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On The Death of Robin Williams

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  • #16
    It asn't just clinical depression it was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder and its not pretty
    A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
    George Bernard Shaw

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    • #17
      As far as I can tell I don't disagree with anything in Walsh's post, but the way he phrased it wouldn't be very helpful to somebody in that situation.
      "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

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      • #18
        I won't say RIP anymore, but then what can I say about things like Robin's death?
        The greater number of laws . . . , the more thieves . . . there will be. ---- Lao-Tzu

        [T]he truth I’m after and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance -— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

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        • #19
          Originally posted by seer View Post
          This guy is getting a lot of grief for this post, I really don't see the problem - do you?

          http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/08/...uZqP5Idohhv.99
          Certainly. Phrasing it as "the final refusal to see the worth in anything" and "the willingness to saddle your family with pain and misery" is disturbing and inaccurate. Depression-influenced suicide didn't involve refusal, but an inability to see worth and beauty and a reason to continue. Walsh makes it sound like Robin Williams woke up one day and thought "Let's see, what shall I do today? Go on living, or saddle my family with pain and misery for the rest of their lives? Hmm...I dunno, I think I'm feeling option #2 today. Think I'll go with that." In reality, some depressed individuals feel that they're a burden or nuisance on their family, and are led to believe that suicide is the way to remove that and make things easier on their loved ones. When Walsh speaks of it being a choice, he seems to be saying that suicide, unlike afflictions such as cancer or natural disasters, is something within one's control, but that's where he misrepresents the nature of depression. It warps and distorts one's thinking so that ultimately the depression, not the individual, is in control.

          Here's what David Foster Wallace* (another brilliant man who tragically took his own life in the throes of depression) said about the illness:

          The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”


          So you could say that suicide is a "choice" in the sense that a conscious decision was made to fashion the noose, but it isn't a choice between two or more options, because the nature of depression is such that the individual becomes convinced that suicide is the only option. And more significantly, it wasn't Robin Williams who made the choice, but the depression that hijacked his mind.


          *Who, come to think of it, was once said to be to literature what Robin Williams was to comedy
          Last edited by fm93; 08-13-2014, 06:43 PM.
          Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.--Isaiah 1:17

          I don't think that all forms o[f] slavery are inherently immoral.--seer

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          • #20
            Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
            To me, there seems to be an implication that all people have the same experience post-mortem given that the phrase is generally used for Christians and non-Christians alike...
            It's not an implication, but a well-wishing. Sort of like saying "Bless you!" when someone sneezes.
            and it seems to carry a great certainty regarding a conscious but inactive intermediate state.
            The people who use it would seem to generally believe in such a state, intermediate or not. I think it would be odd for a Seventh-Day Adventist to use the phrase.
            Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom

            Veritas vos Liberabit<>< Learn Greek <>< Look here for an Orthodox Church in America<><Ancient Faith Radio
            sigpic
            I recommend you do not try too hard and ...research as little as possible. Such weighty things give me a headache. - Shunyadragon, Baha'i apologist

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            • #21
              Originally posted by Truthseeker View Post
              I won't say RIP anymore, but then what can I say about things like Robin's death?
              You could say, What a sad tragedy.


              Securely anchored to the Rock amid every storm of trial, testing or tribulation.

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              • #22
                I don't think it is appropriate to say RIP about anyone who dies.

                If they are a believer, they are not caring what we think about them, and are certainly content in the Lord's presence.

                If they are not believers, then they cannot "rest in peace". They will one day be resurrected to destruction.

                A sad tragedy, indeed.


                Securely anchored to the Rock amid every storm of trial, testing or tribulation.

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                • #23
                  We say RIP just out of respect to those who died. I don't see any reason not too if you are so inclined. We don't know his relationship with Christ. Even if he wasn't a Christian, it doesn't mean we can't be respectful (not saying anyone here is doing that). :)
                  "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

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                  • #24
                    That's why I said, what a tragedy, and sad.

                    No disrespect intended to anyone who dies.


                    Securely anchored to the Rock amid every storm of trial, testing or tribulation.

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                    • #25
                      Originally posted by mossrose View Post
                      That's why I said, what a tragedy, and sad.

                      No disrespect intended to anyone who dies.
                      Totally agree.
                      "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

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                      • #26
                        Originally posted by mossrose View Post
                        You could say, What a sad tragedy.
                        Yes, on multiple levels.
                        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

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                        • #27
                          Originally posted by mossrose View Post
                          I don't think it is appropriate to say RIP about anyone who dies.

                          If they are a believer, they are not caring what we think about them, and are certainly content in the Lord's presence.

                          If they are not believers, then they cannot "rest in peace". They will one day be resurrected to destruction.
                          Except we don't know who is content in the Lord's presence, and who will be resurrected to destruction. Thus the hope expressed in "R.I.P."

                          And if the dead don't care, what does it matter if we disrespect them?
                          Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom

                          Veritas vos Liberabit<>< Learn Greek <>< Look here for an Orthodox Church in America<><Ancient Faith Radio
                          sigpic
                          I recommend you do not try too hard and ...research as little as possible. Such weighty things give me a headache. - Shunyadragon, Baha'i apologist

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                          • #28
                            Originally posted by One Bad Pig View Post
                            Except we don't know who is content in the Lord's presence, and who will be resurrected to destruction. Thus the hope expressed in "R.I.P."

                            And if the dead don't care, what does it matter if we disrespect them?
                            It is true we don't know. But our hope changes nothing for that person.

                            And I guess it doesn't matter if we disrespect the dead. They don't know or care about what we think or do. It is simply, perhaps, ingrained in us by our culture.

                            I don't really know. Someone who has studied the culture of death might be better answering that question.


                            Securely anchored to the Rock amid every storm of trial, testing or tribulation.

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                            • #29
                              I think R.I.P. comes from the more understandable hopeful proclamation "MAY he rest in peace", hence the "hope" to which OBP refers.

                              From his "fruit", I would guess Williams was not a believer, but, in hope, one could say "may he rest in peace".
                              The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

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                              • #30
                                One of my issues with it is that it seems flippant. It's something we say reflexively without thinking much of the meaning, as is evidenced with the comparison with "bless you" after sneezing. Death is a serious enough event and people matter enough that we shouldn't just resort to meaningless platitudes.
                                "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

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