<story><title>US Attorney Chided Swartz On Day of Suicide</title><url>http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/01/13/139218/us-attorney-chided-swartz-on-day-of-suicide</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ComputerGuru</author><text>And you are taking the exact opposite stance. Suicide is the one crime where the person is both victim and perpetrator. You can&apos;t just choose to look at one and not the other. He is victim and perpetrator in one.&lt;p&gt;People treating suicide as pure-victim is absolutely wrong, not in the least because it tends to make it look much more appealing. The real victims of suicide are the loved ones and close friends. They are the ones that suffer, and they are the ones that are truly blameless &quot;victims&quot; (in so much as anyone can be blameless). There is a reason why suicide is considered to be a selfish crime. I am not lambasting Aaron here, but you have to treat suicide for what it is, rather than turn it into a heroic act of defiance and finally sticking it to the man. If only to make people think twice about taking the &quot;easy way&quot; out for themselves.</text></item><item><author>duairc</author><text>Totally ridiculous, victim-blaming comment.&lt;p&gt;“If you add up everyone&apos;s responsibility for something, it doesn&apos;t equal 100% — it equals a billion percent if it has to, because any number of entities can be fully responsible for the same thing.”
— Ran Prieur, The Mathematics of Responsibility (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item><item><author>flipper28</author><text>I think it&apos;s kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at &quot;everyone else&quot; other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself.&lt;p&gt;Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I&apos;ll admit I don&apos;t know the entire backstory of what led up to this man&apos;s suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself.&lt;p&gt;It is self-evident that this man was well-respected in the online community.&lt;p&gt;He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life.&lt;p&gt;Let&apos;s celebrate his life and accomplishments and stop trying to find people to blame.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>duairc</author><text>&amp;#62; The real victims of suicide are the loved ones and close friends.&lt;p&gt;This is bullshit. And so fucking insensitive. This idea, that anybody owes it to their ‘friends’ to force themselves to stay alive when they want to die, just so those ‘friends’ can continue to feel good about themselves and don&apos;t have to deal with the reality that their friend &lt;i&gt;wants to die&lt;/i&gt;, is completely fucked up. Have some empathy for the people dealing with those feelings, not their selfish ‘friends’.</text></comment>
<story><title>US Attorney Chided Swartz On Day of Suicide</title><url>http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/01/13/139218/us-attorney-chided-swartz-on-day-of-suicide</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ComputerGuru</author><text>And you are taking the exact opposite stance. Suicide is the one crime where the person is both victim and perpetrator. You can&apos;t just choose to look at one and not the other. He is victim and perpetrator in one.&lt;p&gt;People treating suicide as pure-victim is absolutely wrong, not in the least because it tends to make it look much more appealing. The real victims of suicide are the loved ones and close friends. They are the ones that suffer, and they are the ones that are truly blameless &quot;victims&quot; (in so much as anyone can be blameless). There is a reason why suicide is considered to be a selfish crime. I am not lambasting Aaron here, but you have to treat suicide for what it is, rather than turn it into a heroic act of defiance and finally sticking it to the man. If only to make people think twice about taking the &quot;easy way&quot; out for themselves.</text></item><item><author>duairc</author><text>Totally ridiculous, victim-blaming comment.&lt;p&gt;“If you add up everyone&apos;s responsibility for something, it doesn&apos;t equal 100% — it equals a billion percent if it has to, because any number of entities can be fully responsible for the same thing.”
— Ran Prieur, The Mathematics of Responsibility (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item><item><author>flipper28</author><text>I think it&apos;s kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at &quot;everyone else&quot; other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself.&lt;p&gt;Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I&apos;ll admit I don&apos;t know the entire backstory of what led up to this man&apos;s suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself.&lt;p&gt;It is self-evident that this man was well-respected in the online community.&lt;p&gt;He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life.&lt;p&gt;Let&apos;s celebrate his life and accomplishments and stop trying to find people to blame.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sneak</author><text>&amp;#62; If only to make people think twice about taking the &quot;easy way&quot; out for themselves.&lt;p&gt;Your understanding of the illness that causes this is sorely lacking.&lt;p&gt;I suggest reading Infinite Jest.  It illustrated a lot for me.</text></comment>