It’s a protest strategy derived from false religious ideas that is close to guaranteed to fail. It’s an imperfect analogy but it’s essentially like a (reverse) suicide bomber. The only reason the idea exists is because of the silly idea of heaven/reincarnation.
I don’t think so. See hunger strikes that can lead to death.
that is likely too broad of an argument. those who self-immolate are in a different class from others who go on suicide missions, and those who commit suicide of despair. to the casual observer such protests and tactics may look similar and defeatist or ineffectual, but reality is more nuanced. many prisoners who went on hunger strikes did eventually prevail.
a recent comment by a political scientist brought up Stefan Zweig as a parable that even at your personal lowest point death is the only thing that ends political agency. the example doesn’t fit climate activism in general, but in some sense can be viewed as a similar outcome.
In general, hunger strikers don’t want to die. It happens but is not the intended outcome. The reason immolation and suicide bombing exist is because the actors believe in a life after death. There is no such thing as an atheist version of either.
I may be mistaken. Can you give an example?
thinking about this some more I guess the mass shooter/incel crowd is an example of an areligious version of this phenomena.
Although are those political actions? Seems a little different.
My understanding of Buddhism does not include an afterlife. There is no concept that the self or ego continues on.
I don’t think this thread is the best spot to address these questions but I feel I must push back on the idea that there is something similar between a suicide bomber and someone who self immolates. They aren’t the same at all.
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It’s a bit more complicated than that but basically yes. At least the sense of rebirth that Clovis is talking about is not a thing. Being reborn in Buddhism is not desirable, the whole point of practice is to escape the cycle of rebirth.
You are overstating the meaning of Anattā imo. It’s not as clear as you are claiming that the self is impermanent.
Either way, it doesn’t really change my point. Buddhist immolation exists because of the religious context. Without the religion it doesn’t exist.
That is demonstrably not true, as suzzer posted earlier, the Arab Spring revolts were set in motion by the self-immolaton of this guy:
Wikipedia describes his motives thusly:
His self-immolation was in response to the confiscation of his wares and the harassment and humiliation inflicted on him by a municipal official and her aides.
You can read more at the link, but it was entirely political and/or economic motives. The religious controversy was about whether his case merited an exception from the Islamic condemnation of suicide.
Edit: And the point is not merely that one guy self-immolated, it’s that this is clearly an effective agent of political change outside of religious doctrine. And people routinely make insane sacrifices, including of their lives, if they are convinced they are going to effect political change. And I would say that it is this, rather than any doctrine of karmic rebirth, which motivated this Wynn Bruce guy to do what he did.
I take issue with “routinely” and the implication that they must be certain they’ll make a difference
The self-burning of Vietnamese Buddhist monks in 1963 is somehow difficult for Western Christian conscience to understand. The press spoke then of suicide, but in the essence, it is not. It is not even a protest. What the monks said in the letters they left before burning themselves aimed only at alarming, at moving the hearts of the oppressors, and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured then by the Vietnamese. To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance.
https://ethicsofsuicide.lib.utah.edu/selections/thich-nhat-hahn/
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I don’t see why it’s either or? It can be political motivated but conceivable only due to the religious context. I’m simply pointing out that if one has a belief in the supernatural and an afterlife of some sort then political suicide makes more sense
This is the very reason all religion must have such a strong prohibition against suicide because if the afterlife is so awesome then the logical response to suffering in this life would be suicide.
Nah you said afterlife is necessary and there exist no exceptions
Basically you’re minimizing people’s own views of how important something is, by saying they have to believe a fairytale to do this. Extemely infantilizing. It’s probably because you think you view it as maximum importance, so they can’t believe it’s any more importanter, and therefore they must value their earthly life less than you do
I wonder how religious the Irish marxist republicans were who knew their hunger strikes would probably kill them
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If only I had made a post 2 minutes later providing a secular example. 
You know that not every discussion has to be a huge gotcha. We can have a civil discussion where we go back and fourth, (gasp) change or alter our position, and not always assume the absolute worst motives of the person on the other side of the discussion.
It should be kept in mind in this academic debate that AQ and people very close to AQ put their lives and health in very clear jeopardy to try effect political change.
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There is an obvious difference between putting yourself in danger and suicide. Nobody is minimizing protestors who put themselves in danger. Hell nobody is minimizing political suicide by pointing out the obvious religious context.
Glad to see you posting !
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To be clear though, I’m not really insulted by people declaring my actions irrational or anything like that. Although I am obsessively curious about their reasoning and logic for how they live their lives, and it’s as if I’m desperately searching for someone to prove me wrong that it doesn’t ultimately boil down to just a feeling if you keep asking “why” to each logical statement. So that I could have a logical reason to either change or keep going. But then people often are extemely insulted when I’m just trying to summarize their view without judgment, to see if I’m getting it.
Regardless, none of this today is about that. I just get annoyed when Clovis declares a universal exceptionless rule like he did, and pretends it’s coming from some supreme logical rather than his own feelings, in this case about religion and his value of his own life.