Re: Emotional Plague
Gil Hardwick (gil@landmark.iinet.net.au)
Sat, 06 May 1995 02:48:38 GMT
In article <3nug4v$5sc@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>, Lane Singer (lsd@ix.netcom.com) writes:
>a) People are suicidal due to severe emotional pain, usually caused
>by serious depression.
>
>b) They don't "attempt" suicide to get attention, but rather to escape
>the pain that they feel they can't end any other way.
>
>c) More women attempt to commit suicide than men because women suffer
>from depression at a much higher rate than men. The reasons for this
>are all conjectural, at this point.
>
>d) Men succeed at suicide at a higher rate because they usually use
>a gun, which is the most effective technique. Women are less likely
>to possess guns, and use much less effective techniques, primarily
>overdoses, occasionally wrist slashing.
I grant that this pattern is so for Westerners, since it is consistent
with the pattern here in Australia within that particular group. Other
groups show quite different patterns, however.
Aboriginal people, so grievously impoverished and dispossessed (cf the
comfortable Western affluence) have exhibited a remarkable tendency to
survive. Those who do "commit suicide" while in police custody do so
quite suddenly and without warning.
They decide apparently that it is just not worth putting up with any
more shit from whitey, and simply let go. Traditional people who had
the bone pointed at them similarly gave up their ghost in short order.
The two societies are fundamentally different. The former chases after
material wealth and remains indifferent to human emotion, while the
latter places social identity and kin-group integrity above all else.
I suspect that exploring that continuum will allow us to get a grip
on why so many people want to opt out of Western society. I suspect
that "suicide" is the tip of an iceberg of complex and exceedingly
variable patterns of individual reaction to the society they live in.
Maybe have a good look at the system itself. So very many people, of
whom those who finally decide to suicide represent a small percentage
indeed, don't insist that the system SUX merely to make a nuisance of
themselves.
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