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?"
Re: ...
November 21 2009, 19:53:57 UTC 11 years ago
In our past disagreement over health care, for example, I do not dispute that it would be a human good if we could magically give every person excellent health care. My disagreement has to do with practical means of accomplishing this in a society laced with assumptions, historical facts, bureaucratic inertia, capital and human investment, and last but not least, mythology and moral panics.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
David Gerrold modifies this slightly: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet domestication." (emphasis added)
I feel that the truth is somewhere in between.
We live in one of the most enlightened, kind and benevolent civilizations that has ever existed on this planet. This gives people like you and me the leisure to glimpse not only how far we've come, but how very much farther we have to go.
Another way to look at it: as humankind we are all under inexorable sentence of death, living between the pronouncement of the verdict and its actual carrying out. Sometimes events in life put this into sharper relief: being diagnosed with cancer, losing a loved one, being a witness to an atrocity of history such as the Holocaust or Rwanda, events on the battlefield of the soldier or the "streets" of the police officer.
I would add to your lists of escape the following phenomena:
-- alcohol use as a legal drug, which a few make large profits from despite enormous social costs (half of persons arrested and half of persons treated in the emergency room are under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time)
-- the shifting role of marijuana and its creeping legalization for the useless (i.e. "medical marijuana") but not for the workers
-- illegal drug use among all segments of society, but especially heroin as a prolonged means of relatively painless suicide, cocaine and other stimulants as "superchargers" for the elite classes to try to keep up with their workloads, and both crack and meth as the self-medication of the poorest and least capable of other means of escape
-- the mass increase in the use of antidepressant and other psychiatric medications, prescribed legitimately for what can only be called an epidemic of depression, stress disorders, anxiety and other conditions
-- the dramatic rise in addiction to both the Internet and to online gaming / virtual reality such as Worlds of Warcraft and Second Life
Suicide can be thought of as the canary for how much stress a population can take, so your analysis is apt on this point.
In an environment filled with death, Frankl had the opportunity to observe both passive suicide (failing to do the utmost to survive, such as choosing to share food with another prisoner) and active suicide (self harm, resistance and/or escape attempts). The latter was exceedingly rare, surprisingly so given the conditions, although historical cases do exist.
Murder-suicide is a familiar phenomenon although again very rare. Individual cases tend to get much more attention, such as Jason Rodriguez in Florida and the shooter at Fort Hood.
Violence as a reaction to stress has three places to express itself: public crime on the streets, workplace violence, and domestic violence in the home. Guess which one is least reported, easiest to get away with, and has the most long term damaging effects for the victim, society and even the offender?
http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet(National).pdf
>> And who's going to want to buy or rent a place where a murder or suicide happened?
You, if you ever stay at a motel or hotel. This is a sufficiently common occurrence in the hotel industry that they have established procedures and clean-up crews on call.
Re: ...
November 21 2009, 23:33:20 UTC 11 years ago
I don't think it's possible to magically give everyone excellent health care. It is demonstrably possible to provide everyone with reasonably good health care, because various other nations have done that. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to make a big improvement in a nation's health and effectiveness. I believe this is necessary because the system we have now is ruinously expensive and Americans needlessly suffer from many health problems which could easily be treated, which impairs their ability to function as useful citizens. If don't find some effective solution to this mess, our health and effectiveness will continue to dwindle until the nation as a whole becomes dysfunctional and/or dissolves in revolution, collapse, etc. These things have happened to other nations in the past and could happen to us, even if people believe that is not so.
>>We live in one of the most enlightened, kind and benevolent civilizations that has ever existed on this planet. <<
I used to believe that about America. I no longer do, although I wish America would live up to those ideals again. Measurable factors, such as longevity, health, quality of life, freedom of press, etc. indicate that numerous other countries have surpassed America in these regards. So then, there are plenty of countries which are more enlightened, kind, benevolent, and civilized right now.
Plus some of the ones the European invaders wiped out when they first landed.
Re: ...
November 21 2009, 23:34:04 UTC 11 years ago
Very apt.
>>cocaine and other stimulants as "superchargers" for the elite classes to try to keep up with their workloads,<<
This indicates one of many ways America is operating beyond safe levels. If many people require drugs just to keep up with everyday obligations, then the demands are too high and will soon destroy the people. "Turbo" is meant to be pushed and released for a quick surge of energy, not held down until it melts the engine.
>> the mass increase in the use of antidepressant and other psychiatric medications, prescribed legitimately for what can only be called an epidemic of depression, stress disorders, anxiety and other conditions<<
Similarly, these are indications of burnout, damage, and dysfunction. If you demand more out of people than you put resources in, then you will use them up. No matter how big the population, it is still finite, and the supply of functional members can be a lot less than the warm bodies.
>> the dramatic rise in addiction to both the Internet and to online gaming / virtual reality such as Worlds of Warcraft and Second Life <<
That's an example of people saying "Your society sucks, I don't want to be a part of it, and I'm going to spend my time in this other one instead." When that happens, it indicates that your society has failed to meet people's needs so that they are willing to consider other options to get their needs met. This might be of concern to you if you hate other social systems that might compete with yours. Because if desperate people see an alternative to their suffering, they can stampede, and if you are in the way they will mash you to jam underfoot.
>>Violence as a reaction to stress has three places to express itself: public crime on the streets, workplace violence, and domestic violence in the home. <<
Domestic violence is a large and growing problem, ubiquitous in the military. I've posted a few articles on this topic. It is greatly worsened by things like post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
>>You, if you ever stay at a motel or hotel. This is a sufficiently common occurrence in the hotel industry that they have established procedures and clean-up crews on call.<<
If I knew that a particular room or hotel had hosted a murder or suicide, I'd prefer to stay elsewhere. Probably so would many people. However, I was mainly thinking about houses, apartments, restaurants, etc. where local awareness is easier to pin on a place and makes them harder to sell or rent. And it can affect a whole town, if a crime gets enough attention.