So lets talk about suicide. I wanted to do a stint about it a while back but never got the chance due to school work/tf2/whatever, but this blog post made me think again about this social phenomenon.
The main reason I feel that I am qualified to comment on this phenomenon is because I took an introductory sociology module last semester, and suicide to sociology is what 1+1=2 is to mathematics. If you don’t understand suicide, you will epic fail the rest of your sociology course. This is because one of the founding fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim, actually published a ground breaking book about sociology explicitly titled Suicide in 1897. Interestingly, even though theoretical knowledge about suicide has been established more than a century ago, there is no effort being made to educate the greater masses about suicide.
Sociologists, being scientists, train themselves to elminiate bias or “think without emotion” when studying social phenomenon. This is easy to illustrate if you have studied physics. A person who has not studied physics will make vague statements about our physical world like “I don’t think a ball comes to a momentary rest when it is thrown upwards” while a physicist would be able to dispute this statement with formal proof. Similarly, a person who is not trained to think sociologically (or a layman) will make vague, speculative and often unfair statements about suicide such as “suicide is for the weak-minded” and “suicide is nothing more than the most selfish form of complaining ever invented by the juvenile mind“.
Social scientists prefer to explain social phenomenon on a structural basis. There are 3 relevant forms of suicide for modern Singapore society:
-Egoistic suicide. This occurs when one’s stake in society is so small, that the person’s death will not affect society much apart from those who know the person closely. This type of suicide occurs mainly among teenagers and divorced men.
-Altruistic suicide. This occurs when a person is so integrated and absolutely loyal to the society one lives in that one does not feel any need for individual gratification. This type of suicide occurs most often among elderly folk (who feel they are a burden) and soldiers (kamikaze pilots).
-Anomic suicide. This occurs when the institutionalised goals of society do not match that of the individual. The individual does not identify with established norms within society and thus feels no need to continue to pressure oneself with such norms. Anomic suicide rates usually spike during economic recessions.
Here are some interesting facts about suicide:
-Men are more likely to commit suicide than women.
-Young men are the most likely to commit suicide in modern society.
-Suicide rates are higher for those widowed, single and divorced than married.
-Suicide rates are higher for people without children than with children.
-Suicide rates are higher among Protestants than Catholics.
Is it fair to say that women are stronger-willed than men because they are less likely to commit suicide? This type of statement is biased, speculative and generally untrue. Women are less likely to commit suicide because most women feel that they have a stronger stake in society and this itself lowers the chance of egoistic suicide. It has absolutely nothing to do with willpower. The uncanny truth about some egoistic suicide is that they are more often selfless rather than selfish acts. It may perhaps be selfish for the people who know the suicidee personally, but does not shake society much as a whole. This is why you never see CEOs, or people with positions of great responsibility, commit suicide. It really, really does not have to do with their willpower.
Yes the truth is, society doesn’t care about those who are close to you. Society cares about your impact on her. She is a living, and breathing thing. There is a larger truth to how society operates and not many may want to see it, but those who do penetrate this barrier will be able to make greater sense of why they behave thus in our modern society.
For those who would like to learn more about suicide, religion, and other social phenomenon in general, I would recommend you to do an introductory sociology course in your nearest university. The module code for the NUS one would be SC1101E. It was overall an enlightening experience and unless you have something against essays, it wouldn’t hurt to do it at all.
wow, thats a very interesting (and educational?) take on suicide, haha.
suicide to soci is like 1+1=2 to maths? sounds a bit morbid, cos that means sociology is built upon why people commit suicide (or why people DONT commit suicide) ? lolol. sounds quite quirky eh.
and u no longer updating ur anime blog alr isit
nononono wad im saying is Suicide is the basic social phenomenon that one must undersdtand in a introductory sociology course. It illustrates the functionalist school of thought very well, and is thought provoking as it deals with human life. Once you get suicide, you can apply similar analysis to religion, social stratification etc. etc.
And nope no time for anime blog. And the blogosphere is saturated anyway; don’t want to add to the saturation.
“Men are more likely to commit suicide than women” is inaccurate. Women ATTEMPT suicide much more often than men, but the actual death rate as a result of the suicidal act is higher in men. I took a “Death and Dying” sociology class and almost everything is pretty familiar to me as well.
I usually don’t approve comments that don’t provide a proper email address. This is to facilitate possible personal discussion and reduce the potential of anomic responses. Regardless, it is still true that suicide statistics point towards higher rates of overall male suicide as compared to women, even if more women attempt to commit suicide.
Hello there a friend told me you linked me in this blogpost so I just had to read it haha!
Anyway actually recently a German billionaire called Adolf Merckle committed suicide, google it and you’ll find a good article about it on NYtimes.
Ok very morbid, calling it a ‘good’ article!
But anyway yeah I guess prominent figures with responsibilities DO commit suicide as well maybe after feeling like they have lost complete control over their responsibilities. From the take of someone who has never done but is very interested in sociology.
P.s. the part where you linked me at “suicide is nothing more than the most selfish form of complaining ever invented by the juvenile mind“ makes it sound like I was the one who said it lol!
P.s. we have quite a few common friends!
The part where I linked is directed to the comments portion directly. I usually don’t hold the blogger responsible for the comment itself, but rather the person who commented. I’ve blogged quite a bit on a thematic blog, fighting for blog hits and reputation, and it is kind of compulsory to learn such blogging techniques.
As for the anomaly you brought up, there will always be a few people that fall through the social net and commit suicide. But the amount of people that hold positions of great responsibility that commit suicide is incredibly small compared to those that do not hold positions of great responsibility. In science and mathematics, we use the term “negligible” when considering these anomalies in our theories.
And actually, no, I’m not interested in reading up more about suicide. I think I had about 30 pages of suicide in my reading package, together with over a 100 pages on religion. Even though I’m not a religious person, I can safely say that I know more about religion than the average layman ^^