There is much debate in Britain at the moment about the problem of assisted suicide - whereby an incapacitated person asks someone else to help them to die.
In this country, the law is not clear about such matters - you might end up being charged with a criminal offence if you aid someone in closing their life, or you might not. See the following link from last month - http://worldfocus.org/blog/2008/10/30/british-woman-loses-assisted-suicide-case/2283/
Even this state of affairs is an improvement compared to previous interpretations of suicide, for it used to be an offence to take even your own life - ie there were consequences if you made an attempt which failed. Such a notion causes me to shake my head sadly, so arcane and cruel a piece of legislation does that seem. You can assume, then, that I support the idea of choosing when enough is enough - but I've never really established whether there are any limits to this, in my own mind.
The question of when enough is enough reduces to or can be re-phrased as: At what point is a situation so intolerable that death is preferable to the situation being prolonged? I have enough times felt that I am in such a hopeless/impossible/unpleasant position that I would rather die than endure another solitary second of it. Yet I am still here, days, weeks and even years later.
This thread is so titled because I have been thinking of an arbitrary (the river of mental symbols I work from mean that arbitrary is always directed into the future) world where it is permissable to ask a doctor to provide 'suicide pills' at any point whatever. A nasty headache; an argument with a partner; a punctuation error in an e-mail, anything. I don't speak of a society where the effacing of the self is actually encouraged, but one where it is accepted and tolerated.
Perhaps in an hour or so when the headache has subsided, I might be posthumously regretting my decision to call a halt to the constituents of life. Your author feels, though, that the momentum which drives suicidal thoughts is derived (in general) not from a novel, equilibrium-shattering hammer blow, but from the cumulative drip of the same event overwriting the same event overwriting the same event.
That which is re-experienced in a never-ending cycle eventually becomes too much. That which I shrugged at in mild vexation yesterday causes a shearing force which separates man from reason today. At that point, I wish to be able to call 'enough!' Of course, I can simply jump from a bridge and spiral into the dark frieze of water below if I choose to.
What leaping from a bridge lacks, however, is the cold absolute certainty of success. I envisage a planet, but do not expect to exist in one any time soon, where certainty is manifested by medical practitioners, and not left in the hands of the likes of me.
