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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

#81

Post by squeaky-clean »

wille92 wrote: post #59

Whenever I read about tribal communities coming into modernity, I can't help but think that our "first-world" culture gets a lot wrong. These communities seem to have a deep sense of narrative--you're a part of a greater cultural story, a spiritual story that's connected with place, nature, and family. There is a journey laid out for you rich with sacrament (e.g. the rite of passage to become an Inuit hunter in this…

I recently read Sapiens by Yuval Harari, and this is a recurring theme in the book. "Collective fictions" throughout human history, the different forms of these myths, and how they help a society grow, or need to change as one does grow.

One sort of related example is local religions versus universal, missionary religions. The majority of religions in history have been local and exclusive. Deities such as nature/animal spirits and the like, other tribes may have their own spirits in their own regions, and there is no need to convert people outside of your regions. But the most successful religions are ones are universal and missionary; they believe that their religion is affects everyone, regardless of whether they believe it (and is often the only true religion), and that for some reason, it is beneficial to convert others to your religion.

Ideas like money, capitalism, art, really anything not essential to the biology of humans, are such "fictions", and the most successful (from any evolutionary standpoint) societies are the ones that have or adapt the most effective "fictions" for their societies. I guess to put it in HN terms, "how scalable are your beliefs?"

A lot of the old ways we've lost touch with, or never had, aren't helpful to modern society. A hunting trip in which you become a man doesn't amount to much in a society with mega-farms, slaughter mills and processed foods that don't expire immediately. Instead, our equivalent goals would be like "get a degree, get another degree, get a job". You're an adult when you're old enough to vote, and so on.

There's a lot of other topics as well, but that's what stuck with me the most and my interpretation of it. It's fascinating to think about.

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

#82

Post by brndn »

gumby wrote: post #75

I was struck by the comment by the woman who answered the suicide line: "Maybe I am giving them a little love." I spent years answering the phone on a crisis line. Some people's problems just didn't seem that bad, yet they were overwhelmed nonetheless. Some people had such crushing burdens I was astonished they could even talk. I didn't find it uplifting, in fact it drained me. I am astonished by her ability to do it…

Where did you do this? Is there a high demand for volunteers? Is it easy to get started with? Is it common to do this work "remotely" or "on-call" by carry around a cell phone?

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

#83

Post by BuildTheRobots »

sevenless wrote: post #55

The section talking about contagion was interesting. What follows is pure speculation on my part and a bit of a ramble. I believe many mental illnesses, depression, suicidal behavior and anorexia among them, can be characterized as contagious. And perhaps some other things that aren't usually described as mental illnesses. The border between belief, religion and mental illness seems a bit fuzzy (echoes of Snow Crash)…

It's a really interesting idea.

A few years ago when my anxiety, depression and agoraphobia peaked one of the things that terrified me about talking about it to anyone was the way I'd managed to "logically rationalise" it to myself - I was literally scared of infecting friends with my ideas because even though a part of me knew it was stupid and broken beliefs, I was still capable of entirely justifying them. The fact I'm usually a strong minded person who's good at talking people round to my way of thinking only made this idea more troubling.

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

#84

Post by wille92 »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #81
wille92 wrote: post #59

Whenever I read about tribal communities coming into modernity, I can't help but think that our "first-world" culture gets a lot wrong. These communities seem to have a deep sense of narrative--you're a part of a greater cultural story, a spiritual story that's connected with place, nature, and family. There is a journey laid out for you rich with sacrament (e.g. the rite of passage to become an Inuit hunter in this…

I recently read Sapiens by Yuval Harari, and this is a recurring theme in the book. "Collective fictions" throughout human history, the different forms of these myths, and how they help a society grow, or need to change as one does grow. One sort of related example is local religions versus universal, missionary religions. The majority of religions in history have been local and exclusive. Deities such as nature/anim…

The idea of efficient and scalable myths is interesting. Haven't heard of Sapiens but I'll definitely check it out. It's especially interesting in the context of this article--transitioning out of a local, exclusive belief system to a "scalable", universal culture must be very difficult for these Greenland villagers.

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

#85

Post by haberman »

toyg wrote: post #19
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.

Bad food and TV didn't materialise out of thin air, they are part and parcel of that cultural bombing I was talking about. I struggle to see how it's racist to admit that white people traditionally own and define the mainstream culture of places like Denmark and Canada. You cannot fix a problem if you don't admit you have one; the main problem here is that modern mainstream white capitalist culture (to which I belong…

I can't speak to the Danish and Canadian media, but the American media also glorify Barack Obama, Malala Yousafzai, Amit Singhal, Russell Wilson, Chris Rock, the Dalai Lama, Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Prince, etc. Also the only major motion picture depicting Zuck makes him look like kind of an asshole.

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

#86

Post by Kristine1975 »

Devthrowaway80 wrote: post #71
ekianjo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Not sure if you can really generalize this much. There are several studies studying the effect of antidepressants on suicide rates, and it's true that some of them seem to lead to more suic…

Warfangle is correct, I was warned specifically about this when I started treatment. When you go on an SSRI, your fatigue lifts before your mood does, which can lead to a few dangerous weeks.

Can confirm, "my" SNRI's package insert (it is about one meter long, in small print) warns that when starting treatment there's an increased risk of suicidal thoughts/suicide, especially in people under 25.

Fun fact: The package insert also states: "It isn't completely clear how antidepressants work, but they can help increase the Serotonin and Noradrenaline levels in the brain." Very confidence-inspiring :-/

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

#87

Post by specialist »

sevenless wrote: post #55

The section talking about contagion was interesting. What follows is pure speculation on my part and a bit of a ramble. I believe many mental illnesses, depression, suicidal behavior and anorexia among them, can be characterized as contagious. And perhaps some other things that aren't usually described as mental illnesses. The border between belief, religion and mental illness seems a bit fuzzy (echoes of Snow Crash)…

"I believe many mental illnesses ... can be characterized as contagious."

I can believe that.

Social cognition, attachment theory, mirror neurons, etc.

Swarm Intelligence has (for its time?) a great primer on social cognition, how our brains resonate with each other, how children use their parent's brains and emotions to regulate their own, etc. http://www.swarmintelligence.org/SIBook/SI.php

I lived with a paranoid schizophrenia. It started making me crazy too. Took months to shake that off.

And I can definitely confirm that anxiety is contagious, from personal experiences.

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

#88

Post by dang »

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.

You ruined this thread by tossing in an inflammatory "racist", thereby knocking it off-topic and making it a flamewar at the same time. Please don't do this on Hacker News.

Pretty much the worst thing a comment can do here is take a specific discussion about something factual and turn it into a generic one about something ideological. I'm sure you didn't mean to produce that undesired result, but because the mechanism is predictable, it can and should be scrupulously avoided.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11548148 and marked it off-topic.

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

#89

Post by dang »

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.

> fuckwad

This isn't allowed in HN comments, so please don't do it, regardless of how wrong someone is.

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

#90

Post by tikhonj »

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…

I especially recommend visiting St. Petersburg during the summer. It's on that same latitude so you get nights that don't go dark and the whole city celebrates. They're called "White Nights" and there's a "White Night Festival"[1] but really, the fascinating part is how the whole city (or at least the city center) comes alive during those nights.

It's absolutely beautiful.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Nights_Festival

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