Paradoxine
n00b
- Joined
- May 23, 2012
- Messages
- 52
He was. Ironically he also had a distinct sense of social justice. He'd done a lot of things for the benefit of society as a whole. The greed, selfishness, corruption, the typical range of behaviors driven by the emotions present in more balanced and stable minds played small roles in his thought processes and decisions. This kind of behavior and drive is because of upbringing, intelligence, and years of severe depression. I know this, I understand this, because I also have bi-polar and have dealt with severe depression for over a decade. Social justice, moral justice, is something one becomes acutely aware of from extensive experience with clinical depression. Hell, Abraham Lincoln is believed to have had bipolar. The way that man thought through things, how he genuinely cared and empathized with all parties, that's the product of years of depression, it's a thought process Aaron had, that I have.
This isn't something I expect people to understand on their own, so I'll explain the kind of thought processes that go on and what's behind them. One poster here claims his suicide was selfish. That somehow his decision to end his life, to cease existence, has greater negative affect on someone other than himself. Ridiculous.
What matters is the thought process, the reasoning, behind his decision. I can't know with certainty what it was, but the manner in which clinical depression alters how one perceives the world is something that can only be fully understood through experience. I have that experience. I don't find myself wondering much about why he committed suicide as I would probably do the same thing in his place for reasons both rational and emotional. First though, background.
The thing about bipolar and clinical depression is that it's not like the depression most people have experience with. It's not primarily psychological. It's deep, dark, a biochecmical deficiency in the brain. If someone gets cut, they bleed, their mind can't think the wound away. The most they can do is ignore the pain, and even then endorphins aid that process. The wound will bleed until it's treated. The difference between that and bipolar is that the treatments for bipolar are almost a crapshoot. Medical science is still quite primitive in how it treats mental disorders. They don't measure how ones mind behaves chemically and then prescribe treatment. They don't precisely target the deficiencies that cause instability. They don't even truly understand what goes on in the mind which causes bipolar. They just try one medicine after the other in varying dosages to see which ones improve the overall state of mind. Primitive.
So, why did he commit suicide. It's nothing so simple as 'he felt depressed'. The yearn for death from clinical depression is real but intelligence, an above average intelligence, both enables and promotes relying on reason and logic to make decisions as emotion is something that one realizes even in balanced minds is an imperfect and flawed method for decision making and in the case of someone with bipolar foolish at best. So, when faced with the prospect of having his life ruined from overzealous prosecutors who define their success by how thoroughly they can fuck over a persons life he had to consider that this would be a financial burden requiring funding that would be better served elsewhere He'd take into account that throughout this process there's the very real possibility that he'd be unable to continue doing the things that made his life meaningful, that kept the desire for death in check. He may have rationally concluded that years in prison would cause so much stress, deny him access to the things he used to cope with depression, that suicide was almost inevitable with prolonged incarceration. One becomes quite familiar with their mental limits and what could break them dealing with clinical depression for years.
So, instead of allowing himself to be a drain on further progress in the area of social justice he devoted his life to, to avoid the less than favorable conditions in prison likely to result in suicide from taking place, to essentially tell people who would go to lengths to counter efforts aimed at benefiting society and mankind as a whole to go fuck themselves, he committed suicide. Did he 'feel terrible' throughout the entire ordeal? I would think so. But he'd felt that way before, he'd dealt with this for years, he'd come to terms with it knew from experience that he could do things to cope with it until things rebounded. The catalyst here wasn't his depression. He didn't feel entitled to be beyond the law. It was that the law was not serving justice, was not enabling social justice, and the price being asked of him was to be denied the things that allowed him to feel any joy in life, the things that enabled him to stave off the desire to end his life. This is a price few should ever have to pay and few will ever understand how severe and steep a price it is.
What would it take for you to consider suicide? Lose your legs? Completely paralyzed? Chronic pain with no relief? How about not being able to enjoy any aspect of life for an untold amount of years, perhaps for the rest of you life? Do you realize that clinical depression is so severe you can't even enjoy sex? What should peak in a height of chemical bliss is instead met with a sigh of despair. That last part a bit too much for some of you? Maybe you should consider that's one of the reasons people with depression feel unable to openly discuss how they feel, what they experience. People just don't want to hear about this, it makes them uncomfortable, and who are you that they should even care? Aaron Schwartz understood all of this, and as a result he dedicated his time and effort to caring for the well-being of others. This world is a lesser place without him.
Excellent post, although I'm afraid your words might be lost to the ears of some of the posters on this forum who think they're god's gift to the world.