The Highest Suicide Rate in the World • Hacker News Board

Re: The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

#141

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 8:07 PM UTC

TimTheTinker wrote: post #95

japhyr wrote: post #45

The history of alcoholism and suicide in Alaska goes back to the time of first contact with outsiders. When westerners first contacted Alaska Native tribes, those "explorers" tended to be people who were after valuable furs, and missionaries. These people were usually a mix of Russians from the west and Americans from the south. The outsiders brought with them diseases like tuberculosis and influenza, and these disea…

> Almost all of the missionaries blamed the survivors for what happened. They said their people died because they worshipped the devil. They took the surviving children away, telling parents they weren't fit to raise their own children. They banned the use of Native languages, and all aspects of Native culture such as dancing, regalia, ceremonies, and more. All of this has led to despair and a disconnect with a rich…

[deleted]

Re: The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

#142

Post by _-david-_ » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

leesec wrote: post #135

_-david-_ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't explain why places that haven't been trampled on by Americans would have high suicide rates. South Korea and Japan both have pretty high suicide rates for example. Also, a large chunk of the suicides are young people who didn't leave through the eras where oppression occurred. I am not sure why somebody would commit suicide because something happened to their ancestors.

>It wouldn't explain why places that haven't been trampled on by Americans would have high suicide rates. South Korea and Japan both have pretty high suicide rates for example. I wasn't trying to say anything about anywhere else. >Also, a large chunk of the suicides are young people who didn't leave through the eras where oppression occurred. I am not sure why somebody would commit suicide because something happened…

How is oppression still occurring?

Re: The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

#143

Post by ianleeclark » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 8:17 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #112

ianleeclark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s the lazy “blame the violent colonialists” approach though. Crazy to think that hundreds of years of violence and extraction had nothing to do with this, and it's just due to cultural faults. There's no world in which their legacy of oppression wouldn't affect their present day material conditions. > Modern technology coming around and wiping out the need for most of your tribe to hunt and gather is going to…

It's certainly not impossible that we've blinded ourselves to other problems by being so quick to blame all of their woes on colonialism however. The real world is rarely so simple. I find it a bit condescending when we try to pin all of the blame on western influence in the past, when these people are quite capable of fucking up their own lives without your help thank you very much. The idea that the old hunter-gath…

> I find it a bit condescending

Cool.

> when we try to pin all of the blame on western influence in the past, when these people are quite capable of fucking up their own lives without your help thank you very much.

Guess we'll never know because of all the rape and pillage.

I'll never understand how people come to so deeply fetishize the subjective that they're entirely willing to cast off the shackles of the objective.

Re: The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

#144

Post by ianleeclark » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 8:20 PM UTC

natalyarostova wrote: post #136

ianleeclark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s the lazy “blame the violent colonialists” approach though. Crazy to think that hundreds of years of violence and extraction had nothing to do with this, and it's just due to cultural faults. There's no world in which their legacy of oppression wouldn't affect their present day material conditions. > Modern technology coming around and wiping out the need for most of your tribe to hunt and gather is going to…

> Crazy to think that hundreds of years of violence and extraction had nothing to do with this, and it's just due to cultural faults. It's extremely easy to see other groups of people who suffered the same thing, and have extremely low suicide rates. At which point you could create the same post-hoc explanation for the opposite outcome, about how hundreds of years of violence created very tough and mentally strong pe…

> which point you could create the same post-hoc explanation for the opposite outcome, about how hundreds of years of violence created very tough and mentally strong people.

This is pure ideology: we were actually helping them when we were chopping their children's hands off in the congo when they didn't produce enough.

Re: The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

#145

Post by pixelbash » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 8:30 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #54

japhyr wrote: post #45

The history of alcoholism and suicide in Alaska goes back to the time of first contact with outsiders. When westerners first contacted Alaska Native tribes, those "explorers" tended to be people who were after valuable furs, and missionaries. These people were usually a mix of Russians from the west and Americans from the south. The outsiders brought with them diseases like tuberculosis and influenza, and these disea…

That’s the lazy “blame the violent colonialists” approach though. There’s a very high suicide rate amongst Greenland natives as well. Perhaps it’s because so much culture was surrounded around food gathering? Modern technology coming around and wiping out the need for most of your tribe to hunt and gather is going to have a big impact on cultures like that.

Cultural whiplash takes many forms. This kind of dualist thinking minimises one take to promote another. Shouldn't we be able to consider two (Or more) things to have merit at the same time?

In the words of Bender, you want me to do two things??

Re: The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

#146

Post by natalyarostova » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

ianleeclark wrote: post #144

natalyarostova wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crazy to think that hundreds of years of violence and extraction had nothing to do with this, and it's just due to cultural faults. It's extremely easy to see other groups of people who suffered the same thing, and have extremely low suicide rates. At which point you could create the same post-hoc explanation for the opposite outcome, about how hundreds of years of violence created very tough and mentally strong pe…

> which point you could create the same post-hoc explanation for the opposite outcome, about how hundreds of years of violence created very tough and mentally strong people. This is pure ideology: we were actually helping them when we were chopping their children's hands off in the congo when they didn't produce enough.

I don't understand what you're saying. Who is saying anyone helped anyone else when children's hands were chopped off in the Congo?

Re: The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

#147

Post by ianleeclark » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

natalyarostova wrote: post #146

ianleeclark wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which point you could create the same post-hoc explanation for the opposite outcome, about how hundreds of years of violence created very tough and mentally strong people. This is pure ideology: we were actually helping them when we were chopping their children's hands off in the congo when they didn't produce enough.

I don't understand what you're saying. Who is saying anyone helped anyone else when children's hands were chopped off in the Congo?

I quoted you.

Re: The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

#148

Post by firefoxd » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

unfocused wrote: post #138

When you read article, it is important to note the before state and after state. There a lot of things that happen in between. First, you need to understand that this culture existed well before colonization, and it existed in peace. Secondly, the culture's history and knowledge, specifically on how to survive in such a harsh environment, was oral as the Inuit did not pass things on by reading and writing. This is a…

This is a pretty good insight. I think it's the same issue affecting many other groups.

Re: The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

#149

Post by fzeroracer » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #112

ianleeclark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s the lazy “blame the violent colonialists” approach though. Crazy to think that hundreds of years of violence and extraction had nothing to do with this, and it's just due to cultural faults. There's no world in which their legacy of oppression wouldn't affect their present day material conditions. > Modern technology coming around and wiping out the need for most of your tribe to hunt and gather is going to…

It's certainly not impossible that we've blinded ourselves to other problems by being so quick to blame all of their woes on colonialism however. The real world is rarely so simple. I find it a bit condescending when we try to pin all of the blame on western influence in the past, when these people are quite capable of fucking up their own lives without your help thank you very much. The idea that the old hunter-gath…

To be brutally honest, I find it more condescending when people try to downplay the brutality and devastation colonialism enacted on the various native populations while trying to claim it was the victims of colonialism that were truly at fault.

Generally speaking, wiping out large amounts of any population whether intentional or not is probably going to have negative multigenerational effects.

Re: The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

#150

Post by BurningFrog » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #137

BurningFrog wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcoholism is always rampant when a population is first introduced to the drug. Over centuries, evolution acts to produce a population less prone to it, since people who drink themselves to death don't tend to reproduce. The population that has had access to alcohol for the longest (8000 years, according to a guess I saw somewhere) is the Chinese, where the "asian red flush" gene has developed as a protection against…

Indigenous Americans made alcoholic fermented beverages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_Native_Americans#P...

Sure, but I think it was expensive and complicated enough with their technology that becoming an alcoholic was very hard, compared to the modern world with unlimited supply of cheap bottles of hard liquor.