I'll be doing the rounds tomorrow collecting rubbiish for the tip. The usual black bagged waste of modern society to be sunk in the earth at the local land fill. This regular ritual leads me to think about how our modern society is the most throw away in history. Someone digs up materials in one part of the world, they are then made into products that we are told that can't live without. They are made by people literally working to keep body and soul together in yet another part of the world. The neatly packaged and value added products are then promoted for our consumption. And after we have bought and played with them and have then become bored or tired with them, they are trashed. Built in obselescence, the search for novelty, advertising, the creation of desire drives the global throw away society. From the original hole in the ground in some far distant place, where the raw materials were extracted, to the final resting place in another hole in the ground near you or me.
Nothing of what I've just written is new and has been much more eloquently expressed elsewhere, but it got me thinking about the subject of suicide. Why now? Because I heard a suicide recently. A single gun shot echoed in the distance, disturbing the quiet of a Sunday morning. I heard it because I just happened to be outside at the time. It transpired that a neighbour had tragically ended his life.
This was not an isolated event. Hardly a day goes by without a discussion on the radio here in Ireland about the country's suicide rate, its possible causes and what can be done. Some estimate that the rate has doubled since the ending of the "Celtic Tiger". Each suicide, each tragedy will have its own story. In trying to find a reason distraught relatives, support organisations and government bodies may attribute unemployment, debt, drugs, alcohol, relationship problems, health concerns, mental health problems or maybe in some cases they are left flummoxed, there does not seem to be a cause.. A particularly a high proportion of suicides are young adult males and a significant proportion are young people who are not ill, drug addicts and would be considered to have a "future".
I am minded of Japanese saying "Etiquette is heavier than a mountain, death is lighter than a feather". For those who commit suicide a life felt as not worth living far outweighs a death which has become as light as feather. But there must have always been times in Ireland when individuals felt that a life was not worth living but it was more likely to be stoically borne perhaps because of stronger traditional family ties than today and also because of the stigma of the sin of suicide. Not to mention the fear of eternal retribution for that sin in the afterlife.
Getting back to waste. Now that we live in such a disposable society it might be that this factor has increasingly entered into the psyche of some people to the extent that in that desperate dark place they may feel that their life is as disposable as an unwanted worn out piece of electronic gadgetry. Is there an element of throwing themselves away? Is it an extension of our throw away society?. Is this a contributory factor in the suicide rates of the Western World?
What do you think? When healthy fit young people dispose of themselves is it because it is a reflection of the throw away society somehow internalised into themselves?
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