Suicide, death, and the destruction of the world:

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Cat’s Cradle illustrates through Bokononism the idea that one’s concept of the world is limited to the experiences of the individual, and not based on a real-world objective reality. When Bokononists commit suicide, they say “Now I will destroy the whole world.” This refers to the fact that by committing suicide, the whole world from the perspective of one’s self is destroyed. In being born, one creates the world (insofar as the fact that despite the propaganda, we are all biased toward a self-centred world-view because of the problem of other minds). In suicide, one destroys the world.

I should note here, that I'm not talking about subjective idealism, but rather, an individualist frame of mind in which the universe's beginning and end relative to one's own experience is equal to birth and death.

As I have written in earlier works, suicide is an act, merely an event. There is intention, there is movement in it.

An alternative reading is that when one thing changes all things are changed in totality. This is a challenge to common conceptions of conservation of identity. For example, in death, one’s consciousness leaves this world, and the result is a changed and remade world. If one conceives of the universe as a unity, then the removal or addition of any part is a complete remaking; a complete destruction and reconstruction.

Every individual’s own birth and death is their own personal experience of world destruction and remaking. (Granted, if the Universe is an infinite unity, nothing can ever be truly added or removed from it, but that is not to say that its contents cannot be rearranged).

The universe is, of course, in a state of constant flux, and committing suicide is a conscious way of taking control of that constant change. It is exerting the will in such a way as to cause a remaking of the universe that is free of you. However, this is neglectful of one’s responsibility to remain in the world, and use the will to exact smaller changes than killing oneself. Using the will to remove one’s own will is counter-intuitive.

On Suicide as a transformative act, and on Suicide as a cowardly act:

Literature rarely represents suicide as an act of despair or defeat. While a character may feel despair and defeat before committing suicide, the narrative will often portray the act as one of meaninglessness or wastefulness, rather than a legitimate act. That said, death and especially suicide are always transformative events. Suicide in literature and art can be taken as symbol for self actualization, wherein self recognition and strength of will allow one to take a “great leap of faith,” as it were, achieving an unknown, ambiguous result.

Examples of creative media in which suicide is transformative: 

Donnie Darko, Persona 3, Fight Club, Cat’s Cradle

Sucide in creative media is a symbol of hope for a change of self or surroundings; an acknowledgement that the end of a life full of 'wrongness' is potentially the start of a new life. However, such themes belong in the realm of fiction. The symbol, metaphor, or allegory is simply demonstrative of a theme or moral. No real life is so wrong or backward that the transformative death used symbolically in literature and art is required. It is simply an extreme metaphor which encourages the death of a way of being that is not life, but living badly.

Hopelessness is a disease with one cure, and that is its opposite: hope. The transformative suicide is in effect the opposite of the cowardly suicide of this real life. It is not an escape from responsibility and hardship, but an embrace of the responsibility to escape the pull of societal norms through the death of bad living, and to effect changes through attitudinal shifts and revaluation.

Albert Camus depicted suicide as a rejection of freedom. The freedom afforded by this life is far more valuable than the escape afforded by real-life suicide. As Sartre said, those who have free will are burdened with the responsibility of it - but the ability to choose what one is responsible for (the consequences of our decisions) ought to make that responsibility a given, and hardly such an inconvenience as to warrant suicide.

Particularly in the faithless life, suicide squanders the chance that life provides. That said, suicide exemplifies a variety of wimpiness that borders on laziness. Plato described it as an act of sloth and unmanly cowardice.

Furthermore, the responsibility of free will correlates with the use of suicide as a symbol for self actualization. The metaphor represents suicide as a freely willed act of shedding mundane, worldly values, and one’s attachment to them. It shows a way beyond mass-illogic and ideology to an individualistic view; a relation between the creation and ascription of values and the responsibility to take part in that process, using free will.

A will that is bent or determined by a group or even just one other’s will is not free, and the acquiescence to such a force is a lazy, cowardly rejection of one’s own responsibility for self-determination.