Autonomy, Duty, Damage, Justice - A Deontological View of Suicide

A woman in her 50's named Kate Spade died this week. Survived by a minor child and her husband, she had a successful career in the fashion industry. That would have been sufficient.

Unfortunately, the suicide of a prominent person is treated with sensationalism rather than discretion. The science that says publicized suicides can/will produce additional deaths is ignored in the pursuit of clicks and sales.

• First we're told she's killed herself, and how she took her life.
• Then we're told her marriage was problematic
• next we see comments by a sister and a brother-in-law, comments that probably weren't perfect for publication
• then the 13-year old daughter is brought in
• Then some details of the marriage - they'd been living apart for ten months, but not discussing divorce
• the note was teased: Bea, this wasn't your fault, ask your Dad

The NYTimes went on to describe her product line in terms of class signifiers, eloquently discussed here, reducing the death of a human to a celebration of niche marketing.

Further comments went on to declare suicide a selfish act, a termination of one's own pain at the expense of others. What about the person who finds them? The first responders? The psychiatrist?

What about the spouse who had moved out? What about the 13-year-old?
And the chattering heads condemn the selfishness of a suicide, turning a victim into a perpetrator.

Here's what's selfish on a much larger scale: major media, well aware of the risk of additional deaths, teases out the lurid details without regard for the +1 deaths, wrapping themselves in moral disapproval while peddling their third-party links and advertisements.

When the media picks up on the #SelfishSuicide trope, they begin to outline the various maudlin Duties the Decedant had to their people. The lines that they play like a violin vibrate like a spider's web, disturbing the souls who fight every day to Not Do It, Just Get Through Today, and Try Again Tomorrow.

No decent person, business, or organization should report the lurid details of a suicide. If there's any news, or value to the public, it's the news that Kate Spade passed away in New York City, survived by a husband and child. That's it.

As a person who wages the fight to Get Through Today, I puzzle over the Duties owed to spouses and children, to employees and investors, to the mail carrier that discovers the deed. When do they end? Is one to ever be relieved?

There is a reasonable expectation of Justice for the Spouse and Children. Does it persist to the point of slavery, that a person in pain should endure for the sake of another?

I think there is a reduction of autonomy when we marry or have children. I'm not sure it should be unlimited.

Every duty should have limits.