I’m not promoting it, nor should anyone. I know people who have taken their own lives, and I myself feel a bit depressed—thoughts about taking my life cross my mind almost daily. But when I look around the world, I wonder how people endure their struggles.
Take Japan, for example. They have long school days, six days a week, and after graduating, you’re competing with hundreds of others for the same office jobs. Sure, most people eventually get hired, but it often starts as an internship, which can be a miserable experience. You’re not there as a full employee with proper treatment; you’re just fighting for the chance to get promoted to a regular salary position.
Japan’s work culture makes it even worse: the government mandates an 8-hour workday, but everyone knows that if you only work the required 8 hours, you’ll never get that promotion. So people push themselves to work 14 hours a day, every day, just to keep up.
It’s not just Japan, either; countries like China are also known for their grueling work culture. However, in China, it’s usually possible to find a liveable job, even if it means working 10 exhausting hours a day with little chance for advancement or quality of life.
In contrast, Western countries have their own pressures. A degree is often required to get decent employment, and to stand out, you likely need a master’s degree or more. On top of that, you need to demonstrate experience, which means more years of unpaid work, internships, or low-paying jobs just for the chance to climb the ladder. After all that, you might still end up in a thankless job that could lay you off at any time.
Meanwhile, the cost of living is absurd—rent often consumes 40% or more of your monthly income, food prices are climbing, and wages aren’t keeping up. AI is advancing rapidly and could take over many jobs soon, leaving even fewer options. As humans, we’re social creatures by nature, but no one has time for building real communities anymore because everything is an endless competition. Between job pressure, media manipulation, and the suffocating expectations set by social media, the weight is unbearable for so many.
And yet, despite all this, the suicide rate—while tragic—is not as high as one might expect for the number of people suffering from depression. This is a good thing, of course, but it does beg the question: why isn’t it higher? With all these pressures and hardships, what keeps so many people going?
i heard everyone company complain about gen z, but can we even blame them?
I know this is quite the unpopular opinion and I'm gonna get it but... There's a lot of people keen on keeping others, even strangers, alive for some reason that I don't quite understand. It's always under the assumption that the person choosing suicide isn't thinking clearly, so you rarely see someone being supportive of someone else's decision to end their life even if they have reached a sound decision for themselves.
Like for example, I don't plan on living much. The moment my loved one dies, I won't have much to do around here because I have many reasons. But whenever I bring it up it's a battle to justify my decision which I've already sat on for decades and I know what I want. And the push back goes beyond this, from barring the topic altogether in forums, normalizing the trivialization of other people's motivations, to actively removing/adjusting products on store shelves that can assist with a humane death through legislation.
So my answer to your question is that others make it quite difficult for someone to exercise their own body autonomy.
Yep, im jelous of people who take theyre life. Most people i see just go on automode, and my brain is always off automode, maybe adhd.
We werent made for this type of lifestyle, so why join the rat race for example. How sugar basically made us all addicted to city life, and ultra prosessed food is addiciting.
Why is suicide wrong? Hell, even some countrys have active death help, why is suicide wrong then? They kinda is the same concept. Maybe its just better to not think about anything, and continue living in boomer generation?