Now that is apologist if there was one: Hole fuck, really?? There is such a thing as making choices. You don't have to drive and text while listening to your iPod at the same time.... Seriously, this was one bad excuse... If you say they are exiting college with debts with no job/future and peak oil/coal/whatever, I say you might have a point, but too many choices.... [shaking head]
given an unlimited amount of freedom and liberty to do anything one wants, leads to chaos. Children need guidance, not insurmountable amount of freedom. So I say wynn has got a very strong argument.
Syzygys: Not fair. This part is very much to the point. Wynn: On the other hand, i have a problem with because there has never been a safe place. Ever, anywhere. It's an illusion, and there are plenty of adults (who ought to, and sometimes do, know better) to promise "Everything will be all right,"... if you ... ... believe on the Lord ... eat this pill ... study business administration ... take care of #1... ... join the armed forces ... vote for me .... buy insurance ... wear this scent ... lose weight ... eat this snack ... work harder ... no - smarter! ... carry a gun ... use this shampoo ... have your fortune told ... tell the truth .... love thy neighbor ... win this game ... and that contest ... don't get caught ... pray ... think ... grow a pair and it never is all right.
I can't tell if you're being serious. This is American slang (and perhaps other anglophone countries) referring to the male organs. These are customarily (but not entirely accurately, since women's bodies also produce testosterone) correlated with courage and even foolhardiness.
... and here we go again, as if the last thread I remember on this never happened. Actually, based on the answers I've seen above, most of Africa and Asia should be largely depopulated by now.
well, if we're talking about growing some balls: Why do people say "Grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive! If you really wanna get tough, grow a vagina! Those things take a pounding! - Betty White (but it may not have been)
Why fixate on that one example? I was merely illustrating the range of mixed and cross-purposed messages young people receive as "guidance" in difficult times. Unfulfilled promises and impossible demands. Absorbing all that could push anyone into a state of mental distress.
Please amplify. This thread is not easy to navigate so I'm not sure which "answers" you're referring to. BTW, Asia includes Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Armenia, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tibet, Mongolia, Nepal and many other countries, plus desolate Siberia. Those areas comprise an enormous percentage of the continent's land area, perhaps 50%. I'm not sure what your point is (not clearly seeing your referent) but population dynamics there has been considerably different from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, etc.
It's all about perception, Fraggle. I had a quick look for that earlier thread I remembered, but the search function seems a little borked at the moment for anything posted prior to the upgrade, so I can't help. Unless there is something I'm doing wrong, I am, after all, watching a movie and well under the influence of Merlot. In a nutshell, yes, Asia encompasses a rather wide area. Yet suicide trends seems to be higher in developed westernised nations than they are elsewhere, including those places where one might expect it to be... notably those you mentioned above. There was an article I remember referencing in answer to something Asguard said which pointed a rather chubby finger at the heart of the problem.
But improving. For the first time since anyone started keeping track, less than 50% of the population of Africa now live in poverty. China and India (which between them have a third of the earth's population) are experiencing major increases in per-capita GDP. So are smaller countries, notably Vietnam.
Sure. When only every other children die before the age of 2 instead of 80%, that is a huge improvement, although I wouldn't want to live in those conditions...
I've often wondered if growing up where fear of an early death is almost a given, would cut down on the number of suicides in that society? Just a guess but if you spend time fearing death, thinking about suicide might not be very high on your list of things to do.
Sub-Saharan Africa was one of the last regions to advance out of the Stone Age. Some populations were Neolithic (agriculture), others were Paleolithic (nomadic hunter-gatherers) when Europeans and Arabs began colonizing, along with some influence from Iron Age North Africa. To my knowledge it was the largest, densest Stone Age population at that time. Australia, Siberia and the Western Hemisphere north of the Rio Grande had very low population densities. At that time, with no vaccines and antibiotics, 80% infant mortality (before adulthood, which was about 13-14 in those days) was the norm everywhere and it was higher in dense populations. Even in 17th-century London 80% of babies may have died before age 2--I haven't looked that up but I'm sure they died before age 10. So the fact that the infant morality rate was at that level doesn't mean that the continent had slid backwards, merely that it had not advanced. Westerners tried to "save Africa," but without understanding the consequences of their efforts. They brought modern medicine and vaccines to the region, attempting to leapfrog the cultures from the Paleolithic to the Industrial Era in one generation--skipping (for many) the Agricultural Revolution, the rise of civilization, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age; each of these Paradigm Shifts had taken centuries or millennia for the rest of the world to adapt to. Stone Age people have large numbers of children: they have to so enough survive to keep the community from disappearing through attrition. But of course they don't understand this "reasoning," it's an instinct--look at how long it's taken the industrial world to learn to stop breeding itself into oblivion. So when their children began to survive into adolescence and even adulthood, they had no reason to suspect that they should stop having so many; it seemed like a blessing. Of course this blessing overwhelmed their economy, particularly their ability to grow food with pre-industrial technology. The colonial powers had divided the continent into arbitrary "countries" made up of fragments of rival tribes, so it was nearly impossible to establish a sense of community to solve these problems together. So instead of dying from malaria and dysentery, they starve to death. And of course the AIDS epidemic came along, courtesy of the colonial powers who established trade routes that cris-crossed the continent and allowed everyone to infect everyone else with whatever disease was going around. (The origin of the epidemic has been pinpointed to the Congo, a veritable Union Station of trade routes from which it even spread to other continents.) So the fact that the poverty rate in Africa has fallen below 50% probably means that conditions there are better than they have been in centuries. The same is true for the world at large. In this century, the number of people worldwide living in poverty has fallen below one billion. Obviously you can thank post-Mao economics in China for much of that. The new hybridization of communism with a little capitalism and a lot of Confucianism has catapulted them into relative prosperity. India is doing alright. Mexico, in one generation, has transformed itself into a middle-class country. Brazil now has the world's six-largest economy and the failing states of Europe are looking to them for help!
That's why I thought that in the 19th century suicide rates must have been lower. Maybe I am wrong, but when life is a struggle from birth, people try to keep up and appreciate the simple things of life...
That was also probably before WWI and WWII. It's a well known fact that combat vets are more likely to commit suicide.
Nice little essay there Fraggle, but it doesn't seem to say much at all regarding the incidence of suicide in Africa and Asia by comparison with western countries.
Not all combat vets. It appears that veterans from earlier wars were more resilient than those from the recent ones. See Malcolm Gladwell's article here. As some newer research in trauma and resilience shows (see George Bonanno's work), some of the central approaches of the past several decades of how to deal with trauma, were misguided (and even counterproductive), and that people are actually a lot more resilient than official psychology and mainstream culture have been giving them credit in the recent decades.
