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Comment by atchoo | Hacker News Reader

Should people quote DFW as an authority given his suicide?

Using metaphors of physical reality for psychological states can make it falsely appear more immutable that it is. It is possible to escape the burning buildings of the mind and knowing that you have agency over your ideas can be an essential part of the reframing/rethinking/challenging that can free you from suffering.

Letting people believe they are in a situation like floor 100 of the WTC and their flesh is literally burning with no escape could be outright harmful and irresponsible for those experiencing suicidal ideation.

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> Should people quote DFW as an authority given his suicide?

A very good writer who committed suicide is probably a great person from whose experience we might learn, especially since they expressed what might be their internal anguish so eloquently.

He might only teach as a counter-example.

He may be advocating for highly dysfunctional irrational thinking patterns that leads to suicide. They might be convincing, seductive and dangerous and should only be responsibly presented with clear context and challenge.

He's trying to share what the experience is like to promote empathy, so that suicide can be better understood by those with less personal experience with it. He's not advocating for people to commit suicide, just for ways to engage with the problem that doesn't further isolate and other those who are suffering.

I don’t think he was advocating anything. I think that misses the point. He was just trying to state the matter in a form that would allow people to understand the suffering better and have empathy for those who are in that type of suffering. Personally, I think he nailed it, and for that I am thankful.

I like the idea that DFW is such a good writer that his words cause death. That would be a great plot device.

Throw in a tennis academy and some strange quasi-apocalyptic geopolitics and you might have yourself a book! :)

One of Hofstadter's books has a story about that.

this sounds like “don’t ever listen to anyone because they might be wrong”

I think to portray it otherwise would be to lose the message, and the fact that Wallace commited suicide should give credibility that the thoughts he wrote beforehand were those of an eventually suicidal man.

In my opinion, without the immutability of the situation the metaphor loses its meaning. People don't kill themselves because they feel they're in a situation they can get out of. I think it does more harm for those with suicidal ideation to ignore their feelings rather than validate them.

> Should people quote DFW as an authority given his suicide?

Why not?

It sounds as if you presuppose that it's always wrong to take your own life, and that anyone who thinks otherwise should be "cancelled".

Sorry, I never read the quote as supporting suicide as a decision. But it's possible that a person contemplating suicide might see it that way.

I always read it as being about empathy. Explaining that sometimes a person's action probably have subjectively valid reasons that we should try to understand, or at least try to accept.

I read the gp comment's quote the same way that's why I shared this one.

It isn’t seen an condoning suicide. GPs point is more that his eventual suicide makes him less of an authority here. Bit like a relapsing addict trying to justify his drug use

Not justify... explain.

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