Putting an End to It All

“Farewell to the World begins by breaking down what Barbagli considers to be the flaws in Durkheim’s original theory of suicide. In brief, Durkheim held that all suicides fall into one of four categories: egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic. All four types of suicide, according to Durkheim, were ultimately caused by a lack of social regulation and integration. In other words, suicide came about as a result of pathology, a fatal mismatch between an individual and environment.”

“To understand why people chose to stay alive against all logic, I had to reconcile the ways in which moral order can be so turned upside down that suicide loses all meaning. In the words of a Jewish prisoner, “Dying was omnipresent, death vanished from sight.””

“In place of comfort, you are asked to absorb the knowledge that when you willingly fall off a building you will ultimately fall into one of four categories, examined not for what you wanted but for what you did not get. The hard data show us that everything everywhere is driving us to go through with it. Harder still is to realize what’s pulling us back.”