While I understand the point that you're trying to make, I think that characterizing suicide this way is unhelpful. It ignores the fact that most of the people who end up committing suicide are deeply sick, and does nothing but make these ill people feel further disconnected from society.

Suicide and depression are incredibly complex issues, and these kind of oversimplifications don't help anyone.

People who take their lives do it because they feel like that is the only thing they still have control over. You can't even put yourself in that mindset even if you truly wanted, which makes it a little strange to make such a statement about suicide.

I'm not sure if we read the same article.

Was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi a selfish and cowardly act?

Is it cowardly and selfish to continue using these products? Do you have any kind of exit strategy or utopian vision where everyone, even Foxconn workers can afford a fashionable new iPhone?

In 100 years, we've gone from using slaves for labor to using machines built by wage slaves for labor, mostly because using slaves for labor makes us feel too guilty. Many would call that selfish and cowardly.

I don't endorse suicide, but I don't think it helps anyone to reduce a complex and heartbreaking situation like this into a simple othering.

I think his parents/siblings would have wished he had never committed suicide.

Although it seems there is no end of politicians willing to ride on his act and use it as a source of legitimacy.

> I think his parents/siblings would have wished he had never committed suicide.

That seems selfish to me. He has to suffer so they don't have to?

Making such generalisations is dangerous; for example, suicide when one is terminally ill and in terrible pain could be seen by many as the sensible thing to do.

Since he took the rather bold step of actually ending his own life I would think that his outlook on life was sufficiently bleak to warrant at more empathy than that.

Regardless of if he was clinically depressed or just very unhappy, are both not tragic?

Please re-read his words and decide again if his plight was shallow-hearted.

"...Every time I open the window or the wicker gate

I seem like a dead man

Slowly pushing open the lid of a coffin."

--------

"...I want to stand up more than anyone else

But my legs won’t cooperate

My stomach won’t cooperate

All the bones of my body won’t cooperate

I can only lie flat

In this darkness, sending out

A silent distress signal, again and again

Only to hear, again and again

The echo of desperation."