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Have you considered not using a tragedy as your little political soapbox?
Anthony Bourdain has died
261–270 of 344 posts
Re: Anthony Bourdain has died
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see what you're getting at, but I think the reason that suicide is linked with mental illness is because it goes against our very nature as living beings. If I recall correctly, a majority of people who have 'failed' suicide (for lack of a better term) have stated that they immediately regretted attempting once it hits the point of no return. This is just an assumption, but I think the will to live greatly outweigh…
I'm gonna stray away from talking about mental illness, cause I'm not a doctor and there are a lot of grey parts. Suicide is about giving up. There can be a number of reasons for throwing the towel in. For seemingly normal people, I tend to think it's because they feel like they have failed in a way that is irredeamable. Like the samurai guys, that have disgraced themselves and there is no way to go on without their…
>Like the samurai guys, that have disgraced themselves and there is no way to go on without their honor. It is all in their head as expectations they have created.
It's not "all in their head". If they don't meet society's expectations of them, then society will treat them very negatively (probably making them an outcast, if not a prisoner, depending on what happened). People in that position, in that society, take that step because they really don't have any good alternatives: society has forced it on them.
This is somewhat like saying "it's all in their head" when someone facing a life prison sentence commits suicide. Prison is essentially torture, so it's entirely rational to commit suicide if you have precisely two choices, spend the rest of your life in prison or kill yourself.
Re: Anthony Bourdain has died
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate why you brought up your second paragraph? I'm not sure what statement you are trying to make.
Not the OP, but higher availability of guns is correlated with higher suicide rates (most notoriously in US mountains states like Wyoming), because it makes it easier to act on impulse when people hit their lowest points, rather than muddling through because they don't have easy means. However, I don't see any reporting on how Bourdain died, only that he was found in a hotel room. So unless it comes to light that gun…
he hanged himself
Re: Anthony Bourdain has died
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depression doesn't care how awesome your life is.
Sometimes an awesome life can actually make it harder. It's easy to justify being depressed when you have a crappy life. (even though your depression probably doesn't have some cause like that) "I am depressed because I am living in a bad apartment in a bad part of town, working a bad job. If I get a better job and can afford a better apartment, I'll be happy." Assuming you have some hope for that happening, that can…
I remember reading about a very successful female model's suicide few years ago - didn't know who she was and can't remember her name now. What I do remember was that she was quite successful materially and jumped from 20th floor (according to the news article).
But what hit me the most was her age - she was just 20 :(
Every person is different and we may never understand what bothers them, even if they appear successful and happy on the outside.
Re: Anthony Bourdain has died
#265If your friends or coworkers seem off, check in on them. Everyone needs to know it’s ok to not be ok.
Someone did this for me a few years back. I didn't cop to anything, but I was down, and it was deeply touching. And honestly, I'm not sure there was much more that anyone could have done.
Re: Anthony Bourdain has died
#266>, I can only hope that people as a whole start seeing it as a complex issue and the stigma of mental issues and stress can lessen so that people can get help Possibly inappropriate - but why do people immediately link suicide and mental illness? Why do we stand in judgement declaring it wrong to decide ones own fate? Am I not the master of my own existence and do I not have the right to make a decision on it without…
Suicide is an extreme, profound, desperate, and undeniable act. It leaves a corpse, and corpses cannot readily be swept under rugs as with other vital statistics.
(Much the same holds for murder vs. other crime rates, though both may be influenced by trauma medicine advances. David Simon talks of this in The Audacity of Despair, on YouTube.)
For much this reason, suicide is seem as a definitive marker of individual, and social, dysfunction. It is the title and subject of Emil Durkheim's foundational work on sociology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_(book)
Re: Anthony Bourdain has died
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe the definition of depression is different, society to society. I'm certain a good amount of earth's human population has at one point in the course of their lives felt hopelessness, for whatever amount of time. The majority of those with access to TV who've also seen some American media have likely felt they're missing out on the riches and opportunities that can be had that they're not fortunate to. Is the def…
I may be wrong, but this how I understand it: Depression is not hopelessness. It is not sadness. It is not unhappiness. Depression is a chemical state in the brain which leads to lower general emotion levels. Depression is when you feel nothing . Depressed people may self-harm to "feel something".
I'm not sure it helps to describe depression as a chemical state. Happiness and sadness are also "chemical" states.
Re: Anthony Bourdain has died
#268Anthony Bourdain was a global ambassador and a gifted writer who helped instill in me a love of travel. He will be missed.
He had a life envied by many and this goes to show that you never know what is going on in someone else's head. Today are more interconnected than ever, but the skin-deep interactions we have through our phones & the digital highlight reels we project can mask both mental health issues and a lack of true meaningful relationships.
The article mentions that he committed suicide while shooting Parts Unknown in France. This will affect many lives, not the least of which are all of the people working on the show. I hope CNN takes care of them financially.
A relevant but tangential point - Slate Star Codex just published an analysis that after controlling for guns, the US has one of the lowest suicide rates of the developed world[0]. That's not to say that mental health isn't the main issue, but rather that there are also practical policy steps that should be taken to limit the number of preventable suicides.
[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/31/in-search-of-missing-us...
Re: Anthony Bourdain has died
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putting an important decision such as ending ones life behind a single point-and-click action is really bad UX. There should at least be a number of "Are you sure?" prompts and two factor authentication as a bare minimum.
But now you are optimizing for and donating resources to the "bad UX" instead of focusing energy where it matters. Focus on why users want to delete their account and not on how easy it is to do so!
Better mental health care will likely require what you call "mommy government" as well.
So I guess we will just have to deal with school shootings and suicides because certain americans have to stand by political ideals while the nation burns down around them, empiricism be damned.
Re: Anthony Bourdain has died
#270He's the chef that hated on Vegans, right? No surprise he's offed himself. It's hard to have compassion for yourself if you're constantly full of rage and hate towards others, especially ones more compassionate towards all beings.