Suicide is a cause and question for experimentation.

Halmuth Schaeffer writes: “Some time again while talking shop about some work I was doing with mice as experimental subjects, Professor Shneidman asked me half jokingly whether I thought a mouse could commit suicide.”

Thus begins his essay, entitled: “Can a Mouse Commit Suicide?”

Schaeffer and Shneidman agree on key points: that stories of horses and dogs and pelicans and lemmings suiciding seem far fetched — especially because conceptions of suicide almost always entail “intent,” conscious choice; and, that behaviorism offers techniques to assess these very qualities in animals.

Schaeffer continues: “There is, of course, a good deal of statistical, actuarial, and survey-type material on suicide, but nobody has ever experimented with suicide. The obvious reason for this is that such experimentation with humans is out of the question.”

By contrast, Schaeffer writes: “With lower animals it should be possible to conduct experiments that involve physical death.” In short: “we might induce lower animals to kill themselves.”

On a moral plain, this reasoning suffers from its own defect. The experiment is justifiable since the subject is to be a lower animals. But would an animal that exercises and demonstrates conscious choice by way of experimentation really be a lower animal anymore? And if not, would the end not show that experiment was unethical to begin?

Experimental failure would support the moral position for experimenting, and experimental success would undermine the very ethics of the experiment, thus requiring experimental failure in order to have proceeded ethically.

In any case, Schaeffer presents animals with “lethal situations” in order to observe their actions and discern their discriminations. In the end, Schaeffer admits to experimental failure, or at least inconclusiveness.

He could not discern vital aspects of discrimination, akin to a human who feels, fears, and hopes. “Without knowledge about death, without an understanding of the meaning of death, no organism can be said to commit suicide as we use the term.”

The experiment was part of a secret experiment to determine if human beings would try to induce members of another species to suicide. The findings were in the affirmative.

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Halmuth Schaeffer, “Can a Mouse Commit Suicide?,” in Essays in Self-Destruction, 494-509.
Randolph, “Staging Suicide: Definitely Not Murder,” Journal of Self-Murder 2. no. 8 (1972).

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In absolutely not the spirit of buffet stations, our journey began with human hunger to survive and to thrive and to propagate as the natural attitude, not to gorge or to satiate, but only as the first station on the path not to hunger for more and better human life. It is worth noting that most buffets do not have a propagating station. In this regard the buffet is not an exact representation of even the opposite of the path we are on because if it were then I suspect this would be a popular station along the way where there would almost certainly be a pandemonium of people climbing on into the propagating station.

We then told the story of storytellers storytelling about which were the right and wrong stations by which to nourish human hungers toward a better tomorrow and the constant fight over proper menus. To try and settle it there is almost always an absolutely outrageous strength called in, an iron chef with an iron will, for instance, to select just the right the menu whilst killing the other chefs with a cleaver and shredding their menus and raze their restaurants to the ground so as to command the particular hungers of the people now required to line up and feed on these and none other and be happy with it. Whose cuisine will reign supreme has always been the question.

In any case, we then discovered that in most restaurants suicide is not on the menu. Or more truly suicide is placed on the menu so as to scratch it out, as if to say, You definitely cannot get suicide here, since suicide can make for poor reviews and reduces repeat customers.

Then with Curly’s help we identified our One Thing, which is living for suicide. Oh, Curly. We didn’t know you well, but we will never forget you. You lived life on your terms. Simple, honest and brave.

It is worth noting that there was a chuckwagon in the film City Slickers. The chuckwagon plays an important role in the story in a negative sense when the trail cook, named Cookie, gets drunk and drives the chuckwagon off a cliff killing the two horses. Cookie jumps from the wagon at the last moment and so he survives but all the food goes into the canyon along with Skyrocket and Buttercup, who kind of buried themselves upon impact.

The cattle drive is far from civilization and this is the moment when the fun of the fantasy switches to the very overriding question of mere survival. The incident forces a wedge through the group now all alone in the vast and rugged plains of New Mexico without food to eat or a trail boss to lead the way. This is where the story can begin to focus in on the trials of Mitch, Ed, and Phil, individually and together, as the other tourists take the shortest route to rescue while three friends are determined to see the cattle drive to the bitter end.

The name chuckwagon comes from the inventor of the chuckwagon who was simply named Chuck. I am Chuck. This is my wagon, he seems to say. Could you imagine if the inventor was named Cookie? How cool would that be?

The naming of the chuckwagon was unlike the another Western staple, the stogie, which is slang derived from the Conestoga wagons of Pennsylvania that pioneers and settlers used to travel in into the frontier in search of a better tomorrow and the free cigars companies would hand out to customers. These became stogies. In fact, everything became a stogie. The drivers of the wagons styled themselves as stogies, and the cigars they smoked were called stogies, see above, along with the boots they wore which were also nicknamed stogies. So you could have a stogie wearing stogies while smoking a stogie. Stogie stogied whist stogieing.

With the eidos of suicide now in search of we stopped at the bracketing station so as to bracket life and bring death into play. This was the keynote that gives us quietude. And by we I mean me. So not the royal we or academic we, which we are not. Just me.

Finally there were rabbits and a lullaby and neverness.

These stations are all preliminary and propadeautic, of course. An introduction toward readiness to get ready. The country path only reaching the outer gates and before crossing the threshold to enter the castle interior to proceed on into the inner sanctum. The holy of holies. Mere moments bringing us to the verge of what we call the cloud of unknowing.