There used to be a Chinese version of this letter, written quite some time ago back in April and much shorter, though it was never sent, as upon rereading I decided it was too emotionally charged with my personal misery and grudge about my friend’s premature death, which might not be doing you any justice. Then came trinity and finals thus for a long time the effort to rewrite a more deliberate version has been suspended.
Long story short, the main reason for my avoidance of any communication with you is I still cannot (and maybe would never be able to) come to terms with the decision regarding my last chance to spend some time with my late friend. The time when we were supposed to go to Thailand together for a week but in the end somehow reduced to a daytrip to HK was the last time I saw her. Obviously you would be familiar with how things had turned out this way - I went to visit you instead. I am pretty sure back then I initially wanted to keep my words of a Thailand trip and would at least spend a few days with my friend. It never happened. Partly because of your insistence that I should visit you and that the trip might not be a good idea, and partly because back then in a relationship I was disposed to prioritise the emotional need of a partner (which I now deeply regret, as in my failure to take better care of my close friend).
At this point you might or might not understand what I am trying to get across, so I will spell it out perhaps bluntly: certain past events and decisions related to you unfortunately got intermingled with certain regrets I would forever have about my late friend. Getting back in touch with you in any way would mean a constant reminder of the chance I missed of seeing my friend a bit more, which would in turn mean constant suffering.
It is very tempting to think of counterfactuals, ie if I had spend more time with my friend and go to Thailand with her instead of visiting you, she might have been in a better state of mental health, then it might have reduced the probability of the tragedy happening. Or it might not, but we will never know. I think it is outright irrational to say a Thailand trip and spending 6 more days with her would have prevented her suicide. But then it keeps returning to my mind, what if there is a maybe 1% chance of this chain of causality being true? Speaking of modality, philosophers like to use a certain tool called possible worlds to analyse things. I think it is fair to say in the possible world where I had chosen to go to Thailand with my friend instead, either she would come back in a better state and thus at least postpone the moment of her suicide, or the tragedy still happened but at least I have much less regret. Either way it is a better world for me, and I would rather exist in that world.
The decision of suicide is perhaps one of the most intriguing phenomenon in the study of causality - how do we know what has led to a person’s suicide? Of course underlying it is the depression and other mental illness, but then there is certainly a tipping point. It might have been something quite innocent at first glance, maybe a neighbour had made a certain callous comment; maybe a friend had ignore the person’s message; or it even might have been whether a phone rang at that moment. The lyrics of the Final Cut from pink floyd describes this well: ‘I held the blade in trembling hands / Prepared to make it, but / Just then the phone rang / I never had the nerve to make the final cut’. Would anyone (or any groups), except for the person committing suicide, be able to held responsible for the death at least to a certain extent?
If we are to investigate the whole chain of events like forensic scientists, certain friends and family of hers might have been culpable. But then in the actual case things get complicated as she has her own free will (or at least partially, limited by her mental illness). Regardless of all these discussion on possibility and causality, I very much voluntarily hold myself culpable for my negligence of her while making the decision.
I wrote all of these because I think I own you an explanation of how things happened, lest you grapple with an incomplete version of this story. Though I am not a practitioner of effective altruism, I do wish to reduce unnecessary sufferings, even if that means writing about an emotionally challenging event which I would very much want to avoid. Now you might have more information to tell yourself a better story. If you do have that story, please use it to reduce any potential suffering that you might still have. It would certainly be different from my story, and at this point I would rather not hear your story, but it’s a perfectly valid story too.
Forgive my bluntness here, but please do not mistaken these as my intention to get back in touch - I do not wish to do so, and please do not respond unless you have something absolutely necessary to say (otherwise it might bring me refreshed misery). If you want to learn about my current situation, it would be available in social media posts (though very sparingly). Take care and wish you a pleasant summer ahead.
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