4 ms·
And yet it has a much higher suicide rate. What gives?
by dilap 4y ago
And yet it has a much higher suicide rate. What gives?
- api 4y agoAnd a way lower birth rate. It’s like it’s paradise but lots of people don’t want to live in it or bring new life into it. This reminds me of the equally paradoxical longing some have for disasters. You can see this in disaster movies which succeed by playing on this paradoxical longing for “something to happen.” I also think this is a driver behind nihilistic fascist politics. It’s sort of like “Let’s create hell on Earth so we can finally be men!” I think we are wired for a much more hostile environment and our brains don’t know what to do with peaceful abundance. We get bored and either depressed or “otaku.”
- chrischen 4y agoGenerally poorer and less developed countries have much higher birth rates, so I'm not sure the "bringing life into paradise" reason is why people have kids.
- api 4y agoThat’s kind of related to what I’m getting at. Maybe there is a right amount of adversity. Too much adversity leaves people broken and traumatized and with learned helplessness. Too little leads to the kind of malaise you see in the most developed nations. But it has to be real adversity, not fake or cooked up by warmongers and fascist loons. This is one reason I am such a supporter of things like space exploration. We need stuff to do that is both hard and real.
- webnrrd2k 4y agoYour comment, from the paradoxical longing part on, has a strong vibe of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning [1]. I think that you might like it. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us_Meaning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us...
- Hamuko 4y agoThe US actually has a higher suicide rate than Japan in according to World Health Organisation data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
- dilap 4y agoInteresting, thanks. It looks like over the last 20 years Japan has made a lot of progress on suicide, and the USA, sadly, has been going the wrong direction -- and they've recently crossed over. So both USA and Japan are higher than the European average, and much higher than an (apparently) happy European country, like Italy. I do think my broader point stands, which is maybe the things we think makes a country nice aren't necessarily the things that will make people feel happy and satisifed.