Director Tony Scott jumps off a bridge

[BroDeal]

He had inoperable cancer. Suicide is an honorable cure that most people don't have the guts to take.

 

[ElChingon]

As long as he didn't take anyone else in the process.

 

[trompe le monde]

He had inoperable cancer. Suicide is an honorable cure that most people don't have the guts to take.

Well....I just recently lost a relative to inoperable cancer. She chose not to fight the cancer and was in the hands of a very good palliative care doctor. Did she then die with less honour? With no honour?

I find the last sentence a bit vexing, as bringing 'death' and 'honour' in the same sentence is a bit problematic. In Canada three years ago Mr. Shafia pushed a car containing his three daughters and ex wife into a canal, killing them. Wire taps confirmed that this was an honour killing, as one, or maybe all I forget, daughters were besmirching the family's name or something to that effect. Was this murder more justified because of honour? I realize that this really muddies the water more than clarifies it, but it is just that I find it problematic when people say there is honour in taking a life, your own or someone elses.

I'm not trying to get into a war of words on the internet, so you are entitled to your opinion. The question of a justifiable suicide hinges on the larger question of 'when does a life no longer have any worth?' Who decides the answer to that? Is it the owner of a cancer riddled body? Is it the friends and family of the life-owning body? Is it society and its capital punishment laws or lack thereof? There is no hard and fast rule to answer the first question in this paragraph. Utilitarianism may try and provide an answer to the question, but I find any philosophical school where the founding father, Jeremy Bentham, found it justifiable to have himself stuffed and displayed (at the University College of London), slightly insane.

I almost forgot, Rest in Peace, Mr. Tony Scott.

 

[Steve H.]

The last thing everyone does in life is to die. How this happens is highly individualized. It seems the only thing death ever "cured" was life.

 

[SafeBet]

Terrible news.
I grew up with lots of his movies.

 

[screaming fist]

Amid the chaos of that day, when all I could hear was the thunder of gunshots, and all I could smell was the violence in the air, I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true, that three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you're so cool, you're so cool, you're so cool. And sometimes Clarence asks me what I would have done if he had died, if that bullet had been two inches more to the left. To this, I always smile, as if I'm not going to satisfy him with a response. But I always do. I tell him of how I would want to die, but that the anguish and the want of death would fade like the stars at dawn, and that things would be much as they are now. Perhaps. Except maybe I wouldn't have named our son Elvis.

R.I.P.

 

[rickshaw]

i don't care about anything but myself.

some of us are afraid to die, some afraid to live. suicide it seems to me, is the ultimate act of selfishness because it denies the feeling and rights of the living left behind.

 

[ElChingon]

some of us are afraid to die, some afraid to live. suicide it seems to me, is the ultimate act of selfishness because it denies the feeling and rights of the living left behind.

But if you're going to die anyway, what feelings and rights are we talking about?

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Sticking with the story at hand, the family says he did not have inoperable brain cancer. Others have reported he had cancer in his hip last year, but it was treated. Some felt the cancer may have come back. But so far, we just don't know.

Sad story either way. Very sad.

 

[BroDeal]

some of us are afraid to die, some afraid to live. suicide it seems to me, is the ultimate act of selfishness because it denies the feeling and rights of the living left behind.

When I had cancer I knew how I would kill myself if treatment did not work out. It's no biggie. This dude was like seventy. He had to go sometime. If he decided that on balance it was better to end it then he has my respect. Too many people take the cowards way out and waste away.

Despite disliking Christian Slater, I always liked Scott's movie True Romance. Tarantino's script helped a lot. The Hunger was also very interesting.