eventually I should read the source material, but the maxims are a pretty great list of rules.

Well you are certainly priveleged enough to have never been at a point to consider it yourself. But speaking the way you do, frankly, is insensitive. Perhaps with something like this, it takes a person feeling it for themselves to understand.

While suicide is the most selfish act a person can do that harms way more people than just the person committing it, the suicidal person themselves does not see it that way. They may even rationalize it as a benefit to everyone else. (Just as a note, I am not talking about the 13 year old girls on TikTok that say they are depressed or whatever for attention, I am talking about genuinely depressed people that may make multiple suicide attempts, not for attention) They experience something so deeply negative that their thinking becomes warped to the point that suicide seems like the only logical way out of that situation. Its like putting blinders on a race horse; all other potential avenues of escape beside suicide get irrationally hand-waived away by their brain, almost automatically. As sure as you are of your own gender, or that you are a certain sexuality, or that 2+2=4, that is how certain a suicidal person becomes that suicide is the only "correct" answer to their problem. But to a person not effected by that thinking, such as yourself, there may be an incredibly "obvious" and even easy or simple answer that doesn't involve suicide. Unfortunately, a suicidal person will effectively dismiss it with the same level of dismissal that you would give when someone tells you that 2+2=5. You wouldn't even consider it for more than a moment. This is why talking to suicidal people is so incredibly volatile, and why even professionals trained to specifically help suicidal people struggle with it.

Its basically like a temporary (or for some very unfortunate people, permanent) mental illness. They may even acknowledge that they have a mental illness, but they almost cannot control themselves. It takes serious effort (and most of the time medication as well) to help someone break free of it. It is a very sad situation to see.

So again, while it absolutely is selfish, I can still understand that people would consider suicide. I don't agree with them, but I empathize with them. Not that I know how they feel, but I know how I felt, and I wish that they would not have to feel that.