I wonder who downvoted this. It is statistically true and anecdotally, it is easier to keep relationship cool when you are not in constant stress from lack of money or hungry or simply can leave job if they treat you badly in this one.
It's not really surprising that middle-aged men who have been raked over the coals in a divorce and left with a hole they'll never get out of, would opt for an end to the pain.
Agreed. Divorce is one of the most financially devastating events that can happen in one’s life. The longer I’m alive, the longer I recommend to people to never get married. Live together, but keep your finances separate (does not apply in community property states; watch out!).
Prenuptial agreements are a thing. Though there's probably some sound thinking behind the point of view that if you aren't willing to get married without a prenup, then you really shouldn't be getting married.
Or you can marry someone who doesn't consider divorce an option, for example a devout Catholic. Of course that assumes they will stick to their beliefs in the face of temptation, and observably many do not.
I doubt I will be able to recover from mine. I'm paying $1700 per month in child support for two kids, even though I have custody of them 45% of the time. I have Smith-Ostler riders to collect 12% from any bonus, stock option sales, RSUs, etc. I basically have to restart from scratch on my 401k, as that was used to pay off the divorce costs and equalizations. I finished paying off spousal support, which was another $1800 per month, but now I am so far in the hole that I doubt I will ever dig out. It's been over two years since the divorce, but I am still struggling just to make my mortgage every month.
I don't know if people on HN (who I assume a majority of are high earners) realize just how much money you can be on the hook for if you have a motivated ex-spouse with an attorney. My ex was a stay-at-home mom with a side business as a photographer. Good luck getting a fair shake in court when you get a W-2 salary, and the other party runs their own business.
The suicidal feelings are generally temporary. Only 10-15% of people who unsuccessfully attempt suicide try again successfully. The linked study shows a high percentage of causes that are temporary like relationship trouble or crises within a one-month window.
And that may be a useful perspective in many instances, but it doesn't tell the real story.
Those feelings are certainly not temporary for those who are successful and are also unlikely to be temporary for the people left in the wake of a successful attempt. My best friend killed himself in the 5th grade, then another very, very close friend in the 8th. I've known 3 other people who I would call a friend who have killed themselves. I'm 37 years old and I still think of these people. I don't dwell, but I certainly do remember these events and their supposed causes clearly.
This seems far too dismissive--almost like a variant form of "just cheer up".
"Relationship trouble" includes mental agony that can drag out over many years. And the fact that many do not make serious attempts doesn't tell us much about those that will make them.
Like many others, I've lived this. The worst is over, and currently I'm merely deep in debt, without material possessions, and signing over my entire paycheck as alimony (yes, all of it). Although my life is currently worth living, knowing what I now know, it would have been better to have simply opted out, rather than go through the years of hell. And that's an awful thing to be able to say.
Each situation is its own, but in general, in the USA marriage is a poor choice for men. If your ex turns evil or crazy, there will be no warning and no mercy.
Whites are the only racial group that you are allowed to openly hate and make disparaging jokes and comments about in polite company.
Whites are even gaslit into not believing that such a group even exists ("whiteness is a social construct"). Imagine if they same were done to any other group.
I don't have time to follow the links and dig into the data quality but a recent SSC post[0] claims "Blacks and Hispanics have only about half the suicide rate of whites", which seems pretty strong to be accounted for by average age differences.
If true, that is interesting. My observation posted elsewhere here is that it seems to me that higher suicide states seem to be more Republican party states. Not a perfect correlation, but comparing the two maps seems to indicate more than a casual relationship.
The map absolutely does not make that clear. It could equally be the case that minorities are dying by suicide more in communities where they are totally engulfed by white folks (or folks of any other characteristic that matches the map distribution).
Too bad they were forced there at gunpoint and not allowed to leave... when will white people learn to stop forcing people into their country, then when they ask to leave, building a wall to keep them in.
You're kidding, right? Many people were forced into the US, and not allowed to leave. The descendants of those people are natural-born citizens. It's their country too.
Their ancestors were forced here, but their ancestors are not the ones "engulfed by white folks" which is what the original comment claimed.
Now, their descendants may feel like they're being persecuted, because they hear that they are from people who have no apparent reason to lie to them. And they may in fact be killing themselves over it.
Nobody here now who writes things like "engulfed by white folks" has any knowledge of or claim to any of the events you mentioned. Nobody was forced into the country, nobody is forced to stay here. Nobody is forced to be around white people.
And specifically (and overwhelmingly) males. My own experience would point anecdotally toward it as well, as the four people whom I knew personally who died by suicide were white male Americans.
Whether or not it's obvious in the map, it seems to be true.
> By race/ethnicity, non-Hispanic whites and American Indian/Alaska Natives had the highest rates of suicide, with rates for both groups showing notable increases across periods [1999-2007, 2008-2015] (from 14.9 to 18.1 and from 15.8 to 20.0, respectively). Rates among non-Hispanic blacks and Asian/Pacific Islanders and among Hispanics were much lower, and showed comparatively modest increases across periods.
I don't think you can infer that from a map, but my recollection is that I have read exactly that. Older white men were also the ones who, in the aggregate, took the biggest hit to their careers and incomes in the recent recession. The recovery has seen a lot of hiring, but wages are "sluggish." Given that men often literally can't even get laid if their income is too low, I can well see that taking its toll on someone and them deciding to just throw in the towel.
It is harder to be a white man today than it was for my father's generation.
There is now almost as much institutional hatred directed our way as there is for... no, that's overstating. There is definitely a lot of institutional hatred directed our way, but it still doesn't come anywhere close to the level of institutional hatred directed at literally every group other than white men.
The gap between white men and everyone is shrinking, but it's still there.
The gap closes, but it closes both ways. Minority groups climb incrementally up the ladder of political and cultural relevance by tearing down the power structures which have implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) served to benefit the white majority, and some white people feel persecuted as their identity with that majority privilege and the assumption of their point of view being the cultural default diminishes.
It sucks to be ostracized, to be tarred with inaccurate stereotypes based on your gender and race, and to have political and social barriers put in place to hold you back on the basis that you are somehow wrong because of the circumstances of your birth, the color of your skin or the configuration of your genitals?
Yes. Yes, it does, doesn't it?
However... no one is lynching white people from trees, holding picnics for it and selling photos of it in drugstores. That is what "institutional hatred" looks like and nothing even close to it is happening to white people, or likely would be tolerated in modern society. What they're getting is the kid-gloves introduction to relative minority membership status.
I used the phrase "institutional hatred" to mirror the comment to which I was replying, but indeed, what GP perceived does not, in my opinion, even really resemble institutional hatred.
"Suicide decedents without known mental health conditions (11,039; 54.0%) were compared with those with known mental health conditions (9,407; 46.0%) for 27 states. Whereas decedents were predominantly male (76.8%) (Table 1) and non-Hispanic white (83.6%), those without known mental health conditions, relative to those with mental health conditions, were more likely to be male (83.6% versus 68.8%; odds ratio [OR] = 2.3, 95% CI = 2.2–2.5) and belong to a racial/ethnic minority (OR range = 1.2–2.0)."
I agree. Increasing the visibility of help and reducing the friction to get that help is part of reducing the stigma around mental illness, depression, and suicide.
Sure, it's awkward to offer a phone number to a stranger or even a friend in crisis, but imagine how things could be if that wasn't the case.
"Hey kid: did you know that your very being is offensive and actually downright violent towards me and there is nothing you can do about it because it literally has to do with a fundamental aspect of who you are."
Basically one kid (eg, the "bully") says to another kid (eg, the "victim") that the victim's mere existence is deeply offensive to the bully. Hope that helps.
Still missing context. Are schoolyard bullies actually doing this to other kids? Or are you talking about something else? Can you speak plainly and not use analogies?
You've really never experienced being told that unless you are a minority (ideally an oppressed one) or a victim, or at the very least, you have some non-typical sexual identity, you are worthless?
You have not noticed people making up sexual identities that they don't really have? Or inventing (or inflating) victim stories about themself?
I've basically never seen the former. I do see 100X as much ranting against it though. It's hard to feel oppressed when you fit into all the majority categories.
As for people "making up" aspects of their identity ... so? Who fucking cares? It doesn't affect me at all, let alone make me more prone to committing suicide!!!
You missed the point. Correct, who cares. But why are they driven to do it? It's because otherwise they are not valued. (If you have another theory let's hear it.)
> I've basically never seen the former. I do see 100X as much ranting against it though.
You don't spend enough time on college campuses, and you especially don't spend enough time listening to liberal student yell and scream if someone conservative dares to talk.
Or maybe you spend just the right amount of time LOL. Ignoring those kind of liberals probably helps one's sanity.
25% of transgender students were physically attacked for being transgender. One in six left school because of mistreatment and one in twelve were kicked out of the house. Jumping from those facts to the conclusion that they are just doing it to feel "valued" is bizarre. You might just as well say they're in it for the money, since they are three times more likely to be unemployed and twice as likely to be in poverty. https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS...
So, in this analogy, white people are the victims, and minorities are the bullies?
I guess if you strip all historical context out of the racial issues, ignore current inequalities, and just focus on what people on Tumblr are saying, I guess you could come to that conclusion, but you have to intentionally avoid a lot of stuff to reach that
I don't think it's possible to deny it at this point; you'd have to be blind not to see the hatred directed towards white people. This behavior is both encouraged and protected by the culture & institutions running the western world at the moment. The opposite is cracked down upon swiftly.
I feel like this comment is coming from some parallel bizarro world. We have an openly racist president and majority party and yet somehow it's the whites who are suffering?
Those two things are not mutually exclusive. This is especially the case when you consider that, for example, government is currently controlled by conservatives but popular culture is controlled by progressives. Similar situations exist for the deep south versus the coast, churches versus software companies, gun culture versus hip hop culture, etc. Therefore, depending on their circumstances both a minority progressive and a white conservative can be suffering.
Both sides complain about this. Its hard to say what the original poster is really saying.
I've got a liberal gay friend who was ostracized by his family after a failure to complete gay-conversion therapy for example. He managed to live fine once he ran away from home, got married in Canada to his now husband, and seems to be happily married for the past few years.
On the other hand, there are right-wing friends who also claim that they're being bullied online. I don't think I've heard of any horror stories that compare to the trauma of gay conversion therapy however. Still, there's a level of trolling that can be psychologically damaging, so I can understand that issue.
To be clear: I'm against bullying of any kind. But often times, its important to know the viewpoint of the complainer. I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about casual internet trolling, not without breaking the 1st Amendment anyway. But there's definitely something we can do about gay conversion therapy for example.
I would personally be for increasing penalties on "obvious" internet troll moves: Swatting, online harassment, revenge porn, etc. etc. There's relatively little legal recourse against these acts of trolling right now. And sure, its technically chipping away at 1st Amendment / free speech issues, but I do think that cleaning up the internet a bit and reducing bullying online will probably help someone.
Unless there is an /increase/ in how much people are being told something analogous/similar to that, I'm not sure how that would explain an /increase/ in the rate.
Is there a reason you would expect the harm from things of that sort to have increased as of late?
Ah, I probably misinterpreted the group they were talking about.
Most of the time I hear people claim that someone else objects to someone's "existence", the person is claiming that people are objecting to the "existence" of homosexual or bisexual or transgender persons. So, with there seeming to be a correlation with red states, I thought maybe the comment was saying "That is because there are a bunch of hateful ___phobes in the red states grrr!"
However, I probably should have picked up on the part of the comment that talked about the unchangable property being treated as "violence", and realized that that likely implied that the group imagined to be saying the quote was likely, uh, the group that tends to define "violence" in weird ways to include things that they believe are bad in general.
I suppose my first interpretation of the comment also didn't fit particularly well with the increase in the rate being primarily among persons who are (considered) white.
I don't think one's political positions/expressions are really a fundamental and immutable part of what one is in the way described by the comment.
Unless you mean that the attempts to make people feel worthless are done on the basis of immutable things, but are done in response to "not towing the line"?
> Unless you mean that the attempts to make people feel worthless are done on the basis of immutable things
Yes, I do mean that. If you are white or a male you are told to "check your privilege", and that you "are not allowed to speak about issues". (Is a white male allowed to have an opinion about abortion? Ask yourself what you think, and ask others as well, and that will help you understand.)
Notice the narrative that the white students don't matter unless they deprecate themself? It's framed in an inclusive way of course ("they include others"), but the subtext is quite obvious.
And that's a CNN article, the real world is much worse.
The pendulum is swinging, and instead of making everyone important, now those who were marginalized before are gaining status by marginalizing others.
That's rather heartwarming; they clearly intuitively understand solidarity. It's not like someone is holding a gun to their heads and making them do it.
Arithmetically, the majority has to be the group that includes the minority, surely?
More seriously, all those kids recognise that news coverage and politics applies very different bias to young white people and young nonwhite people, and they're refusing to accept that and keep pointing it out.
The point of my sentence you quoted was more in the part that said
> but are done in response to "not towing the line"
Like, your previous comment was about "towing the line" and I was asking about the connection between the "immutable properties" thing mentioned in the original comment I responded to, and the "towing the line" that you mentioned.
I wasn't asking "are people speaking against other people's immutable properties?" (which seems to be the question you responded to).
I was asking, "By talking about 'towing the line' when the context was 'immutable properties', did you mean that the treatment based on 'immutable properties' is targeted at those who don't 'tow the line'? If not, what is your meaning in bringing up 'towing the line' in the context of people speaking against others' 'immutable properties'?".
I am not trying to make a point about who is or is not treated badly. I'm trying to clear up what was meant to be communicated.
That's why I linked to that story. If you have an undesirable immutable property (i.e. white or male), then you have to toe the line by deprecating yourself. But if you are a minority then you are not required to do that, you are accepted simply because you are assumed to always be oppressed.
I think thats a distinction without a difference. Even if things like political positions, worldview, way of live, and religion aren't (completely) biological they aren't just opinions that people can change at the drop of a hat. E.g. (genuine) political beliefs aren't something someone explicitly chooses, they are based on their beliefs, experience, and background. In addition, whether a trait is immutable or not is irrelevant to whether or not its ok to hate a person for it for it.
Strawman aside, the current political climate is certainly growing more hostile and polarized as the societal pendulum swings away. It's probably not a coincidence that most who commit suicide are male and the worst of it are in predominately white states which also just so happen to have lagging economic growth.
I like this statement because its vagueness has apparently allowed people with diametrically opposed viewpoints to both view themselves as the victim and the other as the perpetrator. I am not sure how to fix that, but it certainly seems like everyone is feeling persecuted regardless of any objective reality and that can't be good for us.
I think that basically sums up the state of America in 2018.
I guess it's both good and bad, though. Bad because it indicates growth has left the U.S. and we're all doing a little worse than we expected we'd be doing. Good because if everyone is feeling persecuted, chances are we've actually got this equality thing down pretty well.
It's not a perfect correlation, but to my untrained eye, looking at both maps, it seems to me that red (eg, Republican) states appear to correlate closely with higher suicide states.
But please judge and compare the maps for yourself and form your own opinion.
Edit, add: one criticism is that the link I got from Google is a 2016 map.
First, one would establish that there is actually a correlation.
If so, then is there a causation? (eg, does being in a red state make one suicidal, or does being suicidal affect one's political views) That seems a bit of a stretch. But if a causation CAN be established, then is there anything that can be done to help people?
Access to firearms could be another correlation. Firearms are the leading method of suicide in the United States. The consensus opinion I've heard is that firearms are a lot easier to make an attempted suicide an actual suicide than most other methods.
All of these are hypothesis; I doubt we can come to real good conclusions without better data than these summary pages.
% increase tends to favor areas with lower populations, because the divisor is smaller making everyone have a bigger impact. In this cases, cities tend to be more democratic and have more people to amortize losses against.
I'm not really making a point. Making comparisons like this or the OPs flagrant political comparison is silly at best and completely dishonest at worst.
It is pretty well known that one of the demographics to see recent increases in suicide is white males, especially those experiencing economic stress. Since that demographic went pretty heavily for the Republic part in the last several elections, I think it's a pretty obvious possible explanation for the correlation you see.
Another statistic is that gun-owners are statistically more likely to successfully commit suicide. Red States have higher proliferation of guns, and often its easier to obtain a gun.
Modern paramedics can rescue people who take a lot of pills, or do other, less successful forms of suicide. But a bullet-to-the-head is often fatal. No coming back from that.
So it could be a case of "successful" suicides vs "unsuccessful". I'd assume that the rate of "attempted suicides" is roughly equivalent across the country. But an uptick in gun-culture could increase the number of "successful suicides", so to speak.
Assuming "Opioid use" is the indicator of "negative emotions" of some kind, then the statistics at least indicate that we need to be focusing on white, rural women's issues primarily.
With that being said, there's clearly something wrong going on in rural America, at least if Opioid abuse and suicide rates are anything to go by. Just the stats.
----------
I hate to blame a complex issue like suicide on drugs. There's more to any particular case than just drug use. But with so many Opioid deaths in rural white America (especially women), I think this is a statistic that needs to be better known.
Note: It might be cultural (over-prescription by rural doctors), and not necessarily related to politics. But its certainly an issue that needs to be focused on.
I suspect men are feeling worse, but they are less likely to "treat" themself with opioid's or other drugs, just like men in general are less likely to treat medical issues.
Without encouraging or condoning this type of behavior, I really wish people had a chance to conduct an exit interview from life. Only after the decision was solidified and all other methods of outreach had failed.
The data would be remarkable and might save many lives.
World: We're sorry to see you go. Please let us know why you are leaving, and what we could to do make this a better place to live in the future. Thank you for giving us a chance to know you.
I agree. This is actually an unfortunate (but maybe necessary) side effect of the push for "look for the signs." I had a fellow engineer kill himself, and it left a lot of unanswered questions. However, he was very familiar with "the signs" and actively avoided doing things that would have tipped people off. He even pushed code and did some code reviews just hours before he died :-(
I have attempted suicide. I am frequently suicidal. I don't hesitate to comment on it in forums. I sometimes blog about it.
Most people genuinely aren't interested in understanding it. If they understood, they might feel compelled to treat other people better and that isn't on their agenda in most cases, basically.
I understand it. It's not like the world is a super happy place and everybody is like 'why would you want to leave this place - it's amazing!'.
Everybody has their own experiences. Their life is unique. Telling other people that they should stick around can even be selfish, depending on what they are going through.
However. Living life is a skill, and I believe can you get quite satisfactory skill levels by making hard choices and changing your life for the better until it becomes pretty fine. You may even feel happy. Takes hard work though, and it's very hard to find that energy when you are depressed and your brain is telling you that your problems are unsolvable. But they are not. That's the good news I guess. :)
No, you clearly don't really understand it. If you did, you should know that telling a suicidal person "chin up, it's fixable!" is the worst thing you can do. Another big sin is offering me encouragement unsolicited as if I need it when I am not even saying that I am currently suicidal.
Last, I have a genetic disorder. There is no cure for that. Your assumption that anything is fixable if you just try hard enough is monstrously wrong.
The hell of it is, I am getting myself well anyway, for which the entire world would like me to know I am insane, an egomaniac, a teller of tall tales, etc and generally heap abuse on me.
But don't let the facts confuse you. Just carry on with doing things that could push someone over the edge if you did this to them while they were actively feeling suicidal.
You know I could never bring myself to be upset at people with a "chin up, it's fixable!" attitude. It's certainly not the worst thing they could do. And then the above commenter is committing a sin by not reading your mind to know you don't want to be encouraged? Come on.
>But don't let the facts confuse you. Just carry on with doing things that could push someone over the edge if you did this to them while they were actively feeling suicidal.
It's not the burden of people to never say any thing wrong to a depressed person. It's certainly wrong to place causation at their feet. This is the sort of thing that leads people to blame themselves after a suicide, it's an unhealthy way of thinking about the issue.
They start by asserting they understood. I am asserting they don't.
I'm not currently depressed nor suicidal. But if you think it is on the depressed or suicidal person to meet the social and emotional needs of some random internet stranger who wants to be all encouraging, please do the world a favor and stay very far away from such discussions. Your mental model is the kind of thing that absolutely can push someone over the edge, while you try to find justifications for how it isn't your fault.
Having been suicidal for a number of years myself and having overcome it, in my case it was fixable. People suggesting that unfortunately may not be familiar with something as agonizing as a genetic disorder, and I'm sorry for what you're going through.
I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm looking to put out useful information.
Telling an internet stranger "it's fixable" when you don't know what the problem is tends to go very bad places.
My initial assertion was that, no, most people don't really want to understand because then they might have to be kinder and that isn't usually on their agenda. Given the pile on of down votes and every reply to me being dismissive and argumentative, I stand by that assertion.
Whatever interest I had in trying to do some kind of PSA here has basically died. I think I am done here. I have made my point, though, no, most people won't see that. They are too busy trying to come up with counterarguments proving they aren't somehow part of the problem.
This resonates with me. It's very hard to win empathy from those who haven't struggled with suicide. And it's frustrating how many people will confidently offer you advice they've never needed themselves.
Trying to rationalize suicide to someone will almost always lead to more self-alienation, so it's a conversation I avoid almost entirely.
Thanks for being forward. Suicide is nothing to be ashamed of and I believe most of the other comments exemplify the problem. Your message is mostly lost here but I wanted to make a point that you aren't alone.
I'm extremely tired today, so I am probably not making my points as eloquently as I would like. Although this is a new account, I've participated on HN nearly 9 years and some folks are well aware of that. I get recognized as also being that other handle by a surprising number of people. I have long addressed controversial issues like suicide. That isn't anything new.
Today is my birthday. I am trying to tongue-in-cheek look upon the down votes as HN's birthday gift to me.;-)
We already know what causes anxiety, depression, and lack of purpose. But reducing those would mean reducing the motivations for what keeps much of the economy functioning.
Society depends on the premise that suicide can not and should not be understood.
Often times it's when expectations don't align with reality. Disillusionment stems from having been sold an idea that turns out to either be unachievable or a lie.
One such example is a middle-aged man who believes being a man means having a family you can provide for and protect, loses his job, and his wife leaves him. Another example is someone who grew up believing that lasting happiness comes from being wealthy and popular, and after throwing all else aside for 30 years realizes that it isn't the case.
So the only way for society to function is to keep the majority chasing after illusions? Seems pretty dystopian. Is there no way to have realistic expectations from life?
It's not the only way for society to function, but it's very effective at convincing people to be 'productive', so to speak. Realistic expectations are beneficial to the individual, but there are all kinds of forces that do not have the individual's well-being in mind.
Just an interesting observation: People with known mental health conditions are twice as likely to poison themselves in a suicide than those without known mental health conditions.
Firearms are more popular with men and poison is more popular with women. (edit: source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide#...) The charts in the article show that women who commit suicide are more likely to have a known mental health condition than men, so that could explain the correlation.
The common response is that "people will just find another way" but that's not supported by evidence.
>“Anything that builds in delay is working in your favor because that fever-pitch time when you’re actually willing to swallow the poison or pull the trigger is often fairly narrow,” said Cathy Barber, who directs a suicide-reduction campaign at the Harvard School of Public Health.
>And for those who did not die, it's likely they would not try to commit suicide again. A 2002 review of 90 studies indicates that more than 90 percent of people who survive a suicide attempt won’t die from a later suicide attempt either.
The way that's worded makes it sound like they will go on to try again, but are very likely to fail again. It makes sense that that would be the case, but I don't think it's the point you're trying to make.
I am a psychologist and to be honest, I think focusing on methods is well-intended but misguided because it leaves the pain but takes away the mechanism.
I'm not convinced that even eliminating firearms completely would reduce suicide rates as much as some think because people would find another means. Even the linked piece states "nobody knows what would happen if firearm availability in the US resembled levels of other developed countries." In countries where firearms aren't as available, other methods are more prevalent. I also think there's a lot of differences between the US and other developed countries along a lot of dimensions other than firearm use.
Even if it did reduce suicides, though, what does that leave people with? It's akin to saying "we're going to take away this only out for your pain without addressing your problems."
Sure, keeping them alive long enough might allow you to intervene and reduce their pain, but the fact that they are driven to suicide to begin with suggests something failed earlier along the chain.
What we want are people who don't feel driven to suicide, not people who are unable to commit suicide.
> I am a psychologist and to be honest, I think focusing on methods is well-intended but misguided because it leaves the pain but takes away the mechanism.
I work in suicide prevention in a country that has seen decreasing rates of suicide at a time when the government has been defunding mental health care.
Reducing access to means and methods of suicide is the most important thing we can do to stop people killing themselves.
Barriers on bridges and multi-storey carparsk save lives. Smaller pack sizes of paracetamol prevents death. Gun control would absolutely save lives.
We've had a wide range of natural experiments for this. Two notable examples are when the UK changed the domestic gas supply from coal gas to natural gas; and when the UK introduced laws for catalytic converters. Two very common methods went, and rates declined for some years after.
Of course you need the bio-psycho-social support too, but method removal is crucial.
Among the top voted comments here is "this is due to Republicans", and "this is due to SJWs." (EDIT: gladly, this is no longer the case)
Suggesting policy based on evidence instead of trying to immediately assign blame to your least favorite political group is a huge improvement in discourse. It's pretty absurd that this is getting downvoted.
The accelerationism of the world is really taking it's toll. I feel like the political and economical system is, idk, a result of over-application of certain tenets that might have been justified in the past but are increasingly less valid but certain forces are clinging to them because these tenets are all they have.
It's not just the US, the world feels like such a blur. Very important and fucked up things are happening multiple times daily. Things that don't affect me but a lot of times actually really do. Some thousand year old struggles seem to be getting kicked into the internet age and as a result the whole world is getting involved in local conflicts and is forced to take sides.
I legit feel as if some sort of new conception of government, nations, states, rights, is really needed. I don't know what but I'm all ears.
Try reading Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, from what you just said it sounds like you might really like it. He covers a lot of the themes you're talking about in a really approachable way
As for what other conception of states can exist, socialism is pretty cool I think
Socialism together with some capitalism is really the way to go. Having one of them totally uncontrolled to an extreme level is what leads to problems.
Ok, here's my impassionate take on Marxism (I know Marxism != socialism).
The fundamental tenet of socialism is the idea of dialectical materialism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism) which basically states that there are two forces engaged in an endless struggle and future state is a result of synthesis of these two.
There's a close relationship between say Engel's dialectics and something like linear logic. However, Engel's third "The law of the negation of the negation" is fundamentally flawed. You provably can't have both adversarial relationships and still allow double negation.
I think a lot of it has to do with law and education. People in a bad situation hundreds or thousands of years ago were probably far more inclined to use violence to improve their lives. Banditry and similar were far more common. Combine this idea with less awareness of abstract ideas and dealing mostly with concrete things probably meant that people were less worried about larger concepts such as their life as a whole and were more worried about tomorrow or today. You're probably less likely to fall into negative thought patterns that way.
The other thing is that people back then weren't wealthy enough to not be constantly working. Becoming depressed and lethargic would probably mean starving in winter. So the people that did become this way probably died off for hundreds of years.
Here's the thing, I feel like humanity is having a hard time scaling the global society. I know that this is a ridiculous statement but the political (and analogously server) infrastructure needed to handle xyz citizens/users can be completely different for 100 users and for 1000000 users.
Stop watching/reading the news every day. If you want to keep up with current events, read a politically neutral monthly periodical.
I grew up in the 70's and 80's. Every generation looks back on its youth as "the good old days" but things really were much less stressful then and the main difference I see is that you were not connected to a firehose of real-time updates on everything.
I'm not on social media. It's more like, idk, what you deal with living in modern society. And it doesn't matter if you are connected or not if everyone else around you is. If there's a Twitter organized revolution happening around you, ignoring it might be harmful.
At no point was I reminiscing about good old days, and my argument is actually very orthogonal to that statement.
It's not just social media. Everything was slower. If you wanted to learn about something, you had to take a class, or go to the library or bookstore and find some books. There was no Google, no Wikipedia, no Reddit.
In some sense this limited what you could accomplish but it also made you think about investing time and everything was overall more deliberate.
Now, there's no going back, but you can still choose to live your life at a slower pace. The world is only a blur if you choose to ride the merry-go-round.
My close colleges and family don't do X in my presence is hardly proof of X don't exist. Making that observation and then extrapolating it to state of world is equally fallacious.
The dilemma is that leaving social media is increasingly tantamount to leaving society, which is the basis for what remains of politics. On the other hand, the "politics" that occurs on social media is increasingly nothing other than a popularity contest. It seems hopeless.
It's a personal dilemma, not a societal one. My personal take of social media is similar to yours in that it's a popularity contest and allows people to distract themselves from community, local, or family involvement and from self-improvement.
> The dilemma is that leaving social media is increasingly tantamount to leaving society
This seems to be an opinion often stated as fact. We all have the power to end the hopelessness. Anyone can take the first step by leaving “social media” behind. You might find that the world indeed goes on without it and is even better/richer!
Tantamount...not the slightest. Social media is a cesspit that hawks fly over to prey on you. Create tight knit communities (like immediate family) and leave it at that.
> The dilemma is that leaving social media is increasingly tantamount to leaving society
Aside from my debilitating addiction to HN, I don't use social media. I have a job, family, large circle of friends, and all the usual attachments to society. I vote and love to debate politics with pretty much anyone interested. How exactly would my attachment to society be improved by more social media? If HN went away tomorrow, would I no longer be a part of society?
I have found fruitful, enjoyable political discussion and social media to be more or less incompatible. Twitter and Facebook work great for the purpose of "rallying the base." Tweeting or sharing the latest polemic showing all your friends how truly liberal or conservative you are doesn't do much to bring in converts. But the political bases in the US are quickly approaching max rallied-ness. From here on out is the actually difficult tasks of changing hearts and minds, and that doesn't happen on social media.
If you care about politics, the further you get from social media the better.
I dunno about this. I consider HN social media (we are socializing via media of sorts), but even on Facebook, when I post something that I believe validates my perspective, my social graph includes intellectually honest people who chime in with thoughtful counters and we're allowed to have thoughtful dialogues, and have benefited from their influence (as well as those types of discussions in meatspace as well).
I've also had less enjoyable discussions in both areas.
When I see relatives post things that are flagrantly one-sided or even untrue, I try to engage respectfully and try to offer another take.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
But I think increasing communication is one of the side effects, and overall, generally a good thing. As I like to repeat often, clarity is more important than agreement, and having more ways to connect with people gives alot more clarity into who they are, as well as valid counters to my own preconceived notions. Sometimes, others viewpoints don't change my mind overnight, but often they either long-term influence more nuance in my own ideas, or even gird my thoughts to a more defensible position.
And like any social network, virtual or physical, we all tend to have those oddballs in our lives that are really into watching random things online and sharing them with others, and that to me just means more spice to life.
Twitter on the other hand ranges from pointless to toxic when it comes to conversations. It's a broadcast network that by nature narrows positions into extremes, in my experience.
Of course, like my real world relationships, I need to do some amount of curation or a break from certain folks or sometimes the entire system, but overall, it's been a net gain for me socially. YMMV :)
I agree that debate cannot occur on social media and it would be better if no one used Facebook; leaving social media certainly sets a good example.
But I'm arguing against the sentiment that whatever goes on on Facebook is merely a symptom of politics that occurs face-to-face. We live in a world in which people can form political opinions and vote in elections without ever leaving their house.
Today, Facebook might not yet be one of "the usual attachments to society." My point is precisely that social media is increasingly seen as one of the "usual attachments," particularly among younger generations.
Leaving social media seems like a form of suicide until you leave social media. As your focus shifts, you start to realize that the world is not as you have believed it to be.
> I legit feel as if some sort of new conception of government, nations, states, rights, is really needed. I don't know what but I'm all ears.
I think it's 'natural' that we need new social-tech. Taking an incredibly coarse view of history: Hunter-gather > agriculture > industrial > today (bio_genetic-digital-AI-climate_change). At each stage we had new social structures form, why should today be any different? If anything, this fill me with hope and wonder. I've no idea what the new stage is going to look like, but I know that I am going to see it. That's really cool. Hell, I'm privileged enough to maybe have a hand in making the new paradigm. Again, I feel really lucky.
Other than the formation of city states and nation states after the rise of agriculture, what new social structures formed with each technological revolution?
Amen, and thank you for saying this. Simply being kind and smiling can be one of the most powerful things you can do. The kindness of a stranger, even just an anonymous name on the internet, can literally save lives.
I agree! I'm generally a pretty upbeat person but seeing people smile is still uplifting. I have kinda a naturally scowly face but I try to smile when I'm outdoors and its occasionally contageous.
Suicidal urges often last a very short amount of time (ten minutes or so), and for some percentage of people, a kind word at the right time absolutely does make the difference. It may be a small percentage, but it's worth being kind to all.
I've worked in 2 out of those 3 professions. I'm a little surprised they are at the top of the list. Contact with nature on a daily basis is really refreshing. However, economic struggle in these fields is really bad: low wages, price competition from industrial-scale companies, seasonal instability. Still surprising that those are the top 3.
Farming and the like have always been tough economically - you have to fork out for equipment and land but the income from the crop varies dramatically - good year and there is a glut and the prices drop, bad year not much crop and so on. I think it may be better to either have corporations do it where no one is hurt so bad if they go bust, or a regulated subsidised market like the EU.
Desperation is on the rise. That map of suicides by state looks like a map of "flyover states" that are probably disproportionately hit by the downturn in manual labor jobs.
This. Trade deals like NAFTA totally destabilized (if not disintegrated) industrialized regions of the US. This may not be the only cause of suicide, but it’s part of the story for sure. The coasts don’t care, they seem to celebrate it. What I think those people are missing is that this disease can continue onward and spread throughout.
I'm not finding any breakdown of suicide rates by age, which would be useful especially comparing to the previous period they measure.
In fact, I'm unable to find which exact baseline period and the "rising" period they refer to. The article only states "from 1999 through 2016" but one of their data sources only started collecting data in 2003, in a limited number of states (16 in 2010, 18 in 2014): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Violent_Death_Reporti... . Others like the NIS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_Cost_and_Utilizatio...) started collecting earlier, 1988 in this case, and it's unclear how they aggregated this data together.
I'm aware that best-case approaches to disparate data such as this is often as good as it gets but I'm uncomfortable with how it's being described without being able to see the methodology the analysts used.
Young (white) men are completely lost in the US right now. The most exciting thing in the majority of my friends lives right now (23-26 years old) are the current challenges in Fortnite. Everyone is scared of longterm, meaningful relationships and Tinder provides the instant artificial validation to make those long-term relationships seem unnecessary. You're a tryhard if you have serious career aspirations or goals. We go to work during the week to get fucked up on the weekends. The common political/social narrative is that you're "the problem". If you're college educated, you're most likely drowning in debt. Most guys I know actively express feeling stuck in a rut or display behavior that strongly suggests it. This report doesn't surprise me at all.
Love him or hate him, agree with him or disagree with him, this is why Jordan Peterson rose to fame so quickly. Guys my age in this country are almost completely aimless and without meaningful purpose. This report doesn't surprise me at all...
Lack of purpose I suppose. If I have enough money to pay rent, get trashed with the boys on the weekend, and buy cool things every now and then, why lift more than I need to at work?
When my dad was my age he just recently bought a house, got married, had a kid on the way. His effort in growing his small business made tons of sense. For me, if it wasn't for my personal drive to be great at my job - a job which I have a passion for (and I know luck has a lot to do with that) - why would a try harder than I need to? I'm not really responsible for anything, you know?
Suicide rates for non-Hispanic white Americans are the highest. Clearly, race isn't irrelevant.
> By race/ethnicity, non-Hispanic whites and American Indian/Alaska Natives had the highest rates of suicide, with rates for both groups showing notable increases across periods [1999-2007, 2008-2015] (from 14.9 to 18.1 and from 15.8 to 20.0, respectively). Rates among non-Hispanic blacks and Asian/Pacific Islanders and among Hispanics were much lower and showed comparatively modest increases across periods.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 247 ms ] threadJust don't get married, unless you are ready to lose it all if it goes south.
I don't know if people on HN (who I assume a majority of are high earners) realize just how much money you can be on the hook for if you have a motivated ex-spouse with an attorney. My ex was a stay-at-home mom with a side business as a photographer. Good luck getting a fair shake in court when you get a W-2 salary, and the other party runs their own business.
Edit: typo - I have 45% custody, not 55% custody.
Those feelings are certainly not temporary for those who are successful and are also unlikely to be temporary for the people left in the wake of a successful attempt. My best friend killed himself in the 5th grade, then another very, very close friend in the 8th. I've known 3 other people who I would call a friend who have killed themselves. I'm 37 years old and I still think of these people. I don't dwell, but I certainly do remember these events and their supposed causes clearly.
"Relationship trouble" includes mental agony that can drag out over many years. And the fact that many do not make serious attempts doesn't tell us much about those that will make them.
Each situation is its own, but in general, in the USA marriage is a poor choice for men. If your ex turns evil or crazy, there will be no warning and no mercy.
Whites are even gaslit into not believing that such a group even exists ("whiteness is a social construct"). Imagine if they same were done to any other group.
Edit: Also, old people in the USA are more likely to be white.
[0]http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/31/in-search-of-missing-us...
[0] - https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/
Too bad they were forced there at gunpoint and not allowed to leave... when will white people learn to stop forcing people into their country, then when they ask to leave, building a wall to keep them in.
Now, their descendants may feel like they're being persecuted, because they hear that they are from people who have no apparent reason to lie to them. And they may in fact be killing themselves over it.
> By race/ethnicity, non-Hispanic whites and American Indian/Alaska Natives had the highest rates of suicide, with rates for both groups showing notable increases across periods [1999-2007, 2008-2015] (from 14.9 to 18.1 and from 15.8 to 20.0, respectively). Rates among non-Hispanic blacks and Asian/Pacific Islanders and among Hispanics were much lower, and showed comparatively modest increases across periods.
From https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6610a2.htm
But it's still a much better time to be a white male than a nonwhite male, or female, or any type of transgender, in many parts of the world.
There is now almost as much institutional hatred directed our way as there is for... no, that's overstating. There is definitely a lot of institutional hatred directed our way, but it still doesn't come anywhere close to the level of institutional hatred directed at literally every group other than white men.
The gap between white men and everyone is shrinking, but it's still there.
It sucks to be ostracized, to be tarred with inaccurate stereotypes based on your gender and race, and to have political and social barriers put in place to hold you back on the basis that you are somehow wrong because of the circumstances of your birth, the color of your skin or the configuration of your genitals?
Yes. Yes, it does, doesn't it?
However... no one is lynching white people from trees, holding picnics for it and selling photos of it in drugstores. That is what "institutional hatred" looks like and nothing even close to it is happening to white people, or likely would be tolerated in modern society. What they're getting is the kid-gloves introduction to relative minority membership status.
I used the phrase "institutional hatred" to mirror the comment to which I was replying, but indeed, what GP perceived does not, in my opinion, even really resemble institutional hatred.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6722a1.htm
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Disclaimer: I'm a volunteer.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/r-u
Sure, it's awkward to offer a phone number to a stranger or even a friend in crisis, but imagine how things could be if that wasn't the case.
Absolutely shocking that suicide is up.
I literally meant: A bully said to victim that victim's very existence is offensive to bully.
IMO, that summarizes how I interpreted the original top level post.
You have not noticed people making up sexual identities that they don't really have? Or inventing (or inflating) victim stories about themself?
As for people "making up" aspects of their identity ... so? Who fucking cares? It doesn't affect me at all, let alone make me more prone to committing suicide!!!
You missed the point. Correct, who cares. But why are they driven to do it? It's because otherwise they are not valued. (If you have another theory let's hear it.)
> I've basically never seen the former. I do see 100X as much ranting against it though.
You don't spend enough time on college campuses, and you especially don't spend enough time listening to liberal student yell and scream if someone conservative dares to talk.
Or maybe you spend just the right amount of time LOL. Ignoring those kind of liberals probably helps one's sanity.
Lots more detail at http://www.ustranssurvey.org/reports if you're actually interested.
The Bully says to gay kid, your very existence offends me.
The White Bully says to non-white kid, your very existence offends me.
The Sports Hero says to the Computer Nerd, your very existence offends me.
Make other substitutions for bully / victim as you see fit. But it's not an analogy. It really happens.
I guess if you strip all historical context out of the racial issues, ignore current inequalities, and just focus on what people on Tumblr are saying, I guess you could come to that conclusion, but you have to intentionally avoid a lot of stuff to reach that
I've got a liberal gay friend who was ostracized by his family after a failure to complete gay-conversion therapy for example. He managed to live fine once he ran away from home, got married in Canada to his now husband, and seems to be happily married for the past few years.
On the other hand, there are right-wing friends who also claim that they're being bullied online. I don't think I've heard of any horror stories that compare to the trauma of gay conversion therapy however. Still, there's a level of trolling that can be psychologically damaging, so I can understand that issue.
To be clear: I'm against bullying of any kind. But often times, its important to know the viewpoint of the complainer. I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about casual internet trolling, not without breaking the 1st Amendment anyway. But there's definitely something we can do about gay conversion therapy for example.
I would personally be for increasing penalties on "obvious" internet troll moves: Swatting, online harassment, revenge porn, etc. etc. There's relatively little legal recourse against these acts of trolling right now. And sure, its technically chipping away at 1st Amendment / free speech issues, but I do think that cleaning up the internet a bit and reducing bullying online will probably help someone.
Being told that, repeatedly, by multiple people, at an impressionable age, might lead someone to commit suicide.
Is there a reason you would expect the harm from things of that sort to have increased as of late?
Most of the time I hear people claim that someone else objects to someone's "existence", the person is claiming that people are objecting to the "existence" of homosexual or bisexual or transgender persons. So, with there seeming to be a correlation with red states, I thought maybe the comment was saying "That is because there are a bunch of hateful ___phobes in the red states grrr!"
However, I probably should have picked up on the part of the comment that talked about the unchangable property being treated as "violence", and realized that that likely implied that the group imagined to be saying the quote was likely, uh, the group that tends to define "violence" in weird ways to include things that they believe are bad in general.
I suppose my first interpretation of the comment also didn't fit particularly well with the increase in the rate being primarily among persons who are (considered) white.
Unless you mean that the attempts to make people feel worthless are done on the basis of immutable things, but are done in response to "not towing the line"?
Yes, I do mean that. If you are white or a male you are told to "check your privilege", and that you "are not allowed to speak about issues". (Is a white male allowed to have an opinion about abortion? Ask yourself what you think, and ask others as well, and that will help you understand.)
Go watch some campus talks and see how bad it gets. Or just read this: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/24/politics/march-for-our-lives-...
Notice the narrative that the white students don't matter unless they deprecate themself? It's framed in an inclusive way of course ("they include others"), but the subtext is quite obvious.
And that's a CNN article, the real world is much worse.
The pendulum is swinging, and instead of making everyone important, now those who were marginalized before are gaining status by marginalizing others.
That's rather heartwarming; they clearly intuitively understand solidarity. It's not like someone is holding a gun to their heads and making them do it.
More seriously, all those kids recognise that news coverage and politics applies very different bias to young white people and young nonwhite people, and they're refusing to accept that and keep pointing it out.
> but are done in response to "not towing the line"
Like, your previous comment was about "towing the line" and I was asking about the connection between the "immutable properties" thing mentioned in the original comment I responded to, and the "towing the line" that you mentioned.
I wasn't asking "are people speaking against other people's immutable properties?" (which seems to be the question you responded to).
I was asking, "By talking about 'towing the line' when the context was 'immutable properties', did you mean that the treatment based on 'immutable properties' is targeted at those who don't 'tow the line'? If not, what is your meaning in bringing up 'towing the line' in the context of people speaking against others' 'immutable properties'?".
I am not trying to make a point about who is or is not treated badly. I'm trying to clear up what was meant to be communicated.
I guess it's both good and bad, though. Bad because it indicates growth has left the U.S. and we're all doing a little worse than we expected we'd be doing. Good because if everyone is feeling persecuted, chances are we've actually got this equality thing down pretty well.
Compare the map in TFA with this map, which I trivially Googled:
http://news.gallup.com/poll/203117/gop-maintains-edge-state-...
It's not a perfect correlation, but to my untrained eye, looking at both maps, it seems to me that red (eg, Republican) states appear to correlate closely with higher suicide states.
But please judge and compare the maps for yourself and form your own opinion.
Edit, add: one criticism is that the link I got from Google is a 2016 map.
If so, then is there a causation? (eg, does being in a red state make one suicidal, or does being suicidal affect one's political views) That seems a bit of a stretch. But if a causation CAN be established, then is there anything that can be done to help people?
For instance, economic situation could influence both political views and mental health.
There could be even other causes. Living in an area with less dense population affects one's outlook in various ways.
Access to firearms could be another correlation. Firearms are the leading method of suicide in the United States. The consensus opinion I've heard is that firearms are a lot easier to make an attempted suicide an actual suicide than most other methods.
All of these are hypothesis; I doubt we can come to real good conclusions without better data than these summary pages.
Maybe people just REALLY hate working... https://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com/us-unemployment-r...
Modern paramedics can rescue people who take a lot of pills, or do other, less successful forms of suicide. But a bullet-to-the-head is often fatal. No coming back from that.
So it could be a case of "successful" suicides vs "unsuccessful". I'd assume that the rate of "attempted suicides" is roughly equivalent across the country. But an uptick in gun-culture could increase the number of "successful suicides", so to speak.
So if you are a republican, or while, or a male, then you better not go online - and certainly stay away from cities.
https://wire.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/women-bear-greater...
Assuming "Opioid use" is the indicator of "negative emotions" of some kind, then the statistics at least indicate that we need to be focusing on white, rural women's issues primarily.
With that being said, there's clearly something wrong going on in rural America, at least if Opioid abuse and suicide rates are anything to go by. Just the stats.
----------
I hate to blame a complex issue like suicide on drugs. There's more to any particular case than just drug use. But with so many Opioid deaths in rural white America (especially women), I think this is a statistic that needs to be better known.
Note: It might be cultural (over-prescription by rural doctors), and not necessarily related to politics. But its certainly an issue that needs to be focused on.
I suspect men are feeling worse, but they are less likely to "treat" themself with opioid's or other drugs, just like men in general are less likely to treat medical issues.
Comparing to this map is interesting: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/...
Looking at the map from the article, you might think that NY, IL, WI, OR and WA are all in the same boat, but suicide rate in NY is half that in OR.
The data would be remarkable and might save many lives.
World: We're sorry to see you go. Please let us know why you are leaving, and what we could to do make this a better place to live in the future. Thank you for giving us a chance to know you.
Most people genuinely aren't interested in understanding it. If they understood, they might feel compelled to treat other people better and that isn't on their agenda in most cases, basically.
Everybody has their own experiences. Their life is unique. Telling other people that they should stick around can even be selfish, depending on what they are going through.
However. Living life is a skill, and I believe can you get quite satisfactory skill levels by making hard choices and changing your life for the better until it becomes pretty fine. You may even feel happy. Takes hard work though, and it's very hard to find that energy when you are depressed and your brain is telling you that your problems are unsolvable. But they are not. That's the good news I guess. :)
Last, I have a genetic disorder. There is no cure for that. Your assumption that anything is fixable if you just try hard enough is monstrously wrong.
The hell of it is, I am getting myself well anyway, for which the entire world would like me to know I am insane, an egomaniac, a teller of tall tales, etc and generally heap abuse on me.
But don't let the facts confuse you. Just carry on with doing things that could push someone over the edge if you did this to them while they were actively feeling suicidal.
>But don't let the facts confuse you. Just carry on with doing things that could push someone over the edge if you did this to them while they were actively feeling suicidal.
It's not the burden of people to never say any thing wrong to a depressed person. It's certainly wrong to place causation at their feet. This is the sort of thing that leads people to blame themselves after a suicide, it's an unhealthy way of thinking about the issue.
I'm not currently depressed nor suicidal. But if you think it is on the depressed or suicidal person to meet the social and emotional needs of some random internet stranger who wants to be all encouraging, please do the world a favor and stay very far away from such discussions. Your mental model is the kind of thing that absolutely can push someone over the edge, while you try to find justifications for how it isn't your fault.
Having been suicidal for a number of years myself and having overcome it, in my case it was fixable. People suggesting that unfortunately may not be familiar with something as agonizing as a genetic disorder, and I'm sorry for what you're going through.
Telling an internet stranger "it's fixable" when you don't know what the problem is tends to go very bad places.
My initial assertion was that, no, most people don't really want to understand because then they might have to be kinder and that isn't usually on their agenda. Given the pile on of down votes and every reply to me being dismissive and argumentative, I stand by that assertion.
Whatever interest I had in trying to do some kind of PSA here has basically died. I think I am done here. I have made my point, though, no, most people won't see that. They are too busy trying to come up with counterarguments proving they aren't somehow part of the problem.
Trying to rationalize suicide to someone will almost always lead to more self-alienation, so it's a conversation I avoid almost entirely.
Thanks for being forward. Suicide is nothing to be ashamed of and I believe most of the other comments exemplify the problem. Your message is mostly lost here but I wanted to make a point that you aren't alone.
Today is my birthday. I am trying to tongue-in-cheek look upon the down votes as HN's birthday gift to me.;-)
Society depends on the premise that suicide can not and should not be understood.
One such example is a middle-aged man who believes being a man means having a family you can provide for and protect, loses his job, and his wife leaves him. Another example is someone who grew up believing that lasting happiness comes from being wealthy and popular, and after throwing all else aside for 30 years realizes that it isn't the case.
The common response is that "people will just find another way" but that's not supported by evidence.
>“Anything that builds in delay is working in your favor because that fever-pitch time when you’re actually willing to swallow the poison or pull the trigger is often fairly narrow,” said Cathy Barber, who directs a suicide-reduction campaign at the Harvard School of Public Health.
>And for those who did not die, it's likely they would not try to commit suicide again. A 2002 review of 90 studies indicates that more than 90 percent of people who survive a suicide attempt won’t die from a later suicide attempt either.
Lots of people attempt suicide more than once, and many of them die by suicide when they try again.
I'm not convinced that even eliminating firearms completely would reduce suicide rates as much as some think because people would find another means. Even the linked piece states "nobody knows what would happen if firearm availability in the US resembled levels of other developed countries." In countries where firearms aren't as available, other methods are more prevalent. I also think there's a lot of differences between the US and other developed countries along a lot of dimensions other than firearm use.
Even if it did reduce suicides, though, what does that leave people with? It's akin to saying "we're going to take away this only out for your pain without addressing your problems."
Sure, keeping them alive long enough might allow you to intervene and reduce their pain, but the fact that they are driven to suicide to begin with suggests something failed earlier along the chain.
What we want are people who don't feel driven to suicide, not people who are unable to commit suicide.
Is there a reason we shouldn't do both?
I work in suicide prevention in a country that has seen decreasing rates of suicide at a time when the government has been defunding mental health care.
Reducing access to means and methods of suicide is the most important thing we can do to stop people killing themselves.
Barriers on bridges and multi-storey carparsk save lives. Smaller pack sizes of paracetamol prevents death. Gun control would absolutely save lives.
We've had a wide range of natural experiments for this. Two notable examples are when the UK changed the domestic gas supply from coal gas to natural gas; and when the UK introduced laws for catalytic converters. Two very common methods went, and rates declined for some years after.
Of course you need the bio-psycho-social support too, but method removal is crucial.
Suggesting policy based on evidence instead of trying to immediately assign blame to your least favorite political group is a huge improvement in discourse. It's pretty absurd that this is getting downvoted.
It's not just the US, the world feels like such a blur. Very important and fucked up things are happening multiple times daily. Things that don't affect me but a lot of times actually really do. Some thousand year old struggles seem to be getting kicked into the internet age and as a result the whole world is getting involved in local conflicts and is forced to take sides.
I legit feel as if some sort of new conception of government, nations, states, rights, is really needed. I don't know what but I'm all ears.
As for what other conception of states can exist, socialism is pretty cool I think
The fundamental tenet of socialism is the idea of dialectical materialism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism) which basically states that there are two forces engaged in an endless struggle and future state is a result of synthesis of these two.
There's a close relationship between say Engel's dialectics and something like linear logic. However, Engel's third "The law of the negation of the negation" is fundamentally flawed. You provably can't have both adversarial relationships and still allow double negation.
The other thing is that people back then weren't wealthy enough to not be constantly working. Becoming depressed and lethargic would probably mean starving in winter. So the people that did become this way probably died off for hundreds of years.
Get off of social media and twitter.
Stop watching/reading the news every day. If you want to keep up with current events, read a politically neutral monthly periodical.
I grew up in the 70's and 80's. Every generation looks back on its youth as "the good old days" but things really were much less stressful then and the main difference I see is that you were not connected to a firehose of real-time updates on everything.
At no point was I reminiscing about good old days, and my argument is actually very orthogonal to that statement.
If this actually happens, you won't need to be on Twitter to find out about it.
In some sense this limited what you could accomplish but it also made you think about investing time and everything was overall more deliberate.
Now, there's no going back, but you can still choose to live your life at a slower pace. The world is only a blur if you choose to ride the merry-go-round.
Me: "Is {particular social injustice} still happening in the world? I feel like that doesn't happen regularly anymore."
Person: "People are doing it all the time on Instagram. I've seen two posts this month."
Me: "I'm not on Instagram."
Person: "It happens on Facebook too. I saw one this year."
Me: "I'm not on Facebook."
Person: "Then how do you know what's going on in the world?!"
This seems to be an opinion often stated as fact. We all have the power to end the hopelessness. Anyone can take the first step by leaving “social media” behind. You might find that the world indeed goes on without it and is even better/richer!
Aside from my debilitating addiction to HN, I don't use social media. I have a job, family, large circle of friends, and all the usual attachments to society. I vote and love to debate politics with pretty much anyone interested. How exactly would my attachment to society be improved by more social media? If HN went away tomorrow, would I no longer be a part of society?
I have found fruitful, enjoyable political discussion and social media to be more or less incompatible. Twitter and Facebook work great for the purpose of "rallying the base." Tweeting or sharing the latest polemic showing all your friends how truly liberal or conservative you are doesn't do much to bring in converts. But the political bases in the US are quickly approaching max rallied-ness. From here on out is the actually difficult tasks of changing hearts and minds, and that doesn't happen on social media.
If you care about politics, the further you get from social media the better.
But I think increasing communication is one of the side effects, and overall, generally a good thing. As I like to repeat often, clarity is more important than agreement, and having more ways to connect with people gives alot more clarity into who they are, as well as valid counters to my own preconceived notions. Sometimes, others viewpoints don't change my mind overnight, but often they either long-term influence more nuance in my own ideas, or even gird my thoughts to a more defensible position.
And like any social network, virtual or physical, we all tend to have those oddballs in our lives that are really into watching random things online and sharing them with others, and that to me just means more spice to life.
Twitter on the other hand ranges from pointless to toxic when it comes to conversations. It's a broadcast network that by nature narrows positions into extremes, in my experience.
Of course, like my real world relationships, I need to do some amount of curation or a break from certain folks or sometimes the entire system, but overall, it's been a net gain for me socially. YMMV :)
But I'm arguing against the sentiment that whatever goes on on Facebook is merely a symptom of politics that occurs face-to-face. We live in a world in which people can form political opinions and vote in elections without ever leaving their house.
Today, Facebook might not yet be one of "the usual attachments to society." My point is precisely that social media is increasingly seen as one of the "usual attachments," particularly among younger generations.
I think it's 'natural' that we need new social-tech. Taking an incredibly coarse view of history: Hunter-gather > agriculture > industrial > today (bio_genetic-digital-AI-climate_change). At each stage we had new social structures form, why should today be any different? If anything, this fill me with hope and wonder. I've no idea what the new stage is going to look like, but I know that I am going to see it. That's really cool. Hell, I'm privileged enough to maybe have a hand in making the new paradigm. Again, I feel really lucky.
Suicidal urges often last a very short amount of time (ten minutes or so), and for some percentage of people, a kind word at the right time absolutely does make the difference. It may be a small percentage, but it's worth being kind to all.
I'll put it this way - it certainly won't hurt.
Farming, fishing, and forestry far outweighs other occupational groups in suicide rates for men [1].
When standardized against population, at a rate of 90.5 per 100,000 people [2]; vs the next highest, construction and extraction (52.5).
For comparison, computer and mathematical was at 32.8 for men and 12.5 for women.
[1] CDC, 2012 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm#modalIdS...
In fact, I'm unable to find which exact baseline period and the "rising" period they refer to. The article only states "from 1999 through 2016" but one of their data sources only started collecting data in 2003, in a limited number of states (16 in 2010, 18 in 2014): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Violent_Death_Reporti... . Others like the NIS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_Cost_and_Utilizatio...) started collecting earlier, 1988 in this case, and it's unclear how they aggregated this data together.
I'm aware that best-case approaches to disparate data such as this is often as good as it gets but I'm uncomfortable with how it's being described without being able to see the methodology the analysts used.
Here's something from the UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
In England we have three main tools.
1) Public Health Fingertips: https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/pr...
2) The Office for National Statistics: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
3) The National Confidential Inquiry into suicide and homicide by people with mental illness: http://research.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centrefor...
Love him or hate him, agree with him or disagree with him, this is why Jordan Peterson rose to fame so quickly. Guys my age in this country are almost completely aimless and without meaningful purpose. This report doesn't surprise me at all...
Where did this come from, I wonder?
When my dad was my age he just recently bought a house, got married, had a kid on the way. His effort in growing his small business made tons of sense. For me, if it wasn't for my personal drive to be great at my job - a job which I have a passion for (and I know luck has a lot to do with that) - why would a try harder than I need to? I'm not really responsible for anything, you know?
None of the anxiety or malaise you describe in your comment exclusively applies to white people or men, so the parenthetical seems irrelevant.
> By race/ethnicity, non-Hispanic whites and American Indian/Alaska Natives had the highest rates of suicide, with rates for both groups showing notable increases across periods [1999-2007, 2008-2015] (from 14.9 to 18.1 and from 15.8 to 20.0, respectively). Rates among non-Hispanic blacks and Asian/Pacific Islanders and among Hispanics were much lower and showed comparatively modest increases across periods.
From https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6610a2.htm
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_veteran...), in 2012 there were 6,500 which seems like enough to get a slice in a pie chart.