An amazing quote from the the lovely voodoolulu:
"I spoke with a friend yesterday who happens to be an expert on suicide. He is writing a book on suicide. He confirmed something I had read years ago: the suicide rate is higher than the homicide rate in the US. Which means statistically you have a greater chance of killing yourself than of being killed by someone. "
I just read Notes from the Underground and have been thinking about suicide a lot. (not that anyone kills themselves in that book). But, my big realization is that I think people need to be given a reason to live or they will simply self destruct. Which makes sense from a social-darwinian perspective.
It seems like there are two types of suicide: revenge / reactionary suicide (like when your wife cheats and you write your last words on the wall in blood, or set yourself on fire outside the white house) and hopeless suicide. The latter *always* say "I have no reason to live." Far from Freud's Death Drive, I think humans will automatically kill themselves unless they are given explicit reasons not to. Reasons can be things we all take for granted, like the responsibility of going to work at Burger King every day, the knowledge that your mother would never be able to handle it, or giving life by watering your houseplants. I’ve never read it, but I would imagine that people without strong social bonds tend to kill themselves more often. I've also heard that people with cancer recover far better if they feel they have responsibilities to attend to.
Without a purpose, we jump off cliffs like we used to think lemmings did. Full body apoptosis. More self destruction that self sacrifice I guess, but still, weak links take care of themselves. Of course, someone could easily use the "not everyone" retort, but I think this theory covers a large enough percentage of the population to be significant.
In general (beware the tangent) I think responsibilities are a savior. The amount of choice in the life of the average american white girl can be suffocating and immobilizing. The social mobility of democracy and capitalism encourage us to find our purpose through profitable vocation, which, even if one succeeds, is rather superficial and trite compared to harvesting or sewing.
Sometimes it seems like life would be so much easier if I knew I was a coal miner’s daughter and knew I could count on spending my life in the dark and dying of black lung. Trying to figure out your purpose in life is a huge burden. (I know, you’re crying for me at this very moment). But it seems from here that in the past, one could just work as hard as they could on the path they were put on. Now we choose the path and spend so much time switching to other paths and wondering if we made the right decision.
We are taught to quest for power in this society. Climb up. That is what you should want, to succeed. But success is also such a burden. It's fucking hard work to tell someone else what to do! (I avoid it at all costs).
I'll never forget this dominatrix I met at Berkeley in 1999. She said that the vast majority of her clientele were all those guys who made massive fortunes when they were 25 in Silicon Valley before the bubble burst. Those men wanted to be dominated, treated like babies, chained to the wall, to *relieve* themselves of the burden of power, let her take it for a while.
Other societies, some Native American among them, feel that those who want power are the least deserving and trustworthy people to put in power. They look at power itself as an undesirable responsibility. Higher ups have to take on those positions because they would be best for it, not because they want to.
This has tons of implications for democracy. Rather than some slick guy sauntering in and wooing populations, trying to convince them he is going to vote for their interests so they should vote for him, the system should be designed so that communities pick members from within them, and tell that person what to say to speak for them directly. This, of course, is not my thought but has been written in the past. I don’t remember how that relates to suicide…But I think we need to work on making lives real again. I’m not even going to put quotes around the word real. Fie postmodernism!
The end.
Posted by bluprnt at July 17, 2004 12:04 AM