You might assume you have known depression, but you would not speak such cruelties had you truly experienced the depths of sadness that a human being is capable of feeling.
This is the no true scottsman fallacy of mental health. Oh my god if only you knew how worse it can get.
Like you have no comparison, maybe what makes you despair and consider suicide won't make anyone else even budge. The same way you have no way of knowing if I see more or less intense green color, you cannot tell someone they haven't suffered enough.
They clearly did not suffer as much as Anthony Bourdain. This is not a no true Scotsman. It's an observation that OP doesn't know what they're talking about if they're describing suicide as the easy way out.
You do not know what someone else suffers, how can that not be clear to you. Some can suffer 10x what others can without considering suicide once. So no, they haven't "clearly" suffered less, Anthony could simply be a pussy, or the commenter be very brave.
Your confusion stems from the fact that you seem to measure suffering as an external factor.
Two people can have the same exact upbringing yet have vastly different internal experiences. Some people react to negative externalities or internal struggles differently than others.
I make no assumptions about what OP has been through; however it's pretty clear that they have not had Bourdain's experience, and as such clearly lack empathy.
That doesn't mean suffering automatically leads to empathy. But I entirely doubt that OP has experienced enough suffering to know what Bourdain has been through, in order to make such a callous remark.
> Some people react to negative externalities or internal struggles differently than others.
> But I entirely doubt that OP has experienced enough suffering to know what Bourdain has been through, in order to make such a callous remark.
I think these statements aren't consistent with each other. If you believe the first you wouldn't say what someone has or not gone through based on one single remark they made on the internet. They made the remark, yes, but they may very well have suffered way more. In fact more suffering may lead to less patience rather than more empathy when confronted with others' problems. Imagine a case of an innocent person who went to jail for 50 years hearing about an actual criminal caught in the act complaining about a night in jail for example.
The idea that suffering will somehow make you noble is quite awful. Depression isn't some kind of cleansing fire that opens you to empathy. It affects good people and assholes and people in every phase of life.
It doesn't have to make you noble, but there's a certain level of suffering experienced where you stop making comments such as that toward someone who's committed suicide.
He got kicked out of his religion for blasphemy. While he says “God” in a literal sense, his definition of such is certainly not in line with what most people consider to be God.
