Why do suicide rates increase dramatically as a society becomes more successful and prosperous?
People living for generations in disease and squalor with no hope for improvement just carry on indefinitely, yet the wealthiest and most educated people in the world kill themselves constantly. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
The rich are more likely to committ suicide than the poor
>>7984657
Success allows people to face the inherent meaninglessness of life, if youre distracted by the struggle to survive you dont have time to think about it
>>7984657
Because the hard sciences are way further ahead than the social sciences.
Hey, op. This is not personal, however please be aware that people living in dirt grinding poverty, disease and squalor are more likely to die of starvation, murder, crime and neglect making suicides statistically negligible. The fact that the poor and the destitute, do die horribly is recorded as the cause of death on their medical certificates, That is, if they have the good fortune of being recorded as statistics at all.
>>7984671
but progress is done by hard science, not by the soft ones
>>7984657
I think that developed countries have higher rates of suicide than so-called emerging-market countries, but the GDP per capita doesn't correlate directly with the suicide rate, as the suicide rate for Japan and South Korea is much higher than that of the US or Europe. To be honest I don't think it is a problem that can be solved biologically or psychologically. Suicide is such a personal thing.
thought drives the mind insane
>>7984699
Both are progressions in humanity. I find that a new way to make a telescope or a nuclear reactor is just as good as a large leap in psychologists helping people suffering from OCD
>>7984721
>Suicide is such a personal thing.
So? There are commonalities in groups of people for every single "personal" thing about them.
Pussy bitches on drugs
>>7984657
Reality is nihilistic.
Deal with it, or kill yourself.
>>7984827
fuck off
>>7984657
Man cannot find meaning without struggle. The less we have to struggle, the more meaningless life becomes.
lack of fulfillment.
Consider how we function, we are happiest around other people participating and engaging.
The most productive environment for industry is atomized individuals working at optimal speed. We don't need a large majority of the population to be involved in creative discourse or inventive thinking (which is what all survival was for the many thousands of years before civilization). We just take the smartest people and let them be the creatives, then we take majority and offer them a reward mechanism, do this get this.
People end up questioning the rewards and the goal posts constantly have to shift further out of reach. You would be happier fixing something that's broken, or learning how something works by taking it apart, of making a meal from ingredients you collected and prepared, or building something with your bare hands. But that is only profitable to you, it doesn't really benefit society on a global scale. To generate maximum wealth we need billions of automata, people in robotic like trances doing the most optimal movements to fullfill a quota. Then you need to reward these people with consumption. Production / consumption has no room for discovery, exploration, building, repair, inventiveness. It's a vicious cycle of being as productive as possible with your time and to enjoy the rewards of your labour by lavish consumption of luxury goods and services.
>Work for yourself = happiness.
>Work for another = exploitation, but you can save the money and your children will have better opportunities.
>Work for work's sake = insanity, you now have no reason to save and must spend as much money as possible to justify working at all.
Imagine this, we live in a world were in most modern western cities you could go and find fresh food thrown away in dumpsters, sealed food in plastic containers, unexpired, oversupply of baked goods from that morning just thrown out with garbage. This type of waste is indicative of a purposeless culture.
>oversupply of baked goods from that morning just thrown out with garbage
and you get shot trying to collect it
Because the meaning of life is anguish and toil.
Do animals kill themselves? No because they wake up cold and wet and spend the whole day searching for food while keeping one eye out for predators who'd cut short their perfect and miserable existence.
>>7985103
let's recall that the fantasy in humanist societies is the free thinker.
this liberal uberman is a man corresponds to the fantasy of a man being ''altruistic (for more than a few moments) while being hedonistic''.
Indeed, as in any doctrine, there are people who despise hedonism and think they are less hedonistic than they presently are.
These liberal speak of the motto ''liberalism is not about hedonism''.
The best activity of the occidental humanist is to design a structure which would ''change people from animals/hedonists to rational people who act for, who embrace, in a disinterested manner, the Human Rights''
The national education begins here with the faith that people, if educated to love the HR, will embrace the HR at the end of school.
Now, after a few decades if not centuries of this, this structure still fails. In fact, the failure leads people to still ''try to change the system''.
This fantasy of having a structure to change people dates back from thousands of year. So far, no structure is able to make people control if not ''eradicate the desires with evil consequences (wrt to the HR)''.
This is why the liberals and libertarians LOVE the asian doctrines. Buddhism promises that altruism is achieved, but at the cost of giving up hedonism. This situation is despised by the liberals, since they create their doctrine to better enjoy themselves.
The asian doctrines are only look at, by the liberals and libertarians, as an exotic doctrine which permit these people to appear, once more, as less hedonistic than they are.
The worst part is that these doctrines are traditional, but they do not install the tradition of the occidental humanism. so it is a problem for the europeans.
These asian doctrines lack the structure that the europeans have been craving for thousands of year. this leads the europeans to seek such a structure in these exotic doctrine and of course, they are disappointed once they fail to find the object of their desire.
>>7985000
we need more loving and caring street walkers not hooked on crack and dope in all reality
coming from a typical man
>>7985314
oh and if they carried their own condoms at all times, that would be so fuckin cash
ITT everyone gets carried away with OP's false premise. Plenty of successful countries aren't suicidal, and plenty of premier suicide league countries seem like shitholes.
Japan & SK are too hard on themselves.
Finland isn't high on the suicide list but from hanging on /int/ I think they're all on antidepressants, and Norway complains about seeing no sunlight.
>>7985314
If it were made legal it wouldn't be a problem anymore. Same goes for drugs.
>>7984677
I heard 9/10 deaths are not even legally recorded now, most of the world live in misery and poverty in the third world. Earth is depressing now.
>>7985575
I think that might be a bit too high, but I do know that at least 50% of death certificates have no listed cause of death, or else it's filled in with something vague or a guess. There just aren't enough doctors in the third world to properly identify what killed most people.
>>7985496
> ITT everyone gets carried away with OP's false premise.
Is it really a false premise though? When you consider cultures stratified by complex economic ideals, stress due to monetary debt/ social ques/ growing child care cost, perpetual rat races inflicted on employees and companies to be up to date on the latest tech, the constant competing for public beauty, access/abuse to potent pharmaceuticals and the constant threat of your identity and security being comprised.
It's pretty easy to see why suicide rates are higher in developed countries.
>>7984657
Because if you are born into a successful, prosperous community and are given everything without having to work for it, it can be very difficult for such an individual to find meaning in life. Whereas those who have to struggle every day just to live sharpen their instinct to live. They have to work so hard just to survive, why would they throw away that work for nothing? Hope of something better drives them. If you are given everything you want, what is there to hope for? Though, that is a matter of perspective, and that changes from society to society.
It also depends on culture. For instance, in America, suicide is well publicized, and it is not strongly reviled. In some cultures/religions killing one's self is considered an honorable way out. Certain religions (Islam, Christinianity, etc...) it is considered a mortal sin to commit suicide. So belief can play a role.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culture-conscious/201407/cultural-values-and-the-likelihood-suicide
Climate, as some of the posters in this thread have already pointed out, can be a factor as well. Countries that are often gray, rainy, and overall have dull weather, tend to have higher suicide rates. Also places in Northern hemispheres that long periods of very short daylight.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201506/climate-and-suicide
Suicide is a complex behavior that can have any number of contributing variables that change depending on culture, religion, geography, personality, social circle, and on and on.
>>7984668
second post best post
because you are a special snowflake, and more 'advanced' than others, OP
>>7984657
I am so turned on right now. I have problems.
>>7985666
she is disgustingly skinny yeah lol
Because in successful societies people already "kill" themselves to function in the democratic bureaucracy, while in shitholes these people still believe in traditional or charismatic leaders, having a meaning of life.
>>7984657
The mindset that breeds "success" is a mindset that's more industry focused than pleasure.
If you're not enjoying life, you're more likely to commit suicide than a person who can appreciate the simpler things in life without worrying about it detracting from their "success".
Also "developed" countries have TV. TV has ads. Ads are constantly telling you that you need their shit to be good enough and to feel good.
Less developed countries may have less physical resources or means to use them.
But we live in a mind prison.
We've convinced ourselves that money is the energy source that gets shit done, and we've lost faith in ourselves.
>>7984657
Actually I think a better question is: why don't more people kill themselves?
This could be answered pretty glibly with: well most all the people who kill themselves died off
But what mechanism exists in the people who don't kill themselves preventing them from doing so?
>>7985702
why dont more people get tied tubes and ball twists?
on sum reel dough nae bays
>>7984657
Stories are only interesting with conflict. If you had to struggle less, you'd be more bored and more susceptible to thinking life is meaningless and not worth continuing.
>>7984668
this. I was my happiest when I basically homeless
Rationing out my last cans of beans and top ramen was something else
>>7984657
Prosperity opens up a variety of means to kill yourself quickly and easily through technology, whether that tech was intended to kill or not.
