What about the wider social implications of self destruction? If you are an alcoholic, that is self destructive (while also a disease), and maybe society should just let you do that, but what about the wife and kids you beat? How about something less dramatic, like smoking cigarettes? You smoke outside, away from nonsmokers, never giving anyone any second hand smoke. But you are damaging yourself. And let's just say that when you get older you aren't terribly rich, and all your medical care is on medicare or some other governmental program. Your health care costs are much higher than they would have been had you not been self-destructively smoking all your life. Your society pays for it in higher taxes. Using this argument, my fiance has suggested that smoking should be illegal unless you sign a binding contract saying that you get no free or subsidized medical care for the rest of your life.

On the other hand, who are we to say that something is destructive and not constructive? You might be very sick fifteen years from now, but you went outside to smoke a cigarette instead of punching your husband in the nose or spanking your kid so hard and in so much anger that everyone would count it as child abuse. So, yeah, you cut your arms to make yourself feel more alive. Is that instead of committing suicide? Does it actually make the rest of your life more interesting?

Because the definition of self destruction is so subjective I don't think anyone has any right to prevent anyone else from doing any such action. But how can you keep it to just self destruction?

I disagree with elfys fiancee about medical care and smokers. Thoose who don't smoke will get ill of something else later and likely need similiar expensive treatment. So all that non smoking achieves in terms of medical bills is that you postpone them.

You know, I don't buy fruit juice that has preservatives like sodium benzoate in it? I only like stuff like Naked juice that is nearly 100% fruit juice.

On pain and happiness...

One possible measure of how happy you are can be defined as such:

(How you expect you should live) - (How you currently live) = Happiness

So...people who live in distant island communities off the land aren't exposed to 'McWorld' and commercialism, and don't see anything wrong with their lives, so they're happy. But our spoiled selves are routinely exposed to images rich families, perfect happy romances, and so on, so no matter how good we have it we feel our lives are inadequate.

So, lesson! The happiest people in the world are those with the lowest expectations for material wealth and status!

Actually, Bob, aristotle stated that the meaning of life is happiness, and happiness is ensured by avoiding all that would cause us distress. Don't worry, be happy (see, it was around a LONG time before the song...don't tell my old philosophy profs that I said this...I may be rebuked!!)

OK...on self destruction:

First, self destruction is limited to the self. So...all other outward causes the initial cause creates have to be dismissed (unfortunately, this includes the alcoholic that abuses his family...etc). We have to focus on the individual.

Second: Self destruction is often times limited to actions that produce harm and have no physical or positive psychological effect (one or the other would suffice). This may help limit the discussion a bit.

For example: Eating junk food. It is still nurishment, even though it will cause increase in weight if done in excess. Eating itself is not destructive (even if it is a twinkie). Eating a bit more than you should STILL is not destructive. Eating in excess (say...a whole box) with a psychological necessity (compulsive) would be destructive since you no longer can control the activity, and it no longer provides a benefit.

Easier example: Cutting. Cutting causes pain, wounds the body, and produces no positive mental benefit. It is self destructive because it does not provide any commonly recoginized good for the person.

Alternate example: Tattoos. Though some would disagree...this is not sef destructive. The person doing it is usually attempting to display their personality in the form of art. Maybe religious/rebellious...but it does no harm (other than hurting like crazy from what I hear) other than permanently attaching a picture to your body. It is not typically done as a chronic compulsive behaviour, and usually does not cause long-term defects in personality.

I hope this helps....

I'm rather disturbed by the general sentiment that somebody else should get to control what you do with your own life. What's the difference between wanting to end your life because of a terminal disease which, for all you know, may become curable while you hang on to life, or because of other circumstances which are making you miserable and may change if you hang on longer? If we had a concept of people as property, then a condemnation of suicide makes sense since you don't want your property destroying itself, but since we like to at least pretend we don't treat other people as material possessions, what right do we have to force them to continue living? We don't make the Amish use technology even though we think it's better, we don't force Christian Scientists to accept medical treatment even though it would potentially prolong the length and quality of their lives, so what exactly is the justification for making somebody continue to live? Should we force them to get out of bed and go to work when they don't want to? To exercise to keep them healthier? Drug everybody so they can be happy constantly?

Everybody has a right to pursue happiness, they also have the right to give up the pursuit as fruitless and hopeless, and to cut their losses. Throughout history, depending on the culture and the time period, suicide has alternately been looked at as the coward's way out, or as the noble thing to do. Nobly kill yourself rather than be taken prisoner by the enemy, cowardly take your life because you don't want to face reality. Was Brutus a coward? Maybe, but nobody had the right to force him to live and face disgrace.

You have a right to your physical person, and so long as you are not harming others with your actions, to do what you want with it. Perhaps if you have a spouse and children killing yourself harms them, but would it be better to put them through the misery of being around a depressed, dissatisfied, unhappy parent/spouse? Been there, done that, and a lot of harm comes from that too.

We don't tell the guy to jump off the bridge? I suppose not, depending on how long he's been holding up traffic. Listen to the news the next time there's a jumper and traffic backs up, and time how long it takes for you to hear, "Would he jump and get this over with already?" You might not say it, but it will be said.

Suicide illegal? What are you going to do, kill them? Or lock them up, take away all their freedom, and deprive them of all those wonderful things about life that makes it worth living?

I understand that in general the sentiment is meant well, but what could possibly be crueler than looking somebody who has the power to end their misery in the eye and say, "Everybody else seems ok, suck it up, and keep being miserable until you get the hang of it" ? Should we encourage it? No, but we should accept that sometimes that is the better alternative, and stop romanticizing it by saying it's forbidden.

I have to debate that such self-destructive acts such as cutting provide no psychological benefit. From my personal experiences with "cutters", the cutting is a way to express themselves, just like a tattoo. Thus, according to Cap'n Platypus' definiton, can any action truly be labelled self destructive? *shrug* Its this kind of ambivalence that allows me to argue with anything

well, what about things that people do that arent so much... mental choice? like, a complusion, or something done in anger?
like, for example, if i get angry, i might hit something, usually something that wont break, like the edge of a wall, or a counter. This seems to me self destructive, and i dont Want to do it, but sometimes i cant seem to stop myself from expressing my anger in this way.

oh and... uh... WHAT?
are you saying that smokers will get older sooner, but just as severely? do you actually believe that, or are you just kidding? since smoking 'only' kills 50% of the people who give coutless fortunes to the companies (seems ingrateful doesnt it?), then it Cant just make them get old and die sooner.

if you didnt notice, i dont really like cigarettes all that much.

But what is the line between mental choice and compulsive reaction? For example, when someone cuts me off in traffic, I could instinctly start breaking things, or, I could take few deep breaths and calm down. Then, after years with no output for expressing my emotions, my previous mental choices have led me to an instinctive action of jumping off a bridge to end it all and to hopefully hit some jerk who can't accurately judge distance.

I don't like cigarettes either.

But i don't think smokers increase overall medical costs for society.

A smokes, B doesn't, anything else for them is equal (think more of them being the same person in paralell unvierses)

A gets smoking related medical problems at a certain age (say 60) that get treated but nevertheless dies from them at say 75.

B is healthy at 60 but that does not mean he is just living on and later will just disapear. He starts to get purely age related problems somewhere between 70 and 80 and lives till 90. in his 70's and 80's he also causes medical costs.

I agree with arcosh... Ya gotta die of something, and many times those things will cost money. Cynically, You could even say that someone who dies earlier is saving costs to the system because they aren't sucking resources for the next 20 years.

However,
Please don't turn this into a smoking good/bad discussion, as that could be its own topic. The OP premise is should self destructive behavior be allowed.

My personal opinion is generally yes. Almost everything pleasurable seems to be self destructive in one way or another, but having the freedom to make those choices is what makes us human and free :)
I don't want to live somewhere where someone else tells me that the pizza i splurged on last night I can't have because it's bad for me.

As long as it's purely self destruction, it's no one else's business. The issue come when someone's chosen form of self destruction enforces destruction on others. Examples: Smoking, drinking (and driving), many other drugs (and driving), several hallucinagins (making people freak out violently), self-immolatin (outside of extremely controlled environments). Things that can be potentially destructive to other people have a right to be limited; other things do not.