[Baypiggies] Suicide

[Seth Friedman]

Thank you for the sensitive comments.    I am sorry to hear about your
friend.

I've felt that in the mainstreaming of software as business, it has become
less humane of a field to work in.  It's too easy to ignore what this does
to people as individuals.   It is clearly not a zero negative effect.

Personally I have thought it high time to take a moment to think about ideas
like civility in work.   Basic ideas.   But ones that should not be lost.

Hopefully there are things like community, such as this one, that can temper
the seemingly increasingly harsh realities that exist.

~seth

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 10:17 PM, Shannon -jj Behrens <jjinux at gmail.com>wrote:

> My friend committed suicide. He was a brilliant programmer, and he had
> everything going for him. He was very successful.
>
> I'm crushed because I know I could have helped if only he had given me
> a chance. He never did.
>
> We in the programming world aren't always the most emotionally
> balanced. I know of three others who took their lives in the
> programming world. I've hinted at this before on my Bipolar Lisp
> Programmer post
> <http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2008/05/bipolar-lisp-programmer.html>. To
> compound matters, our society has been moving away from personal
> interaction and responsibility for decades, leading to a culture that
> is toxic.
>
> Mother Theresa said that the greatest poverty that she ever saw was to
> see people who felt unloved. If your friends are feeling unloved,
> please reach out to them. We are each far more loved than we think. In
> the programming world, it's so easy to get caught up in petty
> struggles, like Pylons vs. Django, Ruby vs. Python, free software vs.
> open source, Linux vs. pretty much everything else ;) What we forget
> is that we're all people with hopes and dreams, fears and
> insecurities. We're all trying to change the world, but as Mother
> Theresa said, "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do
> small things with great love."
>
> Look out for each other, but if you have no where to turn, contact me!
> Call me directly at (925) 209-6439. Don't consider the middle of the
> night an inconvenience. When else am I going to work with five kids
> around ;) I will do everything I can to help. I don't want to wake up
> on another day to find another brilliant mind missing from this great
> community of thinkers. We are a community and we are only as great as
> the individuals that thrive and share with one another in that
> community. Everyone contributes, whether in small ways or large, and
> every loss is felt by more people than we consider in our moments of
> darkness.
>
> -jj
>
> --
> http://jjinux.blogspot.com/
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