Wen/Zou Bo

On the evening of September 8, 2025, a 25-year-old woman surnamed Huang in Chengdu, riding a shared bicycle alone from the Administrative College Station of Metro Line 2 to Yushi Park in Longquanyi District, hanged herself next to the greenway. She left a suicide note at the scene: "Don't be afraid, I committed suicide. I really can't ride anymore. I originally wanted to find a place with fewer people, more trees, and better scenery, but I really can't walk anymore." Chengdu Public Security reported that after on-site investigation and video tracing, the criminal case was ruled out and confirmed as suicide. The police also emphasized that she was not a food delivery rider.

Unless the cause of her suicide is so clear that it does not require imagination, and unless there are significant hidden circumstances that require us to investigate, I restrain my delusions about the cause of her suicide.

I am only thinking about the act of 'suicide': will her life ultimately be thrown towards death, leaning forward, or leaning back, like a lighter tumblewell than Sisyphus, inserted into the halfway mountain where she cannot roll up? I myself had no intention of writing a poem about 'I can't ride on a bike anymore': '... it's here that I hold back/Aristotle couldn't hold back/The real tickling/Riding against the wind/Like a bug hanging itself without marriage/Rolling my ankles on my own feet'.

But to think more fundamentally about the act of suicide - regardless of the reason, is it holding back from living or not holding back from dying? Have I ever had that kind of tendency myself - suicidal thoughts, suicidal thoughts, suicidal tendencies - when Coleridge first used the word "ideation" - the creation of psychological images, it is a temptation of gravity, the temptation of the moon tide, it appears in everyone's mind, occasionally flashing, but continuous, the most common impulse is jumping into the traffic, or feeling the "itch" state outside the window of cliffs and high-rise buildings, or the dark brain repair of the scene of stabbing oneself with a kitchen knife in hand

On the other hand, a large body of research has shown that individuals who are melancholic and emotionally charged can actually help overcome suicidal thoughts and tendencies by admitting them to others. In Aeschylus' Agamemnon, there is a chorus of elderly people in the city-state leaning on crutches preparing to commit suicide together: "Sing of pain, but let good decide" - while singing, their wise ruler Agamemnon triumphed from Troy but was murdered, and every family's son who returned from Troy also died with very little left. The city-state is about to face the massacre brought about by a new tyranny. But singing in this way actually eliminated the passion for suicide among these elderly people, making them more resilient and able to endure life. But this Chengdu girl, on her deathbed, did not have any pent up wishes to confide in.

How should we talk about suicide? ??What else can we talk about about about suicide besides simply saying 'forced to die' and explaining it with 'depression that cannot be blamed on others'?

British female writer Edith Hall starts with the "comprehensiveness" of death in "Facing the Goddess of Revenge: Suicide, Ancient Greeks and Me".

Hall's book seems to approach the topic of suicide layer by layer: when we talk about suicide, we can start discussing it from life, starting from the passivity of death, gradually transitioning from death to autonomy, and then from atypical suicide to typical suicide. The typical reason for suicide is fiercely transformed into reason alienation, including more casual suicide, which is a more common feature of our time: life - from the classical meaning of "death as one of the only two purposes", to using death as a tool to express the "intention of life" to die. Following this clue, we can even briefly outline the history of humanity.

People either choose to live decisively, to live for the sake of survival, and fall into the repetitive "progression" of synonyms: "I want to live, so that I can live better" - I recently heard this sentence in the new season of "The Strange Tales of the Tang Dynasty". This is easy to understand, it is a more generalized meaning of success in life: every second of living is consistent with the previous second, making the previous second meaningful. Therefore, when I recall this life, I will see the rationality of deducing from the result to the process.

But Tolstoy also said: Life has reached a stage where suicide can be deduced through logic. We can also 'deduce' the necessity of death.

So, people, either - decisively die - rely on WAuden's words - 'If you don't intend to live, start dying immediately' - immediately made me feel the comprehensiveness of death: if you prepare for death well, people can continue to live just to prepare for death. This almost greedy "comprehensiveness of suicide" is precisely the beginning of the book "Facing the Goddess of Revenge: Suicide, Ancient Greeks and Me"??

Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher who passed away in 322 BC, repeatedly warned his disciples to think more about the "consequences of suicide" and the misfortune brought by an accident. Accidents are a 'pure model' used to consider the destructiveness of death - the less prepared we are for misfortune, the purer the destructiveness left behind... Hall actually began to compare Socrates and Aristotle's different arrangements for posthumous events when they died??

Socrates bid farewell in prison. Firstly, he chose to die in order to be martyred. Secondly, he evaded his family responsibilities and told his disciples that "he must prioritize taking care of his own soul." Socrates was not wealthy and even ignored the economic difficulties that his death would inevitably bring to his family. He even did not allow his disciples to help take care of his wife and children. His wife, Zanthipe, walked out of the prison and collapsed on the ground, crying in despair. According to Fritz Mortner, a Jewish philosopher of the Austro Hungarian Empire, in his 1884 novel "Zansipe," Zansipe was a resourceful woman who was forced to run a stonemason business for her husband while he engaged in mental labor.

Aristotle and Socrates followed completely opposite laws - when Aristotle was over sixty years old and found out that he was suffering from a stomach disease (possibly stomach cancer), he made a very comprehensive will.

His will considers various possibilities, including who among his family members will die first after his death. Exiled, he knew how tense and hostile the social and political situation would be after death, so he entrusted his powerful local ally - the Greek governor Antipater - as the executor of his will. He also wants his nephew and adopted son Nicanor as the second executor. Before his nephew returns from abroad, he wants four friends to form a "backup team" to take care of "children, wife, and inheritance". He wants his nephew to take special care of his daughter - he knows very well that women without fathers are easily exploited and need a kind man to represent them in handling legal and financial matters. He even suggested that his nephew marry his widow to directly assume future responsibilities.

Aristotle also "inserted" a clause about his lover in his will: "She has been very kind to me... if she wants to get married... marry her to someone worthy of me. She should be given one taarat of silver from the estate, three female slaves, and existing slaves. If she wants to live in Karkis, she can stay in a guest room next to the garden. If she wants to live in Stagila, she can stay in my father's house. Anyway, the executor must equip her with suitable furniture and obtain my wife's approval

Aristotle even considered slaves and ensured that no one would be sold, saying, "When they reach the appropriate age, they should be given the freedom they deserve

Socrates deliberately did not entrust his family to his disciples, while Aristotle entrusted them extensively and prepared his life for death. The Aristotelian Testament reminds me of the suicide of Qiong Yao at the end of 2024, which was almost a "pseudo suicide" - Qiong Yao's suicide was too comprehensive and almost Aristotelian, and more like a "comprehensive homicide" than the death penalty suffered by Socrates - she turned the fragile suicide into a calm arrangement: the day before death, she instructed her daughter-in-law at the dinner table to visit her at home the next day; The secretary is also included in a comprehensive will; Waiting for Ping Xintao's ex-wife to finish her memoirs and for everyone to finish speaking. But she ignored the truth, which was her contempt for the chubby little heart of her childhood.

Last year, earlier than Qiong Yao, we discussed Sha Bai: Sha Bai's death was also more luxurious than a typical suicide. In the Trojan heroes of ancient Greece, the putrid and gangrenous Philoctetes also begged for the help of his friends to end his life, but was despised by his comrades and exiled to an isolated island to fend for himself. He was unable to commit suicide on his own, but instead begged for someone to assist him in dying - this was different from suicide in ancient Greek thought. And those who assist in death are also exempt from being held accountable.

Since Sha Bai made up his mind to "rest my whole life and enjoy every day", he has been preparing for the arrival of death for a long time without any other unexpected incidents. She conforms to Auden's saying: 'If you cannot live, immediately begin to die.' Between life and death, she did not waste any life struggling. The years when she started to die were the longest and happiest years of her life, and she may have overcome depression. In Marvel's story, there are two parallel times. On the one hand, the snap of fingers can come at any time, but if a day doesn't come, or if death keeps its promise, humans feel another parallel time: life. Because of Auden's words, death is life, life is death, and a person can continue to live in preparation for death.

Among last year's Sha Bai, Qiong Yao, this year's Chengdu girl, and the eternal Socrates and Aristotle, only the Chengdu girl is the true "suicide victim".

The death methods of Qiong Yao, Sha Bai, and Aristotle are almost "extravagant", and most suicide victims in the world do not have the conditions to be calm and comprehensive. The Chengdu girl is the typical and daily "suicide".

I have watched some ordinary people's final videos, and we seem to see that even if death is imminent, it will not 'nourish' them with any peace. They find it difficult to remain calm, even if the live streaming audience can comfort the loneliness of terminally ill individuals. They endure illness in the last minute, thinking about the burden of life and their families, but are powerless and helplessly thinking about unpaid debts. They avoid infinite poverty, infinite responsibility, infinite humiliation, infinite damage, infinite despair, infinite pain and infinite sadness of sexual assault, and may not have a table with a roof to write a suicide note.

Indeed, I once wrote in a radical way because I saw the "shallowness" of people's reasons for suicide: "If the suicide note is mediocre, don't write it; if the suicide note is verbose, don't die; if the suicide note is not profound, don't die. Indeed, when I wrote it, I was using the method of inciting people to live and not die, but it was also a vulgar speculation: living people, regardless of their wealth, would not "envy" Qiong Yao's death, but anonymous people who also committed suicide may be jealous. The suicide of an anonymous person is only like a "sigh" from a celebrity, just to gain some dignity and attention that life should have.

But there are always some ordinary people who ignore the speculation of material determinism and act in a 'humble panic', which makes me ashamed of my words - they have achieved the courage of ordinary people to remain calm and composed when committing suicide.

So, my virtual discussion with the author of this book began here - as if separating the suicides of big shots and ordinary people. For example, French sociologist Durkheim summarized the reasons for suicide into three categories: the first - "selfish suicide", which is committed by those who have low integration with their families and communities; The second type - in societies that support self sacrifice in the name of the collective, suicide is "altruistic"; The third type - intentionally "losing control" in a collapsed society, abandoning others, and letting the flood surge.

The third type - I think of the tree hole where everyone confides in the novel 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter' - the mute Mr. Singh shoots himself. He couldn't find acceptance from his peers, but unintentionally, due to his ability to listen, he became a normal person (not mute) to confide in - he seemed to be able to playfully express sadness to his silent ears, and this mute's ultimate suicide seemed to be a prank on his own inherent loneliness - using the love he didn't need to vent the love he couldn't get - or the simple principle of "living elsewhere" and "dying elsewhere" love.

Looking at these three types of suicide together - the first reason belongs to the broad sense of ordinary people, who are insignificant and have been separated from society. They may also want to draw attention to themselves and let their ordinary deaths create a huge wave behind the third type of person. To achieve this, they may borrow the public heart similar to the second type of person to gain courage.

Anyway, when the flames of suicide are unified, many ancient Greek dramas tell us that continuing to live is still noble. I still believe that if our grassroots "hesitation" can turn into a simple "leisurely and unrestrained life" - then the pursuit of "comprehensiveness" in suicide may be able to save our lives. Can we really live forever just to prepare for death? The author of "Facing the Goddess of Revenge: Suicide, Ancient Greeks and Me" did not belittle "living" for discussing suicide, but also because people in classical times were purer than they are now - at that time, humans were still immersed in the feeling of being "gods" all over their bodies. Even if exiled, life and death were sacrificed for the gods and fate, rather than the fragile feeling of being an outsider in society that modern people are particularly prone to.

The ancient Greeks (even including the slave class) were not easily separated from society because there were mythological ties in addition to social bonds. In Aristotle's eyes, the state is still a small country, a city-state, an acquaintance society, a community, and a multi-faceted family. There is no mythological bond between modern people and modern society, and people are either screws or "detached" and become dispensable.

A contemporary suicide victim is more likely to turn suicide into heroism because experience tells them that living is a humble death. Therefore, the author of this book attempts to balance us with the spirit of ancient Greece, restoring our ancient belief that death and life are both myths with dignity.

The author of this book, Hall, is not a dead eater, nor does he belittle the "decisiveness and self consistency of suicide

She wrote this book herself to escape the curse of the family's suicide genes. She regarded herself as an ancient person who endured the curse of mutual killing among relatives in Agamemnon's family. Her family seemed to bear the curse of the goddess of revenge, and at least four members committed suicide: her mother, great grandfather, grandmother (with the same name as her), and cousins. These deeply influenced her worldview and prompted her to explore the psychological and cultural roots of suicide through ancient Greek tragedy and philosophy.

She stopped believing in Christianity at the age of thirteen and gained a worldview of 'heaven and earth are unkind, all things are like dogs' during adolescence, which often leads to suicidal ideation. Premature maturity, or delayed justice, can make a person feel like they have lost the patience to live

The greatest sincerity of this book lies in the fact that the author places himself in a lower position than other suicide victims - a person from a family with "suicide" genes and temperament tendencies, who is a backer for us ordinary people who do not feel the "curse". But when I said these words, my inner demons were touched, and I began to ask myself, what curse do I carry... But all writers will finish what they want to write before speaking.

While revisiting the living environment of suicide victims in their families, the author also takes us back to the evolution history of suicide concepts in Western classical times??

The Aristotle we mentioned earlier represents the mainstream of ancient Greece. When he talks about suicide - just like his foresight in other aspects - he is still the earliest and most comprehensive person to speak on both sides: "I see suicide from both sides... (one side) I deeply understand despair, as if there is no better future. The pain is heartbreaking - living consciously is unbearable, and both individuals and society should pay attention to signs of others' suicidal impulses and provide non judgmental support. But (the other side) self harm causes no less harm to others than murder, even if the nature is different... it is violent death, and like murder, it leaves greater scars on the bereaved and society than natural death

Aristotle hinted to his contemporaries that suicide was considered a form of courage, but in most cases he disagreed with it: "Escaping may seem attractive... but suicide wrongly accuses others

In Aristotle's ancient Greece, suicide was neither prohibited nor authorized by law. At least before the rise of Rome, the attitude of ancient Greeks towards suicide was in a controversial "wise intuition".

Pythagoras, an earlier philosopher than Aristotle, believed that any suicide was wrong, but did not believe that "the living are the victims". He believed that "the harm caused by suicide is to God". The Pythagorean sect has a certain obsession with cleanliness: they demand that the pot marks be left without dust, that the pajamas taken off be immediately folded, and that the marks on the body be smoothed out - the Pythagorean sect seems to resonate with Qiong Yao's "graceful" and "unstained" liberation from the belief that "the victims of suicide are humans".

Hippocrates swore to his disciples that doctors would never assist suicide victims. Athenian politician Aescines said in a speech that when a person commits suicide, the hand of the suicide will be buried separately from the body.

The mainstream of ancient Greece was not conservatism, but full expression, freely penetrating suicidal behavior and death concepts from all directions, fear becoming the avant-garde of divinity, and protective desires becoming excessive indulgence. In Aristotle's era, there was excessive concern for the psychological abnormalities of children, but he also agreed to allow children who avoided suicide to sacrifice themselves to the gods.

The Stoic school, which directly connects to the concept of individual freedom in later generations, proposed five reasonable reasons for suicide: obeying religious commands issued by divine edicts (such as to save one's own city-state); Avoid doing shameful things according to the orders of tyrants; When a serious illness renders the soul unable to use the body; Get rid of poverty; When affected by dementia.

The author emphasizes that ancient Greeks were so averse to enduring, even unable to tolerate illness, but they also endured not committing suicide. They acknowledged that fate was unfair, that good people may not have good rewards, and that bad people often endure for thousands of years. They also believed that enduring pain and misfortune was of no benefit to a person's morality.

Only when the Roman Empire, which was once again great, rose did certain suicides begin to be considered noble sacrifices for the country. Surprisingly, suicide behavior has officially become positive in history and is actually related to the rise of national consciousness... However, regardless, the fact that suicide victims want to draw the attention of the surrounding world also indicates their sensitivity to their connection with the world.

Early Christianity belittled suicide, as if only Jesus and martyrs could die, while Protestantism began to sympathize with individual choice. As a freedom of life, Montaigne said, "Voluntary death is the best." Later, the liberation of human nature, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment movement roughly confirmed that suicide was free will. Diderot's opposition to suicide was a small episode of enlightenment, while the modern era initiated by Rousseau embraced suicide. To Sartre and existentialism, such as in the 1963 New Wave film "The Flame Within," Leroy was unable to maintain a woman's relationship. To attract attention, "I am committing suicide because you do not love me, because I do not love you, and our bond is loose,I want to commit suicide to tighten it up and leave you with an indelible stain "- this is also like the traditional" death to give "in Yi culture.

As we gradually depart from the moral perspectives of ancient and modern times, and approach modern times more openly - in 1942, Camus solemnly encouraged people to "accept the absurd life" - living in vain like Sisyphus, but not committing suicide, loving Camus, and living with Camus. In "The Myth of Sisyphus," he summarized: "In the eyes of Sisyphus, this ownerless universe is neither barren nor futile. Every stone, every atom, every mountain peak at night, every thin slice of ore, constitutes a world in itself. The struggle to reach its peak is enough to fill a heart. We must imagine Sisyphus as happy." We will always remember Camus saying, "There is only one true philosophical question, and that is suicide.

The absurdity revealed by Camus prompts us to re-examine Durkheim's classification of the causes of suicide, and find that he failed to address the alienation factors of modern and postmodern colors such as "imitation", just like how European youth imitated Werther back then, or how I read "The Twenty Four Histories" and fantasized that murder did not hurt?

I suddenly recalled the tragedy of Agamemnon mentioned at the beginning of the article: Agamemnon's return was tragically killed, set against the backdrop of casualties in the Trojan War. The weak orphans and widows here are unable to bear the justice of those left behind. As a result, an individual experiences a decisive increase in personal misfortune and conspiracy - the prospect of personal tragedy exacerbates the tragedy of the kingdom - murder is followed by massacre. These elderly citizens and left behind weak individuals feel that 'slaughter hurts more than murder', so people here gather to seek collective suicide.

Indeed, rereading classical literature is like experiencing reality for the first time, facing abnormal rationality and feelings, illusions and alienation. According to grammar, slaughter can only be collective, but in modern times, the alienation of murder is that 'slaughtering individuals' is alienation - we accept the slaughter in murder as a collective, and the murder one by one in murder as an individual. We accept the absurdity of modernity - accepting the mutual illusion of slaughter and murder on each other - past, present, and future - suicide is such an open act: in terms of intention, you don't need a reason, you don't need the victim, in terms of behavior, you can kill yourself, you can also kill yourself, killing doesn't hurt.

Alienation "is not only used for suicide, but also as a catalyst for almost all human behavior - imitation, contagion, and popularity, can replicate behavior, can make suicide easier - when children feel that death is like a toy for anger, rebellion, liberation from homework and teacher punishment, they will easily pick up this" weapon ".

Nowadays, people like to interpret suicide as "drawing attention", more precisely - when death and afterlife are no longer important in the eyes of young people, despised, suicide - death becomes a means from the purpose of life, a "means of losing life and death". The most convenient feature of the means is being learned and imitated.

But imitation and contagious suicide have actually existed since ancient times. The saddest short poem by the ancient Greek poet Callimachus summarizes the tragedy of 'imitation':

At dawn, we buried Melanipes, but at sunset, the young girl Basilo died at her own hands. After cremating her brother, she couldn't bear to live on. "There is also a more famous chain tragedy in Sophocles'" Antigone ": when the brother died, the younger sister committed suicide, the younger sister's fianc ? committed suicide, and the fianc ?'s mother committed suicide

The freedom of ancient and modern people is both different and intertextual. For example, ancient people attached great importance to curses (such as Job), which means giving up the "autonomy" in the eyes of modern people, and it is precisely the modern people's patience and hardship towards misfortune; The transmission, replication, and continuation of the curse felt by ancient people have also become a real burden, collusion, and suicide under collectivism in modern times - the "curse" carried by contemporary people is a repeated death of several generations in collectivism, either by fighting against each other or repeating a similar psychological process. Understanding the thinking of ancient people can balance our current understanding, which has long been rationalized by postmodern theory as' pathological 'and' incomplete '.

Recently, I have been reading intellectual writers and poets such as Guy Davenport and Anne Carson, as well as some contemporary philosophers of Neo Aristotelianism.

They resist the politically correct anti intellectual writing of this era, even returning to the classical human nature before "Christian ethics and political correctness", and continue to expand a philosophical structure in the hearts of contemporary people:

The mind of an educated contemporary, if you do not intervene in anything, is essentially composed of Bentham's collective pragmatism and Kant's individual rationality. If you want to do something, use the morality of Neo Aristotle to reconcile the contradiction between the first two (using "happiness or excellence depends on reason to exert virtue, while moral judgment and practice should be based on human nature and context, not abstract rules" to dissolve the two difficulties of life philosophy), and then use Socrates' questioning to "destroy" Neo Aristotle's "comprehensiveness" - just as suicide implies a desire to achieve a vast imperfection on the basis of "complacency" in life.

Hall, who also possessed a profound classical education, continued to reread ancient Greece with a flawed modern tone. She wrote, "Ancient Greek tragedy detached divinity and allowed human nature to be discussed more widely

What is the 'wider incompleteness' of our era - if the divinity of our era is money - when money is removed, will our humanity actually be extended, displayed, and discussed more widely, or will it be more obscured and completely closed off due to the possession of poverty? Buddha said that human life is in the midst of breathing, and 'if one does not breathe, it belongs to the future.' But has a young suicide been so light that he sees suicide as breathing out of this suffocation?

There are thirty surviving plays about suicide in ancient Greek drama, which are an important part of Greek civic education, life education, death education, and humanity education.