Every person born is a human being, but is it better that some human beings were never born and if they realise this is it their fault?

That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. People are transformed by their environment for the most part, unless we’re talking about a huge defect in the embryology process.

I’m not sure how to take this question. How can being born be the fault of the person in question? They had nothing to do with it.

Every life counts.

If you mean they have significant diabilities or live with severe pain I guess the person might consider suicide? But, that would be their own choice. As a society we should not decide anything for the person, we should do everything we can to help them.

[Mod Says:] Please do not ridicule questions. If you have nothing beneficial to add please move on to the next question.

Questions such as these are ones that should stimulate thought and intelligent dialogue.

Thanks!

@gr8teful, Welcome to Fluther!

If I’m understanding your question, someone who might have committed a crime or hurt someone might question the value in his/her birth. Certainly, they bear no responsibility for their own birth—I know you know this—and the compassionate thing to do is work to make amends for any wrongdoing that has occured. I’m providing a very broad answer since we don’t have any specifics from which to work.

People who find their life not worth living need help. They should seek it out.

You ask what the compassionate action would be. If you saw someone suffering and you knew there were resources available to help that person, your compassion would move you to make sure they got that help, right? If that suffering person is you, then the appropriate, compassionate action remains the same: Find professional or spiritual help. It’s out there.

I worry sometimes that you have a “death wish” @gr8teful? Like @JLeslie said, Every life counts. If I am accurate on my concern, may I give you encouragement that your life is special, unique, wonderful, you are loved in your core and you have a great purpose and destiny, just that clouds are covering that. Keep fluthering and you can receive whatever encouragement you are needing to go forward in life.

Oh my goodness, I’m just now looking at your profile, and I share the concern that @smilingheart expressed. Please heed the great advice of the kind Jellies above. I want to see you find great value in your own life.

@Dog Sorry.

@gr8teful We’re going to need more details to give you accurate advice :)

I too share the view that, so long as there is hope for a better life, the compassionate thing to do is seek it out.

You will find that many users here have dealt with what you are dealing with.
Many have felt as you do right now, but have received help and are now truly enjoying their lives and helping others find the joy in living again.

Please listen to the advice of the collective. You are emotionally torturing yourself by not treating your illness. You deserve so much better.

Life itself is precious, of that there is no question. Therefore it’s not possible for any life, by definition, to be thought of in terms of being a waste. Everyone….everyone deserves a crack at this thing we call life, after all, you only get one shot, better to make the most of it while you can :¬)

You’re here now. Make the most of it. It’s your turn to take a spin on the cosmic wheel of life.
Don;t question it, do your best to make your time here happy, helpful, and productive to the planet and mankind.

@thorninmud “People who find their life not worth living need help. They should seek it out.”

Why? I mean, are all people who decide they don’t want to be here anymore mentally ill? Can you not make a logical decision to exit this world on your own terms without being branded as something that needs “fixing”?

I know this is controversial, but it’s a philosophical question that intrigues me.

I’m quite certain you have more to offer the universe than just your kidneys. The past is irrelevant, and every second that passes is a new moment in time and the potential for the start of something great.

@Keep_on_running I’m not excluding the possibility that the help such a person seeks may agree that an exit would be the best strategy. But it is, of course, an irreversible one. Anyone considering that option needs to make sure that they’re seeing clearly, and that there really are no better options, wouldn’t you agree? Help is never a bad thing in matters of this magnitude.

There is no one in history who can judge someone else’s life, not even the Buddha. Buddha would never do such a thing, even if you asked. When I say no one that can, I mean no one that has any objective standing to make a judgment. Of course, everyone judges all the time. And no doubt, we all judge ourselves more harshly than others do.

Making harsh self judgments is a favorite activity for people who are depressed or who have problems with brain chemistry. If you have a different brain chemistry, it is likely you may judge yourself more harshly. You may say your life was not worth living. You never should have been born. You have nothing to offer save your kidneys, or maybe even only one kidney.

I fail to see how it helps us to judge ourselves harshly? It only makes us want to die and really, what it is is a response to feeling bad. We believe that if we feel horrible, psychologically, there must be a reason. So we look around for a reason, and we find none, we look at ourselves and decide we are innately worthless.

This is a story that is logical, but it is also senseless. Senseless because there is no way of knowing if you are worthless or not. It is only a feeling. And feelings come from our unreliable brains. Our brains are at the mercy of chemistry. There is no particular reason to believe they know what they are doing.

No one can tell you what is better or worse about your life. No one has any standing to tell you your life is worse or better than any other life. Your life simply is. It is up to you to make any meaning out of it. It is up to you to decide what to do, and your decisions are all pretty much arbitrary.

You want to help others. That is something that others will appreciate. You want to do this as a last thing before you die.

I’ve been in that place, except I’m not nearly as nice as you are. I didn’t want to give away a kidney. I just felt so horrible that the only thing I could imagine that would make the pain go away was my death. I didn’t want to die. Oh no. But I didn’t think I could stay alive with the kind of pain I felt.

My shrink told me that he advises all his patients to hold off any major decisions for three months when they are depressed. No divorces, no job changes, no suicide, no kidney donations. Just wait three months and wait to see if the meds make a difference.

In my case, they did make a difference. I’m glad I waited (although not all jellies might agree with me, lol). I can’t ask you to see a psychiatrist, but I hope you will. I do feel safe in asking you to wait three months before you make a decision based on your alleged worth or lack thereof. I would submit that you are probably not the best judge of your worth simply because you are prejudiced against yourself (as I was).

It is not your fault you were born, and it is not even your fault you are who you are. Most of you is determined by genetics—even, I hate to say it, your thoughts. Take it from one who has had his thoughts radically changed by chemistry. It’s amazing to figure out that you aren’t who you thought you were, or that who you are is easily malleable, so it is difficult to decide which you is really you.

The compassionate thing to do here, is to have compassion for yourself. To see if you can have something done about your feelings so that you are in a better place to make decisions about your own welfare. Give it some time (three months or more). Get some medical help. See if you really are as worthless as you think you are. They managed to change my mind and I believed—totally believed that there was no one more worthless than I in the world. My kidneys weren’t even worth something. I was only worth lying, bloodied and freezing, in a fishy cobble-stone gutter in the bowels of Gotham City, without even a drink to dull the pain. Believe it or not, I craved my gutter. It was the only thing I could imagine that would be suitable for someone like me. Even today, whenever I think about it, it still seems to make a little sense. Maybe you never lost that, once you’ve had it. Like maybe you’ll never lose the kidney option. But there’s no need to do it right away.

@thorninmud I do agree and after all that if they still feel the same, I think there should be a legal, safe way to leave. I think it’s the most basic of rights to be able to have control in when and how you die.

@wundayatta I really enjoyed reading your post.

I seriously questions one’s ability to accurately measure whether they should have been born. A lifetime has many different interactions that domino out into the future in many unknown ways. Even the things we label as “wrong” or “bad” can unfold into something “good” given changing circumstances. Given new choices.

In my own life, I’ve felt certainty that it would be better had I never existed. I found the compassionate thing to do was repair where I wronged and heal where I was harmed. I wasn’t always able to make direct amends. Yet, I have been able to amend my life and be different than I once was. We have choices. As time passes I see that my life, once considered not worth having, can be worth having if I make choices that give it value. It is a process worth investigating. It also requires that we learn to be gentle with ourselves and others. Pema Chodron, a great Buddhist teacher says: “In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.”

What is their fault? Being born? Being a wasted life?

99.9% of us are born with a blank slate. What you become is a combination of genetics, environment, teaching, and self determination. If you don’t like where you’ve wound up, don’t wallow, change it.

First, a person is no more responsible for their being born than water is for its being wet, it is a simple intrinsic characteristic of its existence, there is, and can be, no fault.

Second, under the circumstances you describe I believe the compassionate course of action for the individual in question would be to balance the ill they feel they have caused by living a life dedicated to acts genuine kindness and good will and to strive to do such acts for each person they meet.

Let me just settle into my bunker before I give my answer…

In the eighteenth Century, anyone engaged in promiscuous sex, homosexuality, or thoughts of suicide was believed possessed by the devil.

By the mid-twentieth century all three were being characterized as mental illness.

Now we recognize that promiscuity and homosexuality are personal choices, possibly shaped by genetic proclivities.

Suicide remains the one area of choice that people steadfastly consider unconsiderable.

I certainly won’t encourage you to surrender your life. But I will support your right to make the decision, without thinking you are desperate, stupid, or deluded. I think many people who feel the world would be better off without them fail to see all the facts. But that does not mean that someone in possession of all the facts would not make the choice.

But for a kidney? Don’t you have two? People do relinquish a single kidney to others, sometimes strangers. Who on earth would accept a gift of __two__, knowing it cost someone else a life? Certainly not the benevolent kind of person you describe. Would you hide your strategy? Certainly giving one kidney carries the potential to change your life fundamentally.

I think you need to take a step back and think about this again.

I think this logic only holds up if there was such a thing as fate, as in someone was fated to be the cause of genocide of millions of people. Otherwise, no.

I think it is a very egotistical and self-centered attitude to think that we have that much control of life, @gr8teful. To be honest, to me, even if I f-up, which I’ve done and will most likey do a few more times before this wonderful life it over, I pray there are good people who come into my path and help me get through it, over it and get something from the experience. I’ve gotten alot from other people’s screw-ups as well. Thus is life. We each affect each other for better or worse and we just love each other through the good times and bad.

Sometimes just talking about what is really bothering us helps. That’s the cool thing about Fluther. Sometimes people just allow us to talk and, sometimes if we are blessed, we get something wise from the friends here.

There is no such thing as ‘realizing you shouldn’t have ever been born’ because there is no pre-determined list of who was and who wasn’t supposed to be born. When a person thinks this way about themselves, it is because something in their life has contribute to this thinking, not because they’re ‘useless on this earth’ a priori.