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The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

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Re: The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

#31

Post by warfangle »

exDM69 wrote: post #18

I live 60 degrees northern latitude in a country with bad suicide statistics and the winters do get pretty harsh on you mentally. And there's still millions of people living norther than I do. Highest suicide rates occur during the spring, around the vernal equinox not around the darkest time of the year. If you've never experienced the northern spring where each day is 10+ minutes longer than the previous, you'll ne…

When people are really depressed, they don't kill themselves. Because they have no energy to.

Once they go on antidepressants, they go on suicide watch. It's the most dangerous time. Because they'll still be depressed, but they'll finally have the energy to get up. And they just might have the energy to do themselves in.

Re: The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

#32

Post by Symbiote »

julianpye wrote: post #10

I love, love, love Greenland. Best place I have ever been to. When I was spending time in Tasiilaq, I was told that the breakdown happened because of the fallout from the Greenpeace activities against seal clubbing in Canada. This destroyed the market for fur products and led to social welfare from Denmark and alcoholism. Anyway, when in Greenland it is politically correct to eat seal and whale, once you find out how…

Seeking whale meat to tourists is completely against the spirit of subsistence whaling, and the reason Greenland lost its official whaling quota in 2013.

I'm thinking of visiting, but there's no way I'll be eating whale.

Re: The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

#33

Post by pm90 »

rntz wrote: post #15
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fascinating long read, which gives a lot of insight in the struggles of daily life in these remote parts of our world I find articles like this highly annoying. I see the headline, think "if it's not the darkness, I wonder what is" and click the link expecting to find the answer. Instead of the answer, however, I get a fluffy human-interest piece that I simply do not care about. How about we stop with crap like thi…

From the article: > Like native people all around the Arctic — and all over the world — Greenlanders were seeing the deadly effects of rapid modernization and unprecedented cultural interference. [...] Between 1970 and 1980, the suicide rate there quadrupled to about seven times the U.S. rate (it's still about six times higher). > Her observations are in line with something psychologists and sociologists think is fun…

> find it difficult to cope with the routine heartbreak of dating

If there was one thing that my conservative culture had taught me better, It would be this. Even knowing this doesn't make the process any easier although there is some comfort in knowing that many others face this situation as well.

Re: The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

#34

Post by warfangle »

romanovcode wrote: post #13

This is wrong and have nothing to do with "successful white people" and quite frankly your remark is racist. Their ancestors were hunters and this gave them purpose in life as well as good diet which led to much happier life. Now they have nothing to do except watch TV and sit on their couch and eat bad food. Of course they are unhappy, you would be too.

Racism requires oppression, as it's a systematic way of oppression based on race.

Are Inuits (or gp's comment) coming from a place of power where they can oppress white people? No?

Then that comment wasn't racist, fuckwad.

Re: The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

#35

Post by dirktheman »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #27
ethanbond wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well facts are usually more difficult to arrive at than you apparently think. Putting forward a hypothesis requires facts and a ton of "fluff." It seems to me that you're not actually interested in learning anything, you just want some factoids. Try the CIA Factbook.

I'm simply suggesting they structure the story different. Begin with a short abstract in which you present your conclusions. Then follow up with how you arrived at that conclusion for people who want to go in-depth. Basically the way scientific papers are organised.

tl;dr: Astronaut battles AI with hidden agenda, defeats AI, gets abducted by aliens.

"The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended..."

Not every story should be structured as a scientific document.

Re: The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

#36

Post by Aaargh20318 »

dirktheman wrote: post #20
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fascinating long read, which gives a lot of insight in the struggles of daily life in these remote parts of our world I find articles like this highly annoying. I see the headline, think "if it's not the darkness, I wonder what is" and click the link expecting to find the answer. Instead of the answer, however, I get a fluffy human-interest piece that I simply do not care about. How about we stop with crap like thi…

To be fair, the title doesn't say it will tell you why the suicide rate in Greenland is so high... Fact is, it isn't completely clear why the rate is so high. Rapid modernization, decades of Danish control, a disappearing culture/way of life and lack of mental health facilities can all be named as factors. Sorry were annoyed and feel like you've wasted your time on a well written, well researched human interest piece…

>To be fair, the title doesn't say it will tell you why the suicide rate in Greenland is so high...

It is highly suggestive that it will though.

> Fact is, it isn't completely clear why the rate is so high.

Then why bother writing an article about it at all ?

> And yes, sometimes you need to know just the bare facts.

No, I always want just the bare facts. Anything else simply isn't relevant. You may call it "well researched human interest" I call it filler material. It feels like a high-school kid trying to make the minimum word count for an essay.

Re: The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

#37

Post by JoeAltmaier »

warfangle wrote: post #34
romanovcode wrote: post #13

This is wrong and have nothing to do with "successful white people" and quite frankly your remark is racist. Their ancestors were hunters and this gave them purpose in life as well as good diet which led to much happier life. Now they have nothing to do except watch TV and sit on their couch and eat bad food. Of course they are unhappy, you would be too.

Racism requires oppression, as it's a systematic way of oppression based on race. Are Inuits (or gp's comment) coming from a place of power where they can oppress white people? No? Then that comment wasn't racist, fuckwad.

Redefining words like Racism is a common tactic of social activists to create an in-group and "all the other idiots". I reject that artificial redefinition.

We all understand racism. Its when somebody puts somebody else down based solely on their race. That's it. The other stuff has other names, like "institutional racism" for instance.

Re: The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

#38

Post by Aaargh20318 »

coldtea wrote: post #16
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fascinating long read, which gives a lot of insight in the struggles of daily life in these remote parts of our world I find articles like this highly annoying. I see the headline, think "if it's not the darkness, I wonder what is" and click the link expecting to find the answer. Instead of the answer, however, I get a fluffy human-interest piece that I simply do not care about. How about we stop with crap like thi…

> Instead of the answer, however, I get a fluffy human-interest piece that I simply do not care about. [...] How about we stop with crap like this, I don't need to hear a story, just the facts please. I've wasted several minutes on this story and still have no clue what the real reason is. If you don't care for the lives affected by the phenomenon, then why would you be caring for the reason? That's something even le…

> If you don't care for the lives affected by the phenomenon, then why would you be caring for the reason?

I'm interested in the mechanism, not some anecdotes about one or two specific people. I like complicated systems and how they work, this interest me because it could give me additional insight in how the human machine works.

I don't need to be interested traveling to be interested in how a plane stays in the air or how the engine of a car works.

Re: The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

#39

Post by Aaargh20318 »

dirktheman wrote: post #35
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm simply suggesting they structure the story different. Begin with a short abstract in which you present your conclusions. Then follow up with how you arrived at that conclusion for people who want to go in-depth. Basically the way scientific papers are organised.

tl;dr: Astronaut battles AI with hidden agenda, defeats AI, gets abducted by aliens. "The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended..." Not every story should be structured as a scientific document.

No, fiction shouldn't, because the whole point of fiction is to entertain.

The point of news it not to entertain but to inform.

Re: The Arctic Suicides: It's Not the Dark That Kills You

#40

Post by kbart »

trhway wrote: post #3
dirktheman wrote: post #2

Fascinating long read, which gives a lot of insight in the struggles of daily life in these remote parts of our world. And no, it's not just the dark that makes people commit suicide. Of the top 10 countries with the highest suicide rates, only Lithuania can be considered as having a somewhat gloomy winter. The rest of the countries all get more sunlight (Guyana, Suriname and Sri Lanka for instance) than the countrie…

didn't know about Lithuania and googled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Lithuania#Statistic... - the lowest rate was in 1990, on breaking up from USSR and getting independence back.

I'm from Lithuania and suicide is really a big problem here. It's being discussed much why it's happening in media as well as professionally, but there's no clear consent. Some key reasons that comes up most often:

1) Society changes. After breakup with USSR in 1990, all collective farms were dismantled and majority of industry closed or restructured what caused a lot of people lose jobs and forced to change profession. This was hard/impossible for some, especially older people, who were used to work the same job for years or even the whole life. In first years it was partly offset by the excitement of independence, but as years went by, excitement faded away and problems remained. Even bigger impact was the mental change that you are responsible for your and your family well being and there's no longer government that takes care of every aspect of life. Some people still can't wrap their minds about this fact and blame government everything. Also, there are very few jobs in smaller towns/villages, so those who could, already fled to cities or abroad and those who couldn't are doomed to poverty which leads to the second reason.

2) Alcoholism. Lithuanians, as most northlings, are overly serious (if you smiled to strangers, locals around usually look suspiciously or even aggressively) and prone to depression what combined witch financial difficulties many faces (caused by 1) often leads seeking relief in alcohol that worsens depression even further.

3) Identity crisis (not discussed very often, mostly my thoughts). We are still in transitional state, where no longer belong to east, but not yet fully converted to western way of life. We lack self-dependence, motivation, initiative and risk taking attributes common for democratic westerners and keep looking back for somebody to lead and hold hand (the same strong leader cult as in Russia today). We are like a teen who fled his parent's home -- don't know where to go and what to do.

These problems aren't unique and many post soviet countries have similar issues, though some simply cope with them better than others. Anyway I'm optimistic, because progress can be clearly seen in many areas (Lithuania has one of the fastest growing economies in EU) and many young people are doing better than their parents.

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