I actually hate the words of this picture - and I think it's cruel. Indeed, I think the words should read instead:

If you are brave enough to suicide, are you brave enough to reach out? Because there is someone out there that needs you as much as you need them. Be brave you are needed.

We are taught from a young age to be distrustful of strangers and sometimes those who are closest to us can be selfish and the last person/people we'd like to reach out to. Reaching out and trust requires vulnerability. There is reason to be cautious about disclosing our vulnerability because people may take advantage of it, but they may not. Most people aren't sociopaths, although we do know they exist, but they are more likely to be CEOs rather than janitors and are no more than about 4% of the population. So we have to be brave enough to overcome those fears. This is a big problem because TV is constantly telling us about people being murdered by neighbors, friends and family all the time and this is not true. Child abduction is down and murder rates are down in general.

All of us feel lonely to some degree, we all need friends, we all need help, we all need to be useful, feel like we are contributing, we all need each other.

But there are different reasons for suicide, no one should blame someone living with a terminal disease for ending the pain.

"The only thing we've found to make the emptiness bearable is each other."

People trying to end it all, suddenly realize when they are jumping off the golden gate bridge that all that seemed unfixable could be fixed if only they hadn't jumped.

We all do need each other and TV teaches us not to trust anyone but we must make the effort to reach out to others who are alone and hurting whether it is simply to help elderly people with their garden or kids with their homework. Our brains are hardwired to search for human faces.

You're not alone and you are needed.

Libertarians like to pretend there is a gun at my head forcing me not to kill my neighbor. As much as I can't abide my christian neighbors, I really, honestly don't feel any desire to kill them. And my other neighbors, I am very happy are alive and my friends.

Yes the law states it is illegal to kill people and as much as I contemplate killing anyone, I know I will not and not because the government says I should not, but because I know it is what I would prefer not being done unto me - my bottom line of self-interest.

While I am white, middle class, living in a nice neighborhood where there may or may not be guns, I like not having to worry when I walk down the street that someone may randomly decide to shoot me.

In my, not so unique, part of the world, people are rich enough to, I hope, think kind of like me. Nevertheless murders still happen despite the proverbial gun of the state at their head. People are killing each other despite the government saying it is illegal. The benefit I hope is if the government is saying it is illegal to kill, it will make people think twice before killing me, breaking into my home, killing my husband and ruining my seemingly idyllic life.

I honestly don't feel coerced not to kill anyone, despite what the libertarians say. They say they'd prefer if i just decided not to kill anyone. Well I decided not to kill anyone already, but under extreme circumstances I can imagine being driven to the point of killing but only if it was to save one of the people I love, myself or someone I considered non-complicit in a life or death situation. I would also kill to defend my country or tribe, perhaps, if such a situation presented itself.

Recently a libertarian said she thought it was barbaric parents weren't allowed to circumcise sons in Germany. Personally, I have read that the country with the lowest incidence of cervix cancer was Israel thus lending support to the idea that male circumcision was a good thing. However, given Europe is beset by Muslims all wanting to perform genital mutilation on daughters, I can see why they ban male circumcision in an attempt to halt the slippery slope of perceived child abuse.

Yes I would put a gun at the head of anyone wanting to perform female genital mutilation on their daughters or "honor killings".

You may say I am being coerced into not killing someone, but I would prefer people think twice before killing me or a loved one or abusing their daughters or breaking into my home.

And no I don't think not putting a proverbial gun to their head to stop them doing it is a total deterrent. There will always be outliers in any system. We hardly know what makes people serial killers, why put people on an honor system when the current system doesn't fully stop people? You may say I am being coerced, but honestly, I don't feel the states gun at my head forcing me not to do those things that are illegal in our society because, yes I admit, I do sometimes get away with parking illegally.

FEMA was hardly at its best under the rein of W, the torturer.

I used to work at a military research institute and I cannot disclose what I did there or which one. Suffice to say I learned a hell of a lot about safety, amongst other things. One chemical I learned about was used to dissolve metals. If you get this on your skin you have an extremely limited time to get this off before it works its way in and starts dissolving your bones leading to an unavoidable and horrific death.

In libertarian world, if a disaster occurs, everyone pitches in and helps survivors. Not on your fucking life. Did anyone notice how those who rushed in to help with the collapse of the world trade center on 9/11 got no help? In Libertarian world you would be helped, I suppose, not sure who by, because all these details are mysteriously unclear. But lets say San Jose, the so-called capital of silicon valley, was leveled by earthquake, would i pitch in to help survivors? Gravely depends.

Peoples homes are full of all kinds of chemicals. Even smoke detectors are radioactive, while I can't remember what kind of emitters are used in smoke detectors, if it was crushed, I definitely wouldn't want its dust lodged in my lungs. I'm not sure how CO detectors work, but even assuming CO detectors are relatively safe, I cannot say for certain. I am not an average engineer (although kindly called so by electrical & electronic engineers), I wouldn't be able to run my eyes over a structure and determine how safe it would be to move this or that, to get pinned bodies out and perhaps I have a better eye at such things than the average, i wouldn't trust it.

As for a headquarters for R&D in Silicon Valley, not on your life. Anyone building proto-test chips, is also dissolving metals and dissolving metals is at least an acid even if its not the horror chemical I described above. The chemicals they use are none the less super dangerous, but building chips is all about dissolving metals.

If I was building a private FEMA it would work with local fire agencies to know what buildings contain what chemicals. Yes average personnel could learn what all the chemical symbols mean but without the appropriate equipment that's next to useless.

FEMA, like CDC, can access information on chemicals in use, experts on rotation, equipment and procedures. Wanna leave that to a bunch of amateurs who may or may not be sober when an emergency occurs? Even if civilians are given adequate training, who are they answerable to? Can they coordinate with military or co-operate with R&D centers?

So where do you concentrate your super skilled task force if you are FEMA? Obviously you would distribute FEMA resources but control it centrally. Deploy it when an emergency occurs but most of the time emergencies aren't occurring, fortunately. Who pays for those resources to be deployed? If this was a private organization, who would be paying for these people to be on call? Who organizes a roster? Who is paid to organize where resources are?

We try to prepare by having a (government paid for) weather bureau trying to predict when a tornado might rip through a town in the mid-west, we try to prepare by (having government paid for entities) predicting when an earthquake will hit on the west coast and we monitor for hurricanes and volcanoes (also paid for by the government). But in reality we don't know when a twister is going to wreak havoc or an earthquake.

Do we want Joe Blow having information about chemicals if he is a citizens' FEMA? Who knows, he may be a Timothy McVeigh. Libertarians will probably say they'd put in all those safe guards that will end up being exactly like the system we have in place already. So what have we gained in libertarian paradise? Absolutely nothing.

If a private organization does it, who is going to pay extra for all the profit they have to make on top of what it'll cost citizens to have the service? The same security authorizing NIST, CIA, FBI, NSA, Military clearances will be able to organize FEMA and CDC clearances. For a private organization, a separate service would have to be created to give security clearances and who knows, it may end up not being as good as the govt service, except it'll cost the tax payer more because the private enterprise will have to make a profit.

Libertarians are so naive.

Some people believe the panacea to solving the worlds problems is community and somehow community will save us.

Community, my ass.

In this site there is a video of a community burning someone alive because they are gay or witches or some such. These kinds of videos are equally prevalent whether its gays or witches being burned alive on the internet & all horrific for 'crimes' that the community had decided to shun. Most civilized 'big government' societies would neither shun homosexuals or witches, and the punishment of burning someone alive would be considered a totally barbaric and repellent murder, whereas the crime not so much. While I am the first to say indigenous communities have been the utterly corrupted by the impact of western  societies, the people burning people alive are indigenous communities, without big government and the closest to living in indigenous societies.

People who bemoan the loss of community are the first to shun their friends, and yet first to embrace 'enemies' as a testament of their even handedness. No doubt amusing to enemies and definitely bemusing to friends.

While those friends who are shut out of communities feel despondent at first, are often quick to breath a sigh of relief from the burdens of the horrors of the community.

But of course, community can be a blessing. It gives us access to peoples influence, perhaps. Using the influence of friends in Jane Austen's society was necessary if one wanted to advance either in the armed forced or in society. However it was deemed unfair. Those with genuine merit were passed over for those with no particular merit because they were well connected.

Yet while I have been part of a community, the request for help has been hinted at but not really forthcoming. Community can be the cement that stops us going insane, but it can be the glue that forces us into insanity because we are taught by small towns that we have to belong, and having to belong, in turn, forces us into miserable holes we don't really fit into in a desperate need to belong.

We all want to belong, but when our friends overstep their boundaries, what do we do? When they don't respect our need for privacy, or our need for space and turn around and shun/or belittle overtures of friendship? Removing ourselves from their community seems little short of paradise, and thankfully, big government society permits us to remove ourselves from the families/towns/countries whence we originated.

Community may work well in certain circumstances, but it is definitely no panacea. There is definitely a dark side to community, especially when dominant personalities decide to shun certain individuals or those with particular characteristics. Most do not want to be shunned by the community and go along with the community's mainstream thought, even fitting into holes they don't fit into, just so they belong. Community can be the death trap of living down to expectations that we are all too eager to escape from.

One of the greatest accomplishments of big government is that it can control the community, the vagaries of fitting into a society directed by the vagaries of strong personality or some male chosen merely by physical strength and their whims of what may or may not be acceptable, such as with the burning of gays or witches. Thank God for Big Government.

Big government doesn't stop communities from forming. And perhaps our best way of wrestling government back from the corporations is the formation of community.