Plato Negro on Suicide

"My life and death are all for Allah."

Your body is the Temple of God. Will you destroy God's Temple? By what right, since you did not give yourself life and breath?

How can one comprehend the need or desire for self-destruction? Is it brought on by a conviction that life is hopeless, that there is no possibility of over coming the obstacles in ones path? Does it occur when one is overwhelmed, seeing no way out, no exit, from the dread of life?

Since life is finite, why not go now rather than later, thus applying a quick fix to alleviate the pain and suffering of the diminished mind that has convinced itself it cannot overcome, cannot transcend?

And then there are acts of shame that bring about suicide, a broken love life, death of a lover, a failed business, the sudden end to a promising career. There are no end of reasons to make the cowardly action of self-destruction. We cannot imagine that a sane or normal person would perform such action, anymore than we can imagine a sane or normal person would commit homicide. And yet suicide and homicide happen with such frequency we want to call them normal and sane acts of a society claiming to not be abnormal.

Yet something tells us such actions are not normal but emanate from depraved minds--as if such minds exist in a vacuum, disconnected from the greater society, aberrations they are called. To come away from denial would be too great of an indictment of society, how can it admit it is the guilty party for the self-destruction of its citizens?

But we know self annihilation occurs when hope and dreams are not realized, when people who are oppressed and exploited see no way out. Even the oppressor comes to realize his bestiality, that he has too long robbed the people, and if this is not a self discovery, it may be because he has been discovered or exposed, which can cause the same pain, shame, and horror experienced by the oppressed. Short of suicide is the Sado-masochists who want to experience the pain they have inflicted on others. And when masochism does not suffice, suicide is the ultimate and final solution.

We wonder at the cause of unhappiness and dread in man, but we also know materialism is the great possibility bar none. Things, contrary to the consumer driven capitalist society, cannot replace love. But things become the addiction to the illusion, leading us to the precipice of dread and nothingness, pushing us headlong into the chasm of self-annihilation.

Only by embracing spiritual consciousness and social activism can we avoid the chasm of dread and nothingness, emanating from the delusion of materialism that ultimately takes us down the road to suicide or its cowardly opposite, homicide, though homicide is often merely a disguise for suicide. The brother put himself in a situation where another brother or the police could take his life since he was too cowardly to take his own life.
--Marvin X
Yuba City Jail
10/6/08

from The Wisdom of Plato Negro: A Hustler's Guide to the Game Called Life, by Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2010. Publication date, late 2010. Read it online at http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/

In 2002, Marvin X lost his son to suicide at 39 years old. His son suffered mani-depression, a situational disorder caused by oppression, occording to Dr. Franz Fanon and Dr. Nathan Hare. His son was a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley in Arabic and Near Eastern Studies. He studied in Egypt and Damascus, Syria, and did graduate study at Harvard. Peace be upon him, Abdul El Muhajir (Darrel Jackmon).

Please, no sympathy emails. Nothing can replace the loss of a child, but I am thankful for my remaining children and grand children. Just pray for all the parents and family members who've lost children to suicide and homicide in this Crazy House Called America. Thank you.

As-Salaam-Alaikum. MX