posted
This is some of the best journalism I've ever read. It's about the Golden Gate Bridge, and those who jump off of it. It's fascinating. Have a read.
Posts: 1481 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Articles like that make me want to subscribe to the New Yorker. I'm still torn, though, because of the abysmal fiction and the fact that I can read the highlights on line.
quote:suicide is much more common than homicide
I didn't know that. I should have figured it out, though.
quote:“Suicidal people have transformation fantasies and are prone to magical thinking, like children and psychotics,”
I didn't know children and psychotics went so well in the same sentence.
Dang, is this why adults often lose the innocence and imagination of children? Because without the protection and love and safety net of parents, that dreaming is an unaffordable luxury?
quote:He’d written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, ‘I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.’”
Motto sat back in his chair. “That was it,” he said. “It’s so needless, the number of people who are lost.”
As people who work on the bridge know, smiles and gentle words don’t always prevent suicides. A barrier would. But to build one would be to acknowledge that we do not understand each other; to acknowledge that much of life is lived on the chord, on the far side of the railing.
quote: As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”
This makes me cry.
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posted
I'm anti-barrier. There's something mystical about it, no doubt. I believe the things one learns mid-flight can be learned no other way. Why not have 24 hour volunteers to talk to would be jumpers, though? To talk them out of jumping? To be that person who smiles. It would not cost very much, probably far less than a barrier, and would be a worthy effort.
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anne kate, what would be the difference in a physical barrier and barrier of personnel in the end?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I think people shouldn't be prevented by force from committing suicide, but they should be persuaded and talked to and loved and cared for and listened to and everyone should make the utmost effort to get them to choose not to. I don't believe in taking people's agency away for any reason.
I know how bad it can be. I also know that lots of people have had it far worse than I. It's not possible for one person to judge how much agony another person is suffering. So I would do everything I could to help someone and give them hope, but I would not stop them from doing it. In the end it's their choice.
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Where I live my apartment partially looks over a multi story carpark. A couple of months ago a man jumped off the top floor. It mas about 11 am, and I saw him standing on the wrong side of the (short) guard rail - I got my boyfriend, we called the police. We wondered whether we should run over and try and talk to him, but figured the time it would take to get downstairs, over the road and up the 7 floors to the top would be too long.
We were right - he jumped and for the rest of my life I will remember the sound when he hit the pavement.
There were a few people about but no-one was doing anything - we recalled the police and they got my boyfriend to go check if the body to see if he was still alive (he wasn't) - there were carpark security guards around, but they weren't doing anything except pointing.
It turns out its good we kept watching because then the police had a witness that it was a suicide, not a murder.
We found out later that was the second suicide from that spot in the car park.
I can't imagine how someone would feel to take their own life, and I felt enormously sorry for the man. The hard thing is at the same time I also felt kind of angry at him for choosing such a public spot - we still see the carpark from our window, and everytime I look at it I remember.
I talked to Mum about it later (she's a doctor) and she said that in the case of men, statiscally when they're over the guard rail they won't be talked down - in 99% of cases they will jump (apparently women are more often talked down).
The whole thing is sad and confusing and frustrating.
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so from a certain point of view, a barrier can be seen as ultimately very uncaring. Here - we'll take from you the only way you can see to relieve your pain, but we will not be there for you to help you find another way to relieve it.
A barrier is only have the solution - stopping the immediate act. But it isn't the other half - helping to be there to fix the desire to throw yourself off the swinging bridge.
There are all sorts of laws we make to prevent people from hurting themselves - seat belts being the first to spring to mind. I don't object to putting up a barrier, but it is definitely only the first half of the solution. The tragic and terrifying statistic is not that so many people throw themselves off, but that so many people want to. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Barriers, boundaries and borders are where all the action is, in mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, international politics, psychology, social classes, relationships and many other examples. Someday I plan to write a mathematics paper to tie all of this together. But only if more people smile at me. Otherwise, why bother?
posted
I support the barrier, and would even if I agreed with Ryan (I'm not sure if I do or don't as it is). The problem I see is that this bridge seems to draw people to it. People who normally wouldn't committ suicide in another way. The death toll thing being a good example, if someone truely wants death putting a barrier on one bridge isn't going to stop them, but I would hope that it would stop those who have a mystical idea of what would happen if they die at a specific spot.
posted
I think it very cold and uncaring not to put up a barrier. It would effectively stop all but a small portion of those people from killing themselves. They aren't going to go buy a gun and do it, or jump off a building instead, as evidenced by the 94% of people who were turned away from jumping and who are still alive (or died of natural causes) mentioned in the story indicates.
I think the story did a good job of showing the power of the bridge in drawing people to do this. If there was a convienent, foolproof, and somewhat glamorous way to kill myself available to me where I live, would I still be alive today? I'm not entirely sure. Like it said, its like having a loaded gun on the table at all times.
The closest thing we have here is the third floor of the mall. Its like 150 feet up, and has a railing about four feet high. Several people have jumped off it since the mall opened, so now there is a guard there permenantly watching. I don't think we should take the gaurd away to give people that option as a caring gesture.
Build the freaking barrier already. Actually, I think an extra couple feet on the existing railing would take care of 90% of the suicides.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:“Suicidal people have transformation fantasies and are prone to magical thinking, like children and psychotics,” --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't know children and psychotics went so well in the same sentence.
Dang, is this why adults often lose the innocence and imagination of children? Because without the protection and love and safety net of parents, that dreaming is an unaffordable luxury?
No, dreaming and magical thinking are different. It's an inability to see reality, and completely believing your wishes, and not what is around you. That's the "magical thinking" of young children and psychotics.
quote:Actually I support suicide. If the person finds it right, who am I to argue with him?
A human being who values life and sees the worth of other people. If you stop someone, that means that person means SOMEthing to SOMEone, and ONE PERSON at least doesn't see them as scum. It's a start.
quote:I think people shouldn't be prevented by force from committing suicide, but they should be persuaded and talked to and loved and cared for and listened to and everyone should make the utmost effort to get them to choose not to. I don't believe in taking people's agency away for any reason.
Anne Kate and I have discussed this before. I DO believe in removing agency when a person is irrational. When you're planning on and attempting to commit suicide, no matter how well you think out and set to the plan, it's irrational at it's base. When you're irrational, someone in a trusted position needs to take over your life, until you can keep yourself alive. Because you are worth that.
quote:The problem I see is that this bridge seems to draw people to it. People who normally wouldn't committ suicide in another way.
That's because jumping off that bridge has a very high rate of the suicide being completed, as given in the statistics in the article. I suppose if I lived in San Francisco, I may have attempted it when I was suicidal. Because, aside from the trip down, it would be fast and it would work.
Obviously, I completely support the construction of a barrier. The harder and longer it is to actually attempt suicide, the longer we have as people to catch up to the potential suicide and help.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
What ever the reason for it Mack, I agree with you. I support the barrier because I think that a lot of the people who jump of the bridge wouldn't attempt suicide if it weren't there.
[EDIT: This post contains no comment on limiting agency]
posted
Didn't you guys read the part where they interviewed people who jumped, and then lived? They all agreed that they completely change their mind mid-flight. That, in and of itself is pretty ample evidence for constructing the barrier, because in the end, they wish they wouldn't have.
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posted
Mack, Hobbes -- that isn't limiting agency. If you stop someone from committing suicide they still have the agency to go along with it or not.
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Maybe we should construct a large trampoline underneath the bridge. That way, they'd jump, change their mind, and be rocketed back on the bridge...
(Note: This comment was made for the specific reason that whenever I look at this thread title, I want to cry)
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posted
My comment on limiting agency was directed toward's anne kate's comments. I don't think the barrier will limit agency. But tackling someone as they try to run and jump over could be considered limiting agency--and I'd do that.
That's right.
I'm an agency-limiter.
That's only because MY agency has been successfully limited.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Has anyone here ever been out on the bridge? It is a surreal experience. On the walkway you can be about 20 feet from the edge and the whole time still have a horrible feeling that you will be going over. My wife refused to go far enough out to put us over the water even.
One comment that bothered me in the article was that almost everyone in the bay area knows someone who has jumped. I lived there for 20 yrs and although it isn't a topic of normal conversation for me. I never heard of someone I know even knowing someone that jumped.
Overall it was a powerful, moving article and like Ryuoko and Imogen, this article and thread bring me to tears. I think the biggest problem people in the area have with the barrier idea is that it will detract from the beauty of the location.
I have an Ansel Adams photograph in my living room of "The golden gate before the bridge" and now will be forever grateful that photo was taken before the bridge was errected.
posted
just relating to a situation i am going through that i cannot really talk about in detail. But it is a bad one...
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Yes, mac, I was really super glad when you told Todd that time and didn't leave it up to me to decide whether or not to do something. I think by telling, you were making the choice, weren't you? You were saying "please don't let me do this", perhaps? I honestly don't know if I could be strong enough to let someone go ahead and do it, if it were in my power to stop them. But I do know this, that when I've felt that way it's been a barrier to me getting any help that I felt I could tell nobody safely without having my agency taken away from me. I've felt that death was far preferable to that. I do know that I believe deeply that there's no worse violation of a person than that. And that in the end, nobody else can live my life for me, and if that life becomes so intolerable that every moment is an agony, and that agony lasts far far longer than I can bear, then I DO want to retain the ability to choose to end it. I feel like everyone has that basic right.
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I honestly have never understood how anyone can kill themselves by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Being on the bridge is an almost mystical experience for me; I always feel better being there. But that's just me.
I do believe that the barrier should be built. It would be nice to think that you can prevent suicides just by having someone there. You can, sometimes. I have had the experience of sitting and holding a friend's hand and talking to him all night long, literally, so that he wouldn't kill himself. But there are times when all the talking in the world wouldn't change a thing.
I especially think the aesthetics argument against the barrier is really stupid. As mentioned in the article the Arroyo Seco Bridge in Pasadena (another bridge I have occasion to cross from time to time), has a barrier. It does nothing to detract from its considerable beauty.
Edit: to get rid of a stray word that shouldn't have been there. Stupid grammar, in other words.
posted
people's all too romantic notions of suicide disturb me to no end. i know this has been discussed before, but i also feel it is easier for some people to be okay with suicide if they've never cleaned up a loved ones brains left on the walls, have never tried to call a friend before remembering that they were gone, or that was never given the chance to help.
or maybe once upon a time they, too, considered suicide and backed out, but were never really comfortable with their decision to stick around.
i loathe and am deeply hurt by suicide out of depression. yes, it hurts, but that doesn't make the hurt go away for all those left behind. it is a terrible thing to extinguish yourself without asking permission. >_<
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To many people, it's bizarre how easy it is to start a suicide epidemic. If someone famous killed themselves tonight, we'd see a big spike in the number of suicides in the next month.
It can also be very strange to see how little is sometimes needed to turn people away from this. Some people get stuck in a mindset and can't seem to get out of it. But, for some of them, the right thing, even just a little thing, can pop them out of it.
Drastic suicide survivors, as in this case, very often report the "What the hell am I doing? I want to take this back." mid-attempt thoughts.
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