I don't think people realize that there really is no "regret" when it comes to this.
Regret is past-tense pain, fear is future-tense pain; and each can be as pernicious as each other, as pernicious as pain in the present-tense, from an active paroxysm freshly touched. Because of the odd way we may comprehend time, it is fully possible to regret doing something
before we've even done it. Have you ever experienced this odd phenomena? I have. Emotions are odd things indeed, our perceptions even odder; both curious indeed.
Regret, fear, suffering, what are all these words but flavours of pain? Let me appeal to your physicalist view of mind; I will analyse the practical ramifications of the word and thing we are gesturing to, "death".
My concerns are pragmatic, and I think that even if regret and being dead may not mix easily, that there are other things that seep into the blend, of conscious experience regarding this. There are many things people may not realize, or put off mind; I hope to draw more out of what is often glossed aside by people, in these words.
The concept of selfishness, the concept of other people caring… so it really doesn't matter in the end anyway. Get that through your head, and if you do it right maybe you'll get the balls to do it.
"having the balls to do it"—I don't agree that being scared or unable to commit suicide is a sign of "cowardice", but is rather a rational fear of the very real pain that suicide certainly involves.
It's not like what the doctor says before an injection, "this won't hurt", but much the contrary. "This does hurt."
Guilt and bodily pain can strongly afflict, easily at their most severe, during the act of suicide. I think it is a truth that ought be kept in mind. Is it better to say that it will be painless and have someone be shocked by pains untold? I say it would be better to be upfront, about what it really
can be.
Of course being 6 feet under and strongly regretting things can't be easily done simultaneously. But I call your mind to realize the space between that, the severe ramifications of
conscious experience that the act involves, and to recognize this exactly as it is, without caveat.
One can state death itself is a state of no conscious experience, therefore no pain. But one cannot be dead, without going through the entire process of dying. (And that is assuming it even goes without being botched; in such a complex system as the human body or brain, this is easier said than done.)
The process of dying is one that fully involves the conscious mind: it is all the pain that is associated unto death, without any of the reprieve associated unto death.
Because death mandates dying, the statement "death is painless" should be further inspected. I recognize differing interpretations of this statement.
0. "Death is painless".
1. "Death is a painless state."
2. "The experience of death (i.e. dying) is painless."
Painlessness is ironically also a conscious experience, in the same way that darkness is a visual experience even if it is not seeing anything. One cannot see nothing without seeing. As for definitions of painlessness, I would personally define it (you are free to differ) as not merely the absence of pain but absence of pain within conscious experience. I think painlessness and "raw nothing" are not the same thing, because if there is no body or mind to bear that painlessness, it's no different from describing death as absolute anhedonia or absolute depression: that is, it ascribes a conscious state and experience to an unconscious state, or rather, a non-state, a non-experience. Death is a state of not being, but if there is no thing, how could it be in any state at all? To be is a verb. How is one capable of being an agent that perform a verb if they are not present to perform the verb? It's like a baby's mother failing to show up to their birth. (À la Doofenschmirtz.)
I have spent much of this text deciphering more concrete definitions of the too-vaguely abstract original notion of "Death is painless", further exploring definition and philosophy behind the statement "Death is a painless state", and adding to the frame of reference "The experience of death (i.e. dying) is painless".
For the conscious agent, conscious experience is certainly an unforgoable concern. The severe unintended complications of dying, that include the very pains one is attempting to cure, unfortunately end up being not only part of but utterly intractable from the state of death. One cannot be dead without dying, and dying is a difficult, strenous, and painful thing indeed.
