The Logic of the Unthinkable

“Without the possibility of suicide, I would have killed myself a long time ago.”

-- E. M. Cioran 1911-95 in “Independent” 2 December 1989

“The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort: with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night.”

-- Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900: “Jenseits von Gut und Bose” (1866)

What happens when the unthinkable becomes logical? I suppose the typical examples of this pertain to men and women in dire straits: on the Donner Pass, atop the Andes, or in lost lifeboats at sea. Concentration camps and other genocides (Armenia, Cambodia, and Rwanda) also come to mind. In the first case, desperation dictates action, the second, hatred. And while horrific historical events would seem to shape my opening question, I had another topic in mind. More ordinary, but no less grim and tragic: suicide.

One of a number of trying occurrences that shortly followed on the heels of McGOOSTOCK was the sad and untimely death of a good friend, Jim Campbell. Jim’s decision to take his own life is my starting point here. My interest is not in Jim’s specific reasons, per se, but in the thinking that, in general, underpins this fatal choice. Was it carefully planned, or a random act? Why did he do it? Where did he get the nerve? How could he do such a selfish thing? Does the lack of answers belie the fact that perhaps we’re asking the wrong questions?

Is war an example of the logic of the unthinkable? If killing one another is irrational behavior, how can we apply logic in justifying the irrational? To speak of a war as a necessity implies the practicality of murder. What prevailing conditions would make killing practical? William Calley would know about this: “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” the former officer, William L. Calley, told members of a local Kiwanis Club, The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported Friday. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

So we understand war, but not suicide. We can’t understand what made Jim Campbell’s choice seem practical to him. It defies our logic. I think most of us can understand wanting to commit suicide when faced with no-exit intractable pain and suffering, but what about being hale and hearty, and still adopting a state of mind that prefers death to life.

Another set of questions: what could be more selfish than burdening the world and those in it with anxiety and worry? Is the logic of suicide a kind of punctuated equilibrium of the psyche whereby the irrational is to the mind what negative space is to the artist? Does having the nerve to live entail a kind of existential hubris? Are we, the sick so desperate to live, not guilty of “Healthism,” a preoccupation with upsetting nature’s balance by seeking out extremist life-extension procedures that are ultimately anti-altruistic, and basely undermine the utilitarian maintenance of our species? Is it not fairer and nobler to cede one’s life as a choice rather than commend oneself to the winds of chance?

My friend says people who commit suicide lack something in the hard wiring of their brain. One more way, I suppose, of explaining how the unthinkable can seem logical.