Suicide goes berserk unto itself.

The Hakagure cites Lord Naoshige, who says: “The Way of the Samurai is in desperateness. Ten men or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate.”

This ferocity and commitment applies to combat: “If you are slain in battle, you should resolve to have your corpse facing your enemy.”

It also applies to suicide: “It is sufficient to become a fanatic and to throw one’s life away. At such a time, if one thinks about doing things well, confusion will soon arise and he will blunder.”[1]

Yukio Mishima concurs. He writes: “the samurai ethic is a political science of the heart.” It is also a “mania for death,” an “anti-intellectualism,” and a “philosophy of extremism.”[2]

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[1] Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai.
[2] Mishima, The Way of the Samurai.

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Of course what suicide is is not always the main story within a story on rectifying the human condition. More often what suicide is receives attention or even mere mention as one among many problems of the human condition needing confronting according to the story. The real power of the recognition and treatment of suicide by these storytellers is how suicide is conceived and judged within the borders of stories on a better tomorrow by way of the authority and influence of the storyteller — as philosopher or theologian or physician or scientist or sociologist — who transmits to others what suicide is so that suicide as a constellation of themes and ideas proliferates and reverberates and gains resonance in being adopted and inserted into other stories on more and better human life to be reenforced and ultimately seared in hearts and minds, individual and society, society and species by overlapping brandings. This is how Suicide BINGO is made possible. And of course not all stories of the kind play a full card of Suicide BINGO. Some stories simply call out a single letternumber from one ping pong ball’s-worth of play for others to daub a card. The virtue of playing Suicide BINGO is that stories of what suicide is interweave stories of what suicide is into a woven story of suicide and in some way the real power of what suicide is is in the mixing of irreducible ideas of suicide to become alloys much stronger and more enduring than their elements. This is how you play the game of Suicide BINGO.