Unfortunately as you hint at - rage quitting does cause change. There are more people speaking out about this than before.
Similarly - the case of the Indian woman who was raped and killed. I dont know why that particular case became headline news, when there are thousands of similar cases are ignored. Hopefully some thing good will come out it, but it might be a misplaced hope- people forget quickly.
I think this post underestimates the challenge that depression poses for some people and overestimates the ability of large systems, MIT and DOJ specifically, to tailor their response to a human scale.
Depression is silent; often, though not always, hidden. The kind of thing where you think you have a handle on it and then you find you don’t. I’m always buoyed by stories of those who overcome these dark burdens but I’m more frequently unsurprised by those who don’t.
And I think it is a dangerous problem when large bureaucracies like MIT and DOJ take action without looking closely enough at the motives, objectives, and, yes, character of the individual they are moving against using laws and penalties often designed for completely different circumstances.
It’s a tragedy. I wish I had a better way of thinking about it. But I don’t see it as ragequitting.
Well said. I don’t agree with associating suicide to ragequitting, but I do agree with your assertions that Aaron could have had a stronger support system and met people that gave him more faith in humanity than he did. One just never knows what ended up going on in his mind… he mentions that the authors never seemed to live up to the books they wrote.
The reason for this is simple: those authors weren’t perfect and their words weren’t either. But you can keep trying and keep striving to approach it. Unlike habit and character, words on paper are easier to change. We should have done better for Aaron and I wish Aaron reached out to more people physically than just those whose works in code and prose he admired. Humanity is much more diverse than that.
Your closing words were great, so I made a poster for you:
https://twitter.com/QuipioApp/status/293505506927067136
Disclaimer: I am the founder of the above project.
Thank you for staying in the game. Should be lots of interesting things over the next 50+ years.
I like a lot of your articles, but this is an insensitive jab from someone who has never themselves been in a dark enough place to consider what you patronizingly call “ragequitting.”
In multiplayer games, ragequitting is a sign of immaturity. In life, suicide is a sign that someone has been dealt more pain than they can handle for longer than they could take it. From the outside, you might think he should have been able to handle it. But dealing with that much pain for that long changes you. It distorts your thinking. It’s like going through life with dark goggles on all the time, for so long that you forget what anything looks like without them on and they get merged into your face so you can’t take them off.
Instead of the Cracked.com article, I suggest looking at http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/ , which is a compassionate, understanding guide for those with suicidal impulses.
At this risk of ridicule, I will say suicide when not the result of mental illness but depression and hopelessness is very sad indeed. People try to offer various remedies, theories and views. But ultimately, I believe hopelessness is a result of the idols we follow. There is only one person who can offer hope and fulfillment. Only one person that can pluck you from the pits of despair and plant your feet on solid ground. And that is Jesus Christ. I implore you to read the Gospels and find the truth.
The truth will indeed set you free through Christ. Not technology or ragequitting or anything else.
Seriously consider this. If someone as successful as Jeff has contemplating or research suicide, what of lesser folks? In Christ you will find true glory.
WHAT? You have recently considered suicide? That is big, horrifying news to everyone here. Jeff, next time you are thinking these thoughts, tell the community about it, OK? Wouldn’t you agree that if Aaron had done so he’d probably be alive today - that the outpouring of concern for him probably would have been enough to get him through the crisis? It’s true for you too. You are cared about and people rely on you. Stick with us please.
Aaron Swartz lived the life of a Cambridge hacker and fought for higher abstract causes like freedom of information. MLK was a black preacher living in a society doing everything within its power to marginalize and exclude blacks at any cost, including torture and murder.
MLK, like all blacks in the South at that time, had to confront the reality of domestic terrorism, and understood the price of standing up to it. Aaron could not, and ought not, have imagined that PDF downloading would come at the cost that it did.
Even if there is some analogy here, the extrapolation from Swartz to MKL is so massive that it is absurd. I find any comparison between the two to be very troubling. The stakes were so utterly different.
Comparisons between suicide and ragequitting also feel very out of scale.
Suicide is not rage-quitting.
True clinical depression can not be solved by willpower.
Suicide is the horrible end result of a terrible illness. I can only speak from my own experience, but I cannot help but think that he would not want any guilt to come to anyone from this.
Oh, and by the way… “I say this not as a person who wishes to judge Aaron Swartz.” Maybe you should re-read what you wrote.
He ragequit? You think?
"And I am convinced, absolutely and utterly convinced, that Aaron would have prevailed."
In a FAIR/JUST System that could be the case. In ROTTEN and CORRUPTED System that is NOT true by far.
I am sure Aaron saw it exactly like that.
as the saying goes … at the end we do not regret the things we did and failed, but the things we never did.
A thought-provoking piece. Assuming for a moment that I am reading correctly, I applaud the courage to state that you considered suicide, and rejected it. However, I would add my reiteration to those who have already stated it - true depression is a clinical brain-chemical-related condition. It is not ‘having a bad day’. It is not something that ‘just gets better with willpower’. It requires at least medical consultation, if not treatment, to correct the imbalance. Seek help.
In the more general case, I am always in two minds about such articles & events, as it highlights that we (whichever community ‘we’ represents) trumpet about given incidents as though they are unusual. Most often, these events highlight endemic or systemic problems; they are not aberrations per se. They happen all the time quietly to other less visible people, in whatever country they happen to live in that has the problem being highlighted.
In that regard I wish the US luck, as it’s not really something the rest of us external to the US can assist with, other than moral support.
I think there’s a healthy balance in our lives where we ask ‘Should I really be doing this? Is this healthy for me?’. Sometimes the answer is no; that’s not rage-quitting. Rage-quitting is typified by an immediate angry response, not a considered decision.
You can’t fight your own mind, you are your own mind. It’s like a machine trying to fix itself. Depression leads to self-destructive behavior, including the irrational wish to be alone with terrible thoughts, which continue until you get exhausted enough to sleep, snap out of it, or …
Jeff, rationally speaking I agree 100%.
The problem with depression is it makes your brain to work beyond any rational logic. Including personal rational logic with which you operate when not in crisis. It’s chemistry fighting against your power to think.
So, irrationality can win here.
The last thing people with major depression ever want to hear is “Just cheer up/Just snap out of it and keep going” (like they never thought of it), “Just act like you’re all right and it will make you be all right,” or “You have so much to be thankful for” and stuff like that. It only piles on the shame and contributes even more to self-loathing. That’s why those kinds of things are among the most hurtful things you can say to those people. (Actually, I’ve had much worse thrown at me but that’s not helpful, especially when blood pressure is already so high.)
So, did the prosecution affect him negatively and contribute: Definitely. Is it the sole, or even the primary reason for his suicide: Absolutely not.
Prosecution or not, it was a horrible, unfair, excruciating, painful thing he was experiencing. And we’ll never know what actually tipped the scales in the end, but it doesn’t matter because it could have been the most insignificant things just at the wrong moment (or, it could have been after days of trying to NOT think about the case - I don’t know).
One thing I will agree on is that if there’s the potential for any good to come from this, whether it’s helping maintain or expand on-line rights, finding better ways of treating (handling and medically) mentally-ill defendants, more of us being proactive when this kind of malicious prosecution happens to a noname.usr we’ve never heard of – or something I can’t even comprehend right now – then it won’t have been in vain.
People should not have to make a choice between public disclosure and disclosure to the company when they uncover negligent security flaws.
If you really want to participate in activism, maybe Andrew’s case will be of interest:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/21/ipad-hack-statement-of-responsibility/
How direspectful and condescending article.
NOBODY IS READY TO HAVE ITS FREEDOM TAKEN FROM HIM FOR RIGHTFUL ACTIONS.
Do you think he was seriously considering having his life broken (30 years in jail) when trying to make public data financed by public money ? That was completely disproportionate and that’s all the issue.
“But do not, under any circumstances, give anyone the satisfaction of seeing you ragequit.”
LOL just say that to the people executed and emprisonned until death for non crimes. “Guys, you have to stay alive until your jailer decides to kill you”.
That happens all around the world, and that was what Aaron was facing.