I’m not sure what to write about Hunter S Thompson killing himself because he really didn’t have an impact on my life. I haven’t read anything he wrote and have only heard of him through others, who mostly thought he was a great man.
I don’t know why he decided to turn himself off, but it does bring up a point of note for me: suicide is a reasonable way out of a reality worse than death. I don’t believe that God will damn a soul for the act of suicide. The real sin is when people try to force someone to stay alive against his or her will.
Some lives are worthless from the beginning and some become degraded, miserable things as time erodes the good from them. Other lives are a miasma of pain and suffering and some lives turn unbearably boring. The people who live these lives own them and it is their right to choose when the candle should be snuffed. If we have free will, and it is a gift given by God as many in this society believe, then the right to die at the time and place of your own choosing is sacrosanct in my mind.
Hunter S. Thompson has moved onward to somewhere or nowhere and that was his right. Anyone who says otherwise can kiss my ass.
Update: I was watching CNN from my hotel room this morning and they were reading the letters from viewers. Some “Christian” wrote in and said that the only person who should have the power to end a life is God and I thought to myself – what about free will? The sheer arrogance of others in enforcing their own particular brand of “God’s will” leaves me enraged.