751
massive morphine. One thinks back to the Austrian exiles from Nazi Germany to
Petrópolis, Brazil, the great Jewish author/philosopher Stefan Zweig, and his spouse
Charlotte E. Altmann, February 22, 1942 when they overdosed on barbiturates to
leave behind a most miserable world of unceasing turmoil
1
. Zweig had finished the
previous year his memoir of life in Europe, Die Welt von Gestern (The World of
Yesterday)
2
. Three years later, waves of suicides for very different reasons, encouraged by Hitler, would sweep Germany. Indeed, as reported by Albert Speer, Hitler
Youth handed out cyanide pills to concert goers at the final Berlin Philharmonic
performance, near the end of the war
3
. Nor is it surprising that the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention show the highest suicide rates in the United States,
at present, since World War II
4
. We are in a war.
There will be those who consider such self-destruction as selfish (though not in
the case of Seneca and his wife, as they were charged and, like Socrates, ordered to
do so). But, alas, the most selfish act is the most sacred of deliberated anodynes,
selfishness being the quintessence of probability theory, at the core of a human system that is least given to randomness. The paradox of a selfish death, an escape from
all that swirling dark epiphany-laden earth that has fallen, is successful up to a point
of biological reincarnation, whether one believes it spiritually or not. The physical
components are irrefutable. One cannot elude the truth of what kind of an organism
one is. Whatever dialectics might accrue from its gross anatomy, like a fungus, it has
no necessary commentary, no posterity.
The premise of ecocide leveled against oneself pits epistemology against a heavenly euthanasia. This is the philosophical matrix singularly justified and oriented as
the ultimate renunciation of pain. Given the state of siege humanity has waged
against all Others, this self-annihilation represents the least footprint, a demonstrable reduction to zero of suffering, consistent with the most eloquent poets and cosmologists to ever go on record in its defense. How ironic, then, that prior to the
French Revolution, when French laws were liberalized regarding all things pertaining to the self and its freedom, and despite approbation by authors as celebrated as
Voltaire and eventually Montesquieu, those who failed in their attempt to commit
suicide might easily be mobbed and slaughtered, buried under roads, or sewers, an
unconscious, societal highlight—the irrational backlash by which the innocent
ending of oneself was highjacked, as it were, by all-out social vengeance. How dare
1 See “The Escape Artist – The death and life of Stefan Zweig, by Leo Carey, The New Yorker,
August, 20, 2012, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/27/the-escape-artist-3,
Accessed January 27, 2020.
2 ibid, Leo Carey, The New Yorker Magazine.
3 See Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, Pan Macmillan, London, UK, 1996, p. 507.
See also, “Why a Wave of Suicides Washed Over Germany After the Nazi Defeat,” by Oded
Heilbronner, November 25, 2019, Haaretz, https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-germany-s-mass-suicides-that-accompanied-the-nazis-defeat-1.8165793, Accessed June 25, 2020.
4 See “U.S. Suicide Rates Are the Highest They’ve Been Since World War II,” by Jamie Ducharme,
Junw 20, 2019, Time, https://time.com/5609124/us-suicide-rate-increase/. Accessed June 25, 2020.
83.2 Egocide
massive morphine. One thinks back to the Austrian exiles from Nazi Germany to
Petrópolis, Brazil, the great Jewish author/philosopher Stefan Zweig, and his spouse
Charlotte E. Altmann, February 22, 1942 when they overdosed on barbiturates to
leave behind a most miserable world of unceasing turmoil
1
. Zweig had finished the
previous year his memoir of life in Europe, Die Welt von Gestern (The World of
Yesterday)
2
. Three years later, waves of suicides for very different reasons, encouraged by Hitler, would sweep Germany. Indeed, as reported by Albert Speer, Hitler
Youth handed out cyanide pills to concert goers at the final Berlin Philharmonic
performance, near the end of the war
3
. Nor is it surprising that the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention show the highest suicide rates in the United States,
at present, since World War II
4
. We are in a war.
There will be those who consider such self-destruction as selfish (though not in
the case of Seneca and his wife, as they were charged and, like Socrates, ordered to
do so). But, alas, the most selfish act is the most sacred of deliberated anodynes,
selfishness being the quintessence of probability theory, at the core of a human system that is least given to randomness. The paradox of a selfish death, an escape from
all that swirling dark epiphany-laden earth that has fallen, is successful up to a point
of biological reincarnation, whether one believes it spiritually or not. The physical
components are irrefutable. One cannot elude the truth of what kind of an organism
one is. Whatever dialectics might accrue from its gross anatomy, like a fungus, it has
no necessary commentary, no posterity.
The premise of ecocide leveled against oneself pits epistemology against a heavenly euthanasia. This is the philosophical matrix singularly justified and oriented as
the ultimate renunciation of pain. Given the state of siege humanity has waged
against all Others, this self-annihilation represents the least footprint, a demonstrable reduction to zero of suffering, consistent with the most eloquent poets and cosmologists to ever go on record in its defense. How ironic, then, that prior to the
French Revolution, when French laws were liberalized regarding all things pertaining to the self and its freedom, and despite approbation by authors as celebrated as
Voltaire and eventually Montesquieu, those who failed in their attempt to commit
suicide might easily be mobbed and slaughtered, buried under roads, or sewers, an
unconscious, societal highlight—the irrational backlash by which the innocent
ending of oneself was highjacked, as it were, by all-out social vengeance. How dare
1 See “The Escape Artist – The death and life of Stefan Zweig, by Leo Carey, The New Yorker,
August, 20, 2012, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/27/the-escape-artist-3,
Accessed January 27, 2020.
2 ibid, Leo Carey, The New Yorker Magazine.
3 See Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, Pan Macmillan, London, UK, 1996, p. 507.
See also, “Why a Wave of Suicides Washed Over Germany After the Nazi Defeat,” by Oded
Heilbronner, November 25, 2019, Haaretz, https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-germany-s-mass-suicides-that-accompanied-the-nazis-defeat-1.8165793, Accessed June 25, 2020.
4 See “U.S. Suicide Rates Are the Highest They’ve Been Since World War II,” by Jamie Ducharme,
Junw 20, 2019, Time, https://time.com/5609124/us-suicide-rate-increase/. Accessed June 25, 2020.
83.2 Egocide