Does anyone else think suicide/SI is a natural reaction to living in this capitalist dystopia?

[meles_inoris]

Question

 

[ravergirl]

Yes. I don't want to be alive to see what's going to happen as the climate gets worse and society starts to collapse.

 

[EmbraceOfTheVoid]

Sorry if I'm annoying people by always posting these quotes but they're highly insightful and answer your question.

"Living happily" itself is a myth. Nobody on this floating rock is consistently "happy" every single day unless there is something seriously neurologically wrong with them that makes them that way. Life itself is inherently suffering - this isn't some edgy edict, it's the fundamental nature of the human condition; we are animals, and moreso social animals, which, not unlike elephants, zebras, dolphins, cows, or donkeys, are biologically wired and adapted to chasing short-term fulfillment, and avoiding pain and suffering - to the degree we experience and remember negative feelings and experiences far, far deeper and longer than we do positive experiences. This is the telltale sign of our inescapable animal nature - the hardwiring that makes suffering so inherently unavoidable, and pleasure seemingly so elusive.

Boiling the phenomena of NEETdom down to "mental health" is a reductionistic fairy tale that completely ignores the context of modern life in favor of hyperindividualizing the consequences of that context down to the individual and leaving it there. Speaking of context - the factors you mention are not as much of an immunological force as you imagine. Our society is one rife with celebrity suicides, who so many see as the "winners" of our silly game - they have money, prestige, recognition, fulfillment, endless fancy toys and achievements - and yet still cannot escape the call to the void - which, if anything, speaks to the fact we spend our lives chasing things that really do not make our lives all that worthwhile in the end. Sure, it's nice to be clock in to your 9-5 every day and pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you're doing the right thing like everyone else, but this is the life of an obedient somnambulant - one we are conditioned for in this society. You know the script - go to school, work until you're old, save and scrimp the whole way through, retire, and go rot in an old folks home using the money you've hoarded your whole life. This might be a fulfilling life for an inanimate machine part that cannot feel and is not alive, but for a social animal that needs environmental enrichment and belonging and meaning to feel any kind of consistent fulfilment, it is a slow death.

This isn't to say NEETdom is some grand alternative - it is the final consequence of this meaningless life program - narcissized depression and almost total alienation, whereby one practically declares themselves dead to the outside world and escapes deeper and deeper inside themselves as a solace, until the crushing emptiness of isolation and loneliness destroys their ability to experience pleasure and often their will to live. This is typically because of the self-isolating shame that attaches itself to the status. As social animals, we need people in our lives to feel any degree of worthwhile. Interpersonal interaction injects our lives with a kind of meaning and fulfilment that all the technology, distractions and drugs cannot. Unemployment and NEETdom would not nearly be as bad if not for the immense social stigma, and if we could all expect to live in communities we felt a part of, or at the very least had friends who cared about us outside of our job title. Unfortunately, this is not the nature of our hyperindividualized, materialistic, and vain society whereby one increasingly derives their (narcissized) sense of self-worth and status from their ability to consume and brag about said consumption. Instead, we live in a time where over half of the population reports always feeling lonely and having few if any friends, 1/6 of us are on psychotropic drugs, and the suicide rate hasn't been this high in 30 years.

All the same - this doesn't make "successful" people failures. But it also doesn't make NEETs "failures", at least in any individual sense. The failure is society itself - in providing an insane sociocultural script that makes people incredibly sick; if I could call NEETdom anything, anything at all, I'd call it the canary in the coal mine for a society that is providing an age old lifescript that is no longer worthwhile, rewarding, or even meaningful in any sense - nor does it even guarantee the barest physical necessities for participation anymore; recall that wages have been stagnant for 40 years and we have wealth inequality levels that mimic those found prior to the Great Depression, what becomes all the more clear is that modern life is the new Great Depression. This is a dreadfully sick post-meaning society where mass shootings, panoptic surveillance, suicide, opiate abuse, loneliness, and alienation have become as commonplace as psychotropic drugs and psych diagnoses; which, if anything, says nothing more than that the very concept of "mental illness" is a desperate attempt by the system to hold on to it's collapsing validity by pointing at dissidents and shouting "they have some inherent biological illness that makes them this way!" As such, the realm of modern day psychology/psychiatry has become no more than another long arm of the corporatocratic, neoliberal police state, which has a part in allowing modern-day quality of life to continue it's decades long slow bleed to the sociopathic class - the wealthy and powerful.

We must think of NEETdom, depression, and a wide scope of psychological maladies as meaningful signals our bodies are sending us about the ways we conduct our lives nowadays, not as noise that is to be ignored and medicated away." -Stranger from the internet

I don't think there's a motive, atleast not one that is operating at a conscious level, per-se. People in any civilization are inculcated with a set of beliefs just as members of a cult - they are raised with a rather static lens they are taught is the "correct" way to experience, perceive, and make sense of reality; this can be something as simple as "things fall down because of gravity", to "money is a very important pursuit in life", or "communism is evil". Taught repeatedly both explicitly and implicitly, one begins to lose themselves in these messages, and the differentiation between "self" and this static perception becomes very fluid - an attack on this perception, even in the form of a piece of information that creates a stark juxtaposition, triggers a fear response, much like that of an animal encountering a predator. The idea is, we may have incredibly advanced technology, but we still operate psychologically at the level of tribespeople; we become incredibly attached to cultural belief systems the same way we attach to our mothers and fathers as children, even if they abuse and berate us.

This comes to the heart of the problem, in my mind. Our cultural apparatus no longer seems to have answers for us, and the chase of money, status, materialism, et al - the hollow idolatry of late capitalism - is failing writ large to satiate our existential fears, if in large part because the system pumping it out has become so corrupt and inequitable that it is losing its legitimacy, and with it, its ability to hold us under the "civilized" spell. But even so, you have billions who have been raised to believe in its wicked fairy tale, to see and judge themselves and others through its objectifying, atomizing, reductionistic lenses, and for the most part know no other way to perceive reality. This is a large part of why "mental illnesses", suicide, and childlessness have skyrocketed and continue to - these are perhaps natural reactions to perceiving reality accurately, beyond any cultural spell.

This said, how does one continue to exist in a world that is not only rapidly changing for the worse - where an extinction crisis is looming large not so far over the horizon, where one is more likely than ever to be socially isolated, exposed to toxic levels of pollution, live in a terribly unhealthy fashion, work an unrewarding, mundane job that barely pays enough - and NOT want to kill yourself, or at the very least be chronically depressed?

Well, the answer, which also includes the answer to your question, is to double-down and become even more insane in the ways of the culture. The role of culture itself is transcendence - to deny death itself and give life a sense of permanency; culture becomes the self and the self becomes culture, but by becoming so intertwined, one becomes a part of its hypervigilant immune system. The problem is, no one really benefits from this arrangement in the long run; but in the short run, the constant denial of reality keeps one in a state of blissful, willfully ignorant cognitive dissonance. To anyone not insane in the ways of our culture, anthropogenic climate change is the Sword of Damocles hanging over life itself, making everything we need to do to sustain life in modern civilization seem absurdly Sisyphisean.

And yet, the denial of reality serves a dual purpose - it allows one to sink into learned helplessness, and it allows one to avoid the existential crises that come with awakening to the fact they are utterly codependent and individually helpless (much like an abused child who ultimately conforms to its treacherous parents' whims, once it realizes they're the hand that feeds and it has nobody else). To illustrate, right now it is estimated some 60% of the world's population lives near a coastline, with nearly 2.4 billion people living and working within 100km, and some 634 million living only 10m above sea level. The majority of these individuals live in the mega-cities that themselves are the major arteries of modern civilization. These cities are neither sustainable nor self-sufficient, and depend on a fragile global logistics chain to continue functioning.

Imagine yourself to be a decently well-off middle class resident in one of these coastal regions, or cities. You have an advanced degree and a great white collar job - let's say you're a family practice physician at a small doctor's office and although you don't save much, you do make ends meet, have an alright social life, overall things don't seem too bad. You never struggle to put food on the table, you're relatively happy with your life, more or less. You feel "successful" in the eyes of your culture because of the two letters after your name, the size of your paycheck, the fact you "own" your property and a nice car from the last 5 years. You're the envy of your less fortunate friends and peers, who are struggling in the gig economy and paying $1100 for a bunk bed in a small room; they look at you and tell you, "you've made it, man!" - its a similar admiration you experience with the opposite sex, who perk up after you mention your career. So, things seem relatively stable in your life. Economic crises seem to come and go, the world seems to be getting scarier by the day but you don't notice much - sure, groceries are always getting more expensive and the packaged goods keep shrinking, sure, you keep seeing friends from your peer group drop off the map or appear in obituaries you scroll past on Facebook, regardless more and more of them are speaking openly of their "mental health" struggles, and sure, people seem to be driving a little crazier, more of your patients are uninsured or on Medicaid, and the weather seems to be more chaotic than ever. But for the most part, you get up in the morning, get dressed and drive to work like everyone else, and although you can't dismiss this tickle in the back of your mind that something isn't quite right, your life seems rewarding enough to keep the tickle repressed. You might get a surge of anxiety now and then - or maybe that's just another pothole on the slowly degrading, neglected highway you take to work, but eventually you forget it until the next time, and the next.

The point is, if you live in any measure of comfort like the above story, belief in the status quo IS your "self", it not only enables your life, it provides you a stable sense of identity and status. To consider climate change is to collapse that lens upon itself, reveal it as a dream, an illusion, and with it, everything you have come to see as fixed and rigid and sensible about your life, every answer you've ever had to those late night existential questions that keep you up. It is to awaken to the stark reality you are a helpless cog in a massive mechanism, who operates a machine you don't understand, that runs on a fuel you can't create yourself, to work a job that is only possible because of a global logistics chain, to shop at a grocery store full of food and drink from who knows where, made by who knows who, to return to your domicile in the evening powered by who knows what from who knows where - all you know is as long as you keep your bills paid, the lights will magically turn on, the food stays cold in your fridge, and you can veg out to the latest sitcom on Netflix after a long day at work. Besides, what could you really do about rising sea levels or a splitting polar vortex, individually?

If we return to the story, imagine yourself that person again - and you've brought up similar subjects with your friends, or your professional-class colleagues, but they tell you you're being a downer, so you eventually drop it, and maybe even begin doubt it's even real or that it matters at all. "The scientists will figure it out," you tell yourself, clutching the Bible that's actually a cellphone streaming the latest climate denial or techno-hopium to your eyes, as you drift off to a dreamless sleep. Anyway, you've got work in the morning and the clocks always ticking and the bills aren't gonna pay themselves.

It's far easier to accept the one reality that is farcical and mundane and be united with your atomized peers in that, to feel the power your status and money grants you, to do the steps of the dance of "normality" - than to stand completely alone in the other reality, in which you are a dependent child in an adult's body, subsisting in a world that is not only bewildering and complex beyond your imagination, but utterly terrifying and unpredictable beneath it all. In that reality there are no answers, only the fact that there doesn't seem to be a place for you in it, and your life is virtually unimaginable without the forms of modern civilization - the grocery stores, the gas stations, cars, two day shipping, fire and police departments. Most would sooner forget that is the world that is threatened and fading than imagine living in a world would it.

 

[SodaBaconWeed]

Yes. Jobs are hard to come by with low wages where you may end up evicted for being late on your bills. Constantly worried of the prospects of homelessness or ill health with no insurance putting you in debt. There's not enough being done to help those less fortunate and so the stress is unbearable leading to thoughts of suicide.

 

[Shinkansen]

each year approximately 1 million people die from suicide, because life as a modern human being sucks.

 

[Serenity]

Yes. The way I see it, the people who are really sick are those that get by in this society with a smile on their face, the people who can lie to themselves and everyone around them that "everything is ok" the way it is. In my opinion, the truly sick and deluded people are the ones who see all the selfishness, cheating, inequality, and evil in this world, and just go about their lives acting like everything is fine.

 

[Sinai Silence]

For decades now wages haven't increased proportionally with inflation. We have to pay more for less and work ourselves to the bone for peanuts. The top one percent will continue to monopolise wealth whilst everyone else fights for the scraps. Its no wonder no one wants to live in this society.

 

[Deleted member 17949]

kinda yes kinda no. In reality those of us with mental issues would have struggled no matter what situation we were born into, but there is also something to be said for whether modern society feeds into the depressive sides of people's emotions more. One definite issue with capitalism is the seemingly infinite choice and the feelings of obligation to go beyond the minimum of living an okay life and try to be something more.

 

[ravergirl]

For decades now wages haven't increased proportionally with inflation. We have to pay more for less and work ourselves to the bone for peanuts. The top one percent will continue to monopolise wealth whilst everyone else fights for the scraps. Its no wonder no one wants to live in this society.

Exactly. All that the previous generations have left me to enjoy is music, drugs, risky sex, and thoughts of sweet, sweet death.

 

[Abgrundanziehung]

Yes. But I'm glad it's actually become a serious conversation people are having even in the mainstream. Or at least the mainstream has to begrudgingly acknowledge how many of us are tired of the system. I'm a big supporter of democratic socialism and remember thinking if Bernie Sanders was elected president, and was actually able to make any of the changes to capitalism that he talks about, it would be interesting enough to stick around awhile longer. Things didn't quite pan out that way though...

Not trying to start an inflammatory political conversation. This post just reminded me how a major change in society for equality, strong social safety nets, etc would make life worth living for awhile for me at least

 

[EmbraceOfTheVoid]

Yes. But I'm glad it's actually become a serious conversation people are having even in the mainstream. Or at least the mainstream has to begrudgingly acknowledge how many of us are tired of the system. I'm a big supporter of democratic socialism and remember thinking if Bernie Sanders was elected president, and was actually able to make any of the changes to capitalism that he talks about, it would be interesting enough to stick around awhile longer. Things didn't quite pan out that way though...

Not trying to start an inflammatory political conversation. This post just reminded me how a major change in society for equality, strong social safety nets, etc would make life worth living for awhile for me at least

I bet people are wishing they voted for Bernie or Yang now considering what has happened to the economy. But hey, a single stimulus check will surely save people from homelessness!

 

[rata1]

op: i think it is normal to take apropriate measures against every threat against ourselves (ctb would be one). its an evolutional thing. capitalist dystopia can be one threat to our "lifes" or "ourselves". perhaps we even can be greatful as humans to be able to do it (technically speaking). whales in fishingnets arent able... or they just have a too strong si

 

[TAW122]

Yes, from the surface and for a lot of people, it is. This is because the conditions within the world we live in contribute or create the problems that we face in present, modern day (wealth gap, income inequality, human rights abuses, discrimination, and more).

 

[restingspot]

Suicide? Yes. Survival Instinct? No. SI is your body's last ditch effort to preserve itself to keep on living. It's completely biological, much like how agonal breathing is the body's way of trying to get oxygen to the brain, or how some women's bodies will calcify a dead child still in the womb to protect the mother's body (real shit, look it up). The human body is fucking metal.

 

[GravityUtilizer]

 

[ARW3N]

I don't think it's the only reason people kill themselves, but, yes, it's one of the reasons people decide to end it all. We have to constantly prove ourselves to others and are defined in terms of what we do for a living. Can you understand what absolute torture it would be for an animal to work for a living and sit exams in order to earn its right to be an animal? Take away the religious aspect of Buddhism and you can understand why Buddha walked out on his wife and kid.

 

[TotallyIsolated]

Yes, absolutely. I find suicidality a far more reasonable and relatable reaction to the world we live in than those who say they love life. How?

 

[catscradle]

yes.
that's why it's hard for therapists to understand, when you are faced with the threat of capitalist exploitation and the forms it takes (racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc) you can't just positive think it away

 

[Superdeterminist]

I don't know if capitalism is the source of all of our problems, or even most of them, but of course it does have it's flaws, some major, and many have suffered hugely under it. I think in a more general sense though, that existence is rife with so many potential problems, their exact nature varying, causing such great suffering, that expecting everyone to be content to simply live out all their days is unrealistic.

 

[ARW3N]

yes.
that's why it's hard for therapists to understand, when you are faced with the threat of capitalist exploitation and the forms it takes (racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc) you can't just positive think it away

Yes, absolutely! I don't need to narrate the sad history of the Native Americans, but they have the highest suicide rates. Women have been exploited and continue to be exploited as can be seen from the Harvey Weinstein scandal. I could continue my diatribe against modern capitalist life, but you get the gist of it.

 

[Jeff_The_Cursed]

I do know that earlier generations of workers enjoyed a better way of life for their servitude to "the man", and without having to have a college degree.

 

[Nymph]

Yes, that's why it's increasing

 

[Wisdom3_1-9]

I know it's definitely a contributing factor in my case.

SI is biological, though. I don't see how that connects to society. I think it goes counter to society actually. We want to leave this horrific culture, but we can't.

 

[ARW3N]

Yes, that's why it's increasing

Yes, you are absolutely right and it's increasing in the most industrialised nations.

 

[Aap]

I don't know. The 150 million people killed last century from communism probably weren't terribly content either. There is a good der speigel article comparing suicide in East v west Germany. Pro tip: it was much higher in East Germany.

 

[epic]

No, Capitalism is by far the best economic system for providing good living standards. Open a world map and mark all the countries which are capitalistic USA,Europe(except for healthcare),Saudi Arabia,South Korea,Japan al these countries have a much better standard of living than socialist or communist countries like Cuba,Vietnam,Bangladesh,Soviet Union(former). GDP , life expectancy, poverty rates are all better for capitalist countries.
The best example in today's times is China, after it's open door policy in 1970's and privatization of many sectors ( all capitalist policies), the country is going to emerge as an economic superpower in the near future. China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms.
Suicide is caused by a number of causes. It is difficult to pin it down to just "capitalism". Infact for the reasons stated above, an average suicidal person will be much better off, living in a capitalist country then any other economic system.

 

[Worthless_nobody]

Yes I think it contributes to it. Take the Un- United States for example...low non livable wages, high cost of housing, no healthcare options unless you have a great job and many full time jobs offer terrible insurance. So if you get severely sick here your choices are go in debt, suffer or die. A livable wage (meaning the person can live independently) capping the amount that can be charged for rent or housing, free healthcare for ALL, creating more jobs intead of automating them away would go a long way...it wouldn't stop suicide but it would at least allow people access to help...and a better quality of life.

The irony is I can get all sorts of things to ctb but I can't get one bit of government help to improve life...also it's sick and messed up how some states take better care of people but step accross an arbitrary line and your left with no options..no Medicaid nothing. As a person with health problems having access to healthcare would be life changing.

 

[Red Dog]

It's part of the West's Capitalists uncaring pattern. Not so blatant all over the world. Suicide is collateral damage to these heartless 'lizards'. Even in China the Google factories had the highest suicide rate in China and that was amongst young people....There used to be 'an unacceptable face of capitalism' in the West but that is long gone-along with that phrase that meant a little something 'the common good'.

 

[БойСвежий]

I don't know for sure it can be completely pinned down to Capitalism, although it's definitely not much better than any other political system. What I think it might boil down to is the fact many of the existing political systems are all poorly thought out by their very nature. We weren't meant to live like machines, period. Be it Capitalist/Communist. We are social animals who would be much better off imo if we would have just stayed as hunters/gatherers in some kind of modernized way, or maybe even not in a modernized way. If we all went extinct because we didn't have Hospitals, and modern healthcare for example, we would still feel a sense of universal engagement and belonging.

What maybe happens in modern times is that there are certain types of personalities that are suited for living in political system A,B,C and the rest all live in some kind of isolationalist nightmare where they're stigmatized, or worse, jailed/tortured/killed for not being a good fit. I'm aware hunting/gathering societies had immense suffering at times, and I may be completely wrong. To me though, it seems that a human hunting/gathering society would always have a universal sense of belonging, and much more social engagement for all members of such a society. In modern times it would bring immense suffering anyway, much more, because we've fucked the environment into the ground, and reached into the collective consciousness of every human way of life in every corner of the globe. How many people are still NPC'ing it when things are getting so obviously worse? Business as usual, it'll all burn down eventually though.

 

[ceelo]

You dont live in a capitalist dystopia, you live in a corporatist one, big difference.