While nature is the biggest threat to everything else, death drive in humans is an entropy from living a complex life. Suicide ranks as the 10th leading cause of death overall and the second leading cause among youth and young adults (ages 15–34 per the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention).
Given that I am a cerebral sci-fi romance author, I endeavor to query unconventional and thought-provoking perspectives to transform this sensitive psychological issue into a higher concept.
Let's unravel the psyche of Self-Harm scientifically and philosophically. When viewed through the lens of these polar opposite concepts, our body and mind appear to be separate. While our body is an autonomous biological machinery. Our mind is abstract, an operating system that runs the thought software using our body as the hardware. It gives us a sense of individuality, creating our unique identity called 'Self' or Ego. Our brain powers this process, constantly cataloguing things as good or bad. When something threatens its individuality, it fights back with the duress.
Overprocessing causes it to malfunction. It goes in a loop - defend, doubt, dissolve, and re-discover its individuality. People often isolate themselves mentally and an internal battle of self-preservation begins, no longer reliant on just an external stimulus to trigger the loop.
Scientifically, suicide is a byproduct of depression caused by brain's inability to process human emotions resiliently. Restoring the chemical balance by increasing serotonin and dopamine and reducing cortisol can be helpful as it positively changes the body's biological response.
Philosophically, suicide could be a way to seek the ultimate silence by submitting to creation and no longer holding on to the mind-made idea of 'Self.' Therefore, our drive for oblivion is not a flaw but accepting oneness by becoming non-dual.
The Architect of Negation U.G. Krishnamurti said that the "natural state" is the original operating system that exists before the installation of societal and psychological software. And that the "I" is a persistent hallucination that consumes immense metabolic energy, leading to a desire for the system to power down entirely.
I have inferred that our universe is a 'global server' that holds memory of its creation, preservation, and destruction. The need for individuality is a noise, pinging us to read the data from the global server. This separation is hence a precious gift that allows us to understand and appreciate the rest. Sure, preserving our 'self' is a strenuous activity when the external stimuli, especially virtual catalysts from social media, are relentless.
We can still exit the fatal line of code designed to seek its own deletion by affirming daily, "My 'self' is a knowledge bank. In order to grow, I will stop resisting changes and subscribe to other ideas with an open mind."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you,
-PB