Page 20 THE VILLADOM TIMES III • August 25, 2010 The siege of Masada in 73 A.D. is not mentioned in The Bible, but Flavius Josephus and modern archaeologists have shown that the Jewish defenders awed the Romans, when all hope was lost, with a comprehensive mass suicide of more than 900 people. Tacitus, the Roman historian, was impressed by their valor. The first suicide mentioned in the New Testament was Judas. This may be where the idea of the curse comes from. Judas was reviled, but not merely because he committed suicide. When Paul and Silas were in prison in Philippi, an earthquake shook open the doors of the cells. The jailer drew his sword to commit suicide, but Paul talked him out of it and converted the jailer’s whole family. Beyond doubt, the message of the Gospels is to value life and avoid death when possible. The early Christians, however, died in great numbers rather than deny their faith. Anyone willing to make a sacrifice to the divinity of the emperor or to affirm the gods of Mount Olympus was generally spared the lions, the attack dogs, or the crucifixions and burnings in the arena. Accepting a brutal or agonizing death rather than committing even a mild blasphemy was actually a form of suicide. It was also a form of heroism. Jews and Greeks admired the Christians for their beliefs. The Romans, according to Tacitus, simply admired their courage. But it often takes courage to live, rather than to die, when things do not look good. What happens when people kill themselves? According to people who have survived a near death experience – about 136,000 patients under medical supervision, based on a book printed this year – people who elect to kill themselves realize as soon as they are outside their bodies they have made a terrible mistake. Most of those who are resuscitated do not talk about flames or devils with pitchforks. But they all talk about feelings of absolute confusion and despondency and wish they had not taken their own lives, or attempted to. Those few mediumistic communications that contain evidence rather than utter blandishments contain the same message: “Don’t ever kill yourself. It’s worse over here than it was on Earth if you pull your own plug, and the process of sorting it all out seems interminable.” Nobody who claims to have come back from the dead under medical supervision, and a great many people say they have, has had a single good word to say about suicide. What then? Kids who are haunted by the desire to destroy their own lives need to understand that they cannot destroy their consciousness. They can destroy their physical bodies, but that only makes matters worse for the emotional problems and self-rejection that caused them to give up in the first place. What are the buttons pushed to cause self-destruction? If one is academic failure, consider that most people who really want to will finish some college or other. There are useful jobs without college. Lost love? While painful at the time to sincere teens, young adults learn that new boyfriends and girlfriends will come along. Most people who want to get married do get married. Seen from the ramparts of Castle Medicare, the people who looked so wonderful in their teens or early 20s are lucky if they are even mundane by the time they are 40 or 50. The lamest deterrent of all, of course, is to tell the potential victim how this will hurt the family and friends. That is what some of them may actually want. My father treated me as if he were a drill sergeant with a dumb recruit. The social culture of the school system I attended glorified stupidity: not just some of the students, who had been left back two or three times, but some of the teachers. Guys used to beat up kids with learning disabilities just to hear them scream, and gifted kids because they could actually read and sometimes did homework. They worshipped cars. I didn’t fit in with that value system. I can understand that when you think the world is a bad place, it’s not hard to want to leave. In those days, fathers themselves had been boys who were routinely beaten and this turned some of them in cranky, irascible old men who hated kids and thought beatings were good for them. Rage against fathers turned into rage against self. I understood this, and treated my kids like human beings, praised them when they did good or did well, and didn’t make a big deal about small stuff. Neither of them has any suicidal impulses – even when some of their friends talk about it, or do it. Girls, especially the smart ones, have different impulses than boys. Peer competition is so intense and conformity so obsessive, whether it be “popularity” in dating or college acceptance, that if things don’t work out, they give up on life before they have given life a chance. If your parents give you grief about bad SATs or mediocre report cards, get a tutor or dye your hair some bizarre color or play music they don’t like. You won’t get away from your troubles if you end your life. You’ll just be misunderstood and miserable Somewhere Else. Psychiatrists are now working out a computer test they claim can detect people who are at risk for suicide. They are right to be concerned: Suicide is a merciless foe of today’s youngsters, and it is often the brightest and nicest kids who fall into the trap. Bad people generally do not kill themselves unless they are facing life without parole. Not all suicides are reported, and not all drastic deaths are suicides. Those who kill themselves wrong only themselves. They don’t deserve to be held up to scorn. They and their families have a right to some privacy. Many years ago, a young man who had gone through a broken romance drove past my house on a county road at 100 miles per hour, clipped a car coming the other way, and slammed into a tree. He broke his neck and died instantly. The guy in the other car, who had a wife and a five-year-old kid waiting for him at home, was not seriously hurt, but his nerves and his car were not in great shape. That young man committed a criminal act when he used a public thoroughfare for his spectacular departure from a life he no longer wanted, at least temporarily. Had he endangered only himself, I would have seen his act as a terrible mistake. He went over the line, literally and metaphorically, when he came close to killing a husband and father who was not any part of his problem. An older friend of mine took a different approach to selfdestruction. His wife, whom he loved with sincere devotion, was dying of cancer. When the doctors told him there was absolutely no chance the woman he had loved since he was a young man would ever recover, or even recover consciousness, he told them to pull the plug. Then he went home and hanged himself in the cellar. This death was in no way criminal and didn’t endanger any third parties. It may have been a mistake, but it was a mistake that never verged into criminality. I’m proud this man was my friend and I honor his memory, if not his decision. What actually happens when a person takes his or her own life? Rationalists see it as the big sleep, but they might be wrong. Some religions conjure up visions of eternal damnation. The Bible doesn’t say that, but strongly disapproves of suicide. In the Old Testament, most of the people who committed suicide were bad people. Abimelech, son of Gideon and envious murderer of his own brothers, was besieging a city when a woman threw a millstone and fractured his skull. He told his armor-bearer to run him through so no one could say Abimelech had died at the hands of a woman. The kid obeyed orders. Saul, first king of Israel, had ordered the murder of the priests who sheltered the future King David. The night before the battle with the Philistines on Mount Gilboa, in one of the scariest scenes in the Old Testament, the Witch of Endor brought up the spirit of the Prophet Samuel from the ground at Saul’s nervous request. Saul was terrified when Samuel told him that that night, Saul and his sons would be with Samuel. The next day, with his sons dead at the hands of the Philistines, Saul told his armor-bearer to run him through. The kid dispatched Saul and then fell on his own sword. Help kids evade the dark huntsman Lightning detection system (continued from page 4) by a volunteer. John Hanlon, who has also been involved in the process, said the council is due to approve payment for the system, which could occur this week. The aim, he said, is to have the system installed before school starts. “The equipment has been shipped to the people in New Jersey,” Hanlon said, pointing out that the Wisconsin manufacturer has a local installation company. The part of the system at North Field will run on solar power, he added, while the installation at the public school will be hooked into the building’s power source. “The heart of the system will be installed at the police station,” Hanlon said, noting that local officials are currently working out an installation date with the police department. At the most recent public council meeting, Ho-Ho-Kus Mayor Thomas Randall thanked Tyler for her fundraising efforts, adding that the project is an example of successful cooperation between the private and public sectors. “It’s a good system. It will save lives,” Tyler commented. Tyler is president of the Ho-Ho-Kus Ambulance Corps. She has been working with the Ho-Ho-Kus Office of Emergency Management and the Ho-Ho-Kus Recreation Department to bring the lightning detection system to the borough’s fields. The fundraising campaign she launched just a few months ago quickly netted over $13,000 in private donations for the detection system. The private funds will be combined with a matching grant from the Bergen County Open Space Trust Fund the borough received last year, so the project will be effected without the use of tax dollars. The detection system reportedly includes an audible alarm that will be used during the day and turned off with a timer at an appropriate hour in the evening. The strobe warning system will be in operation every hour of every day. The system is designed to provide warnings as electrical storms approach, including alarms when these storms are 15, 10, and five miles away, so anyone on the local fields will have ample time to leave the area. Tyler previously stated that the strobe lights would be visible to those on the fields, but not far beyond them. Lightning can be present at any time of year. The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s website states that there are over three million lightning flashes worldwide each day. Lightning kills more people than tornadoes, floods, and other natural occurrences, according to NCAR. J.CRUSCO