busySo we use statistics to measure people breaking. Suicide and murder statistics are fairly useful, although it can be hard to gather all the relevant data. What we can see in the articles below is that these signs of human breakage are rising at alarming rates. We can also see indicators of what types of stress causes people to break in these ways.
Yana Kunichoff | Army Suicide Rates Hit Record and May Continue to Rise
Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: "Suicides among veterans and soldiers have reached a record high this year and are set to continue rising, a Pentagon press conference confirmed Tuesday. The announcement, coming on the day that the suicide rate for 2009 reached the record number of 2008, leaves advocates worrying about the troop escalation of the Obama administration and the measures the Army has in place to deal with the combat scars which leave no physical trace."
Nick Turse | Violent Deaths Are Now Following Evictions, Foreclosures and Job Losses
Nick Turse, AlterNet: "In 2007, Jason Rodriguez was fired from his position at an Orlando, Florida engineering firm and ended up taking a job as a 'sandwich artist' at a Subway restaurant. His salary was cut nearly in half and his debts mounted until, last May, he filed for bankruptcy, listing his assets at just over $4,600 and his liabilities at nearly $90,000. Although he lived only 30 minutes away, according to his former mother-in-law, America Holloway, Rodriguez barely saw his son. When the boy asked why his father didn't visit, Holloway said Rodriguez told him: 'Because I don't have any money. I don't have a job. I don't have anything to eat. When things get better, I'll come see you.' "
A responsible society tries to make life reasonably safe, comfortable, and productive for its members. That is the point of having a society in the first place, to make life better than living alone. So a good society tries not to break the people in it, and when the breakage rate is rising, looks for causes and takes action to stop those from causing such bad problems.
A suicide sends a message such as...
"You win; I fold. I can't keep playing this game. I have nothing left to play with."
"I quit. You suck, you're cheating, and I am leaving."
A murder sends a message such as...
"I have run out of energy to control my base nature."
"I have run out of desire to control my base nature, since nobody else seems to bother to control theirs."
"I have decided to leave, so I have no reason not to express my extreme displeasure toward certain individuals and/or society at large."
A familicide sends a message such as...
"Not only am I leaving, I'm taking my family with me, because I don't know what else to do."
"Not only am I leaving, I'm taking my family with me, because your society sucks so bad it is literally a FATE WORSE THAN DEATH."
And the idea of someone killing themselves and their entire family isn't unthinkable in America today: so many people are thinking of it and doing it that it now has its very own word in the English language. It's important enough to encode. That's appalling.
Now let's look at the wider implications. Maybe someone doesn't care about other folks committing murder or suicide; they're just failures, after all, and important people are competent enough not to get into that situation. So then, look at the collateral damage. Every soldier who dies on American soil is a soldier not available for deployment in combat or other service gratifying to the citizens. Every murder and violent crime makes America a little less safe for everyone -- you have to leave your home some time and breakage-inspired shooting sprees don't confine themselves to ghettos. Every murder, suicide, and other violent crime has a severe negative impact multiplied by the number of people who knew the victim(s) and in some cases extending to affect an entire town. In that fashion, someone else's breakage can lash back to cause grief for people who don't think they are connected and don't think they need to care -- maybe they have a friend or relative who lives near there or knew the person and is wondering, "Is this my fault? Did I miss some kind of clue?" forever. People so impacted thus have less energy, attention, and mental resilience to apply to their own challenges and that can make life harder for the people around them, so it keeps spreading. There are even more obscure effects: murders and suicides tend to be messy. Somebody has to clean that up, somebody who will likely be unsettled by it and in any case will not be available for other duties while mopping brains off the floor. And who's going to want to buy or rent a place where a murder or suicide happened? That's hard on the landowner.
It doesn't matter if you think the broken people are horrible for doing what they do. They are doing it, and we-all are paying the price. If we want that to stop, we are going to have to arrange things so that our society does not break people then step on the broken shards and hop around going "Ow! Ow! Ow! Why did you do that to me, you useless turd?"
November 21 2009, 19:03:53 UTC 11 years ago
Unfortunately, there can't be any laws mandating that everyone be nice to each other and refrain from mobbing, character assassination, and other horrible human practices. Even if we tried to write laws such as this, they would be ineffective. We can't even write message board guidelines that will get people to be civil to each other on the internet, although here's a remarkably complete example of what a set of rules like that would look like.
Since rules can't cover everything, many people turn to religion as "the answer," thinking that only love/fear of God, Christian values, etc., can possibly help people break the cycles of horrible behavior. This has been stated to me as fact many times.
Of course, from where I sit, religion and Christianity have been responsible for more than their share of horrors as well, so I don't find that "the solution" either. I do know that many would disagree with me, arguing that those instances were perversions of the original message of universal love preached by Christ. Still, I have this habit of looking at results... :-) and I'm not buying that a wholehearted embrace of Christianity would solve our country's problems. (Sorry, Dad!)
To me, "the solution" can only happen on a small scale, between and among small groups of people. Cultivating love, compassion, and tenderness within our own circles, and ensuring that "mobbing" and other horrible practices don't happen on our watch, is all we can do.
Hmm...
November 21 2009, 19:41:53 UTC 11 years ago
That is a fascinating and apt analysis!
The fact is, nobody is perfect and almost all people are greatly influenced by context. In ordinary circumstances most people are fine and functional; even in extraordinarily challenging situations, most people manage to get through. But there are always limits on endurance. So in each group, there will be some number of people who could potentially explode outward under extreme stress; some who would implode into suicide; and some who would implode into catatonia.
>>Unfortunately, there can't be any laws mandating that everyone be nice to each other and refrain from mobbing, character assassination, and other horrible human practices. Even if we tried to write laws such as this, they would be ineffective. <<
People have tried that. Unfortunately, this is an area where it is especially true that, by the time you need a law for something, it's usually past the point where having a law would help. These things need to be managed on a social rather than legal level; that is, society must teach skills and support behavior for decency rather than barbarism. So for instance, if an adult watches children picking on each other and says, "Well, boys will be boys," that encourages inhumane behavior. If the same adult instead breaks up the attack and says, "It is not okay to amuse yourselves by hurting each other," and then presents some conflict-resolution options, that encourages decent behavior.
>>We can't even write message board guidelines that will get people to be civil to each other on the internet, although here's a remarkably complete example of what a set of rules like that would look like.<<
People can and do create civil environments online, it just takes work to do that. I've been studying this for ... gosh, at least 15 years now. Each community, including online ones, has a set of standards that members are expected to uphold. These may be declared up front or evolve gradually over time. An online venue will not contain trolling, spamming, sexual harassment, etc. if its members do not practice those things and quickly squelch outside encroachments. I've seen a variety of venue guidelines that work, so this can be done.
>>Of course, from where I sit, religion and Christianity have been responsible for more than their share of horrors as well, so I don't find that "the solution" either.<<
Yes. Spirituality can be used for wholesome or unwholesome purposes. I have seen it cause many problems, some of which I then had to clean up after.
>>To me, "the solution" can only happen on a small scale, between and among small groups of people. Cultivating love, compassion, and tenderness within our own circles, and ensuring that "mobbing" and other horrible practices don't happen on our watch, is all we can do.<<
I think that's where it begins, but if it ends there, we aren't going to make much progress. On a large scale, some societies are simply much more violent than others, based on the choices that people make on a cultural level. So if we want a wholesome society that treats people decently, then we have to find ways of defining, communicating, and spreading those values so that they become a widespread part of the culture -- not just our individuals families or companies or churches. That is hard work, but it too must be possible because people have done it before. No society is perfect, but some of them have turned into quite nice places to live. Others have turned into pits of horror. It helps to study good and bad examples, and try to figure out what they did, so that we can apply leverage in a positive direction.