Is suicide just natrual selection?

[yahooey]

Every other human on earth is able to get through life despite its problems, but if I end up ctb'ing because of that isn't that just textbook survival of the fittest? Is my mental illness just an evolutionary mistake that needs to be eliminated which is why I want to kill myself?

 

[blackbeauty]

It feels that way doesn't it? maybe it's our way trying to rationalise ctbing

 

[Pon]

I do not think you are weak for feeling the way you do, as neither am I.
What you are feeling is acceptable and valid, and as such I believe thinking of it as natural selection and your own inabilityー that inability to cope with circumstances outside of your control and capabilities, is not right as the aforementioned does not make you a failure.
The failure in question is society and the world as a whole allowing for people like us to suffer in these unfair situations, leaving us to ponder a cold embrace as an adequate means of finding peace and much-deserved rest. Why are some seemingly so much more fortunate than others?

Unfairness.

 

[Darkover]

Natural selection is a process that affects the gene pool over generations. It favors traits that improve survival and reproduction. Suicide is an individual action, often caused by environmental, psychological, or social factors rather than purely genetic ones. Even if there were a genetic predisposition, it would not be the sole factor behind suicide.

While there may be some genetic influences on mental health conditions linked to suicide (e.g., depression, bipolar disorder), suicide itself is not a strictly heritable trait. Many people with no family history of suicide still experience suicidal thoughts due to life circumstances, trauma, or neurological imbalances. Likewise, many with a family history of suicide never experience it themselves.

Natural selection doesn't aim for happiness or well-being—it simply favors traits that lead to survival and reproduction. Plenty of people with severe mental illnesses reproduce, and many who die by suicide could have had children beforehand. Viewing suicide as "natural selection" misinterprets how evolution actually works.

Suicide is not "just natural selection" because it is not purely genetic, it is heavily influenced by external factors, and it doesn't follow the principles of evolutionary fitness. It is a complex, human issue deeply tied to mental health and societal conditions rather than an evolutionary process.

 

[Johnzaga23]

Every death prior to procreation is technically due to natural selection.

 

[Skylar6]

Every other human on earth is able to get through life despite its problems, but if I end up ctb'ing because of that isn't that just textbook survival of the fittest? Is my mental illness just an evolutionary mistake that needs to be eliminated which is why I want to kill myself?

If it had a bearing on evolution then those those inclinations would have been removed from the gene pool a long time ago.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Not necessarily. Depressed, mentally ill people still choose to procreate sometimes.

Maybe for those of us who are suicidal and antinatlist, we will be removing our genes from circulation though. In my case, for the best I feel.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

Not all suicides are due to mental illness and can be caused by other factors. There are also plenty of mentally ill individuals out there who aren't suicidal or who, despite being suicidal, have never attempted before. In reality, most suicidal people don't even attempt.

To add onto this, many suicidal individuals who do decide to commit may do so after having already produced offspring. Just look at the number of parents on this site, for example. Suicide rates tend to be highest for women ages 45-64 years old and for men over the age of 75, thus a lot of those who commit suicide have reached the age of sexual maturity and many of these individuals have probably already had children, making suicide a pretty poor method of selecting disadvantageous traits out of the population.

I have doubts that suicide is a form of natural selection. I think that @Darkover put it best in his post.

Every death prior to procreation is technically due to natural selection.

Nope, it's not. For example, if a bunch of people get killed because of a plane crash, that would not be a case of natural selection, even if most of those people had not procreated prior. Natural selection refers to the process through which populations change and adapt to their environment. It's about individuals with heritable traits better suited for their environment being more likely to survive and pass those traits on to the next generation, leading to gradual changes in the population.

Not all deaths before one gets the chance to procreate have anything to do with this. Hence why things, such as the bottleneck effect, exist.

 

[Darkover]

Every death prior to procreation is technically due to natural selection.

Of course, not every pre-reproductive death is necessarily due to genetic fitness—some are just bad luck (like accidents). But from an evolutionary perspective, anything that prevents reproduction contributes to shaping the gene pool over time.

 

[Worndown]

The cold numbers, a percentage of the population has insurmountable problems and dies early. Including them with those that die through poor choices would equal natural selection.
Two distinct groups but sharing a classification.

 

[MatrixPrisoner]

I thinks it's quite the opposite. Suicide claims many who see reality, and spares many ignorants that don't. It's more like natural DEselection. Survival of the dumbest. This is why society keeps degrading more and more everyday.

 

[Coffeandamug]

I know it might be tempting to think that because you are suicidal and something in your life is horrible you are "less capable" than others. But that is not often the case. I know of people who are far uglier,poorer and incapable than many suicidle people I've met.I think that it is usually not good to think about some aspects of the human consciousness in terms of evolution. The human consciousness is a very complex and almost unique phenomenon. It usually takes many actions against survival (think of global worming for exemple, we know it has been coming for 30 years but we still aren't able to organize and to survive because of the greed of the few.) and against reproduction (think of abortion for exemple (which I am in favor of) and think about the solitude of monks and priests). This phenomena occurs not only in humans but many more inteligent animals have counter-intuitive behavior towards evolution because of consciousness. Conciousness might have emerged from evolution but it has became so complex of a system that it is capable of undermining it's logic.

 

[Little_Blue_Train]

CTB is an individual decision and the factors (biological/ environmental) that lead to it will be different for each person, but within the pool of everyone who CTB certain undesirable genes that reduce the likelihood of reproducing are probably overrepresented.

Btw I am talking individual genes and in no way judge the entire person to be genetically worse than others (we all have a mix of desirable/ undesirable genes, and I in no way think that there is a "suicide gene"). I just think that within the whole pool of people who CTB there will be certain undesirable genes overrepresented, maybe relating to being more depressive/ similar things.

 

[Kbeau]

You might not be wrong, that's for sure! I don't want my crap genetics passed along that's for sure

 

[wiggy]

I believe that it is plausible that there might be some maladaptive hereditary gene or combination of genes that increases the likelihood of suicide. Importantly, it seems like the gene expression would only come online in the presence of civilization, since I don't think we have any evidence of early humans killing themselves - certainly it seems like it would be a very unlikely event before the advent of language. In fact, I believe the earliest recorded suicides we know of are only a few thousands years old, it could take much longer than that for a maladaptive trait to be bred out of a species.