicly traded companies, ones that owe the banks a lot of money, the same banks that hire our politicians to write our laws.)

Mass shootings, I should point out, are a form of suicide, but they are both an implosion and an explosion.

Suicides are romanticized in our religion, from Masada to Christ himself. We practically swoon over ideas of martyrdom and patriotism, which are acts of suicide for "higher causes" or "higher ideas;" rather than simply acts by people who were terrified into thinking they had to commit such suicide, lest they suffer a form of slavery in this life, or even be thrown into an eternal hell in the next.

And if it is honorable and brave to commit suicide for God, King, or country, than why is it any less honorable or brave to do so for oneself? For as Thomas Paine put it, "my own mind is my own church." And if we can so easily be manipulated into dying for fictions like gods and kings, then why not for the sovereignty of one's own mind and soul - which is exactly what everyone who rushes off to kill his brother believes in their heart they are doing anyway.