Well, they're not so much committing suicide as choosing the way they die. They're going to die anyway, so they view it as preferable to die killing incarnations of absolute evil than just rotting away, or going crazy and murdering the people they care about.



Especially in a culture which handles shame the way Aiel do, having everything you believe in and take pride in ripped away from you can certainly be a traumatic blow. I can't relate to it myself, but at least there is some actual psychological damage being dealt, unlike 'that's just the way we do things in our culture.'



Here I think the exact opposite. That test is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Anybody with a half decent sense of responsibility should stay in that ter'angreal. Seriously, imagine that you're wife is in labour and you've got to drive her to the hospital. Suddenly you hear voices in your head that tell you to abandon them behind and go running into a bright glowing doorway that only you can see. You actually respect people who ditch their responsibilities to follow their own insanity more than those who realise what their priorities are?