I get it, though. The US state and economy are antagonistic to its people. If you're just going to be funneled into bonded labor for some billionaire's vanity project and there is no joy or escape, why live? This is why FOXCONN has anti-suicide nets all around their labor compounds.
The suicide rate in the US is 14 people per 100K and has been steadily rising.You want less suicide, make the world better. Or don't and just hate the game
Yeah most conversations about suicide suck at least imo. Having had quite a history with suicidal thoughts, I always just kinda look like :| when looking at most suicide prevention stuff. I’m sure that these efforts are somewhat effective but they also can lead to guilt and shame in the intended audience. If only the world were to get better
Heh. I was depressed in 1974. I wasn't doomscrolling then.
If anything, doomscrolling validates the suspicions I had in the 80s that things are going very, very wrong while my parents, instructors, ministers, etc. are lying to me that they're not.
Counterpoint, killing yourself is letting the system win and you can find ways to not only make your life better, but also everyone else's by staying here.
I've long ruled that I cannot play or win by competition but collaboration. I, for one, believed my parents and teachers and ministers when they suggested we were trying to live in a society rather than a circus of gladiators massacring each other to the delight of elites.
There's a cute bit in the John Scalzi short story Morning Announcements at the Lucas Interspecies School for Troubled Youth in which the announcer (not the principal) expresses well wishes to, and high hopes for those students soon to be graduating, but noting one species who will, after graduation, be bussed to the downtown stadium to begin mating challenges that will leave nine out of ten of you dead... That's us. That's what we do. Jobs are fought over by dozens of qualified applicants, each of whom face hunger, the elements and law enforcement if they lose. We're playing musical chairs like it's a Squid Game.
I refuse to live in a society where, in order for my success and comfort, a dozen others must suffer and fail. I'm not, to paraphrase Vonnegut, a tin solder some rich kid got for Christmas. What greater glory is there in being a disposable, interchangeable, replaceable part in some billionaire's vanity project over choosing my own fate? If anything, the mess my corpse might leave on some state building's marble floor could serve to express that no, the system cannot continue as it does.
As it is, I do have reason to live to see tomorrow. There are people who care about me, who would grieve and suffer if I were to vanish. There are people who depend on me for emotional and practical support when I can't be there financially.
But we all do live in precarity. There are crises being managed in every ring of this circus. And for 80% of the US, this is normal and accepted.
It's is going to be an It's A Wonderful Life Christmas for my household and family in 2023; either things miraculously come together if luck comes and meets our efforts half-way, but we may find ourselves like a trapeze acrobat plummeting through the air unsure if there's a partner to catch us on the other side.
Whether I am caught safely or plummet without a net, the rest of the world will see it as all part of the show.