Suicide: Modern Culture's Blight

In the land that commercialized positive thinking and put pill bottles in every drawer, depression has emerged as the most debilitating condition we face.

This is what I was feeling when I watched that silly video "This is Water."  Professor Wallace's photo is featured in this article.

Here is one of the most fascinating articles I have ever read in the mainstream media, both well-written and informative.  I encourage you to read it:

The Suicide Epidemic by Tony Dokoupil

Addiction and suicide are like twins separated at birth.  Both result in the destruction of the person.  The only difference is in the last of the three 'factors' of suicide which addiction does not bear:

"I am not afraid to die."

Addicts waste their lives precisely because they are afraid to die.  They live in horrendous circumstances because they lack the courage and confidence to 'end it all' without things getting worse.  I would say that many addicts are saved by a worse hopelessness than the suicide.  That is, even death won't solve anything.  Only the addiction can take away the pain, and death means an end to the relationship with the addictor.

Here's another factor:

When teen suicide was on the rise in the 1970s and 1980s, society was stung by the conclusion that something must be wrong with the way we live, because our children don’t want to join us. The question today is different, but just as unsettling. With people relinquishing life at its supposed peak, what does that say about the prize itself? What’s gone so rotten in the modern world? In her next bundle of research, Phillips hopes to pinpoint the massive, steam-rolling social change that matters most for self-harm. She has a good list of suspects: the astounding rise in people living alone, or else feeling alone; the rise in the number of people living in sickness and pain; the fact that church involvement no longer increases with age, while bankruptcy rates, health-care costs, and long-term unemployment certainly do.

Yes, church involvement helps keep people from suicide.  Why?  How many of us have denounced the 'insensitive' ways traditional Christianity has dealt with suicide?

The Church will not offer a full funeral for a suicide in part to make sure everyone has a healthy fear of suicide.  The modern therapeutic culture has gone to great lengths to destigmatize suicide even within Christianity.  Now, we offer 'life celebrations' for those who kill themselves, then wonder why they kill themselves.

Why, indeed.

You do not offer the victor's crown to anyone else but the champion.  When victory status is afforded to the suicide, and we erase the notion that suicide is a failure that God despises, then it becomes a serious option.

We should be afraid to die.

Recovery from addiction rests on this principle.  If you are not afraid to die, then suicide is a much easier option than years and years of self-discipline and pain.  An addict can 'tap out' of life and take a short cut to eternal rest without the inconvenience of living a sober lifestyle not driven by self-will.

Atheism and the suppression of Christianity are also largely responsible for the high suicide rate.  By preaching utter nothingness after death and the meaninglessness of life aside from hedonism, the long path towards old age and its burdens seem to be a hopeless prison.  The middle-aged high-risk category are confronting the fact that they are getting too old to have the adventures of youth and their choices are becoming more limited.  Self-gratification becomes harder, and so death looks like a great way to exit an non-enjoyable existence.

Cradle-to-grave public services make many of us feel 'disposable.'  We are no longer necessary for the survival of others.  We are now in an era where the government provides more support for children than parents, in the form of free or subsidized education, along with generous welfare benefits.  No one is 'indispensable,' and we are even taught now that mom and dad are easily swapped with mom and mom or even no mom or dad at all.  Love is just a kind of amorphous putty that can occupy any number of shapes.

It will be harder to get people into addictions treatment the more that the materialist mindset takes hold and people are taught to suppress their natural desires for life and their fear of death.  The more pervasive these beliefs become, the more untimely, self-imposed death we will see.