Re: suicide


Subject: Re: suicide
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Tue Feb 29 2000 - 09:42:46 EST


In a message dated 2/29/00 8:47:19 AM Eastern Standard Time,
jjv@caesun.msd.ray.com writes:

<< Jim, considering there are about 7 other people participating in this
 discussion, and they all want to talk about group, not particularly
 Seymour . . . well you get the rest.
 
    Jim, you have to realize, that when you use a word like coward to
 discribe so many people (as Seymour represents so many people
 ultra-sensitive, desensitized by war, then back to ultra-sensitive land
 again) you are going to get a backdraft.
 
 -jason >>

Again, of course people can talk about what they want, but the post I was
responding to (Sean's) was in support of a post replying to mine (Robbie's).
So again, sure, talk about whatever you want, but if you're going to respond
to Me pay attention to what I'm saying. ;)

I don't mind getting a backdraft, and appreciate intelligent responses. I
think yours was the most direct and intelligent to date. I think. Robbie
has had a couple good ones too. The only thing that's frustrating to me is
arguing black, and then having people respond to me as if I said white. If
you want, I can very easily start doing that to you, and see how long before
you're ready to strangle me :)

I do make allowances for my poor writing and everyone's (including my own)
poor comprehension skills. But I do have limits to those allowances too.

Yes, Blake's comment was self-annhiliating, but at the same time he was
making a point, eh? :)

There's a difference between a philosophical system worked out as such, and a
philosophical system implied in a body of fiction. I would say Hemingway had
an undefined and somewhat not worked out philosophical system (and definitely
had a value system) represented in his writings. If he had taken the time to
somewhat systematize it, or elaborate it in prose form, it would have taken
on a different life. I think Hemingway's value system allowed for suicide.
I don't know that we can know that much about his philosophical system to
make that judgment. I don't think H's suicide was an act of the mind (or, at
least, no more than partly an act of the mind), so I don't think his
philosophy is relevant at this point.

Why did you feel it was necessary to say, Hemingway wasn't a coward either?
See, that's stupidity, Jason. As part of a post replying to me, it implies
that my position is that cowardice is the only possible motive for suicide.
Sorry, but you can't get that out of any of my posts. What I have said is
that it's one possible motive for suicide, and that it was Seymour's.

Now...bad faith and Sartre. I guess if we're going to talk existentialism, we
may as well nail it down to Sartre, because his was the last and most
developed existentialism, I think. Maybe not the most developed...Jaspers
was pretty developed, but no one reads him anymore. Sartre was like a final
commentary on the whole movement right before the movement died.

My memories of Being and Nothingness are very vague and spotty, but it seemed
to me that Bad faith had to do with self hatred. I will have to go back and
look now.

Now, this paragraph...

<<Cowards are people that believe in something, that want something and
don't have the gonads to do something about it. That is a coward. I
don't think that applies to Seymour. I don't think all the Vietnam Vets
who had done the same, plagued by untreatable post-traumatic stress
disorder, or as my friend calls them "the night shakes," are cowards
either. And Seymour can certainly be plopped in this group (a
bananafish). >>

I agree that Seymour can be plopped into post - war - veteran group, and if
you want to claim his dysfunction was a product of his involvement in the
war, well, go for it. Tell me something I don't know about war trauma and
show me how that's evident in Seymour's life.

But I think the very first statement in the above paragraph applies about as
directly to Seymour as a statement can get. He wanted marriage and
happiness. And he wanted spirituality and detachment. His pusuit of the
former made him a bananaeater, and it killed his ability to pursue the
latter. The bananafish in APDFB imply this, and some of Teddy's statements
imply this. He couldn't reconcile the two, so he checked out. Coward.

Jim
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