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Suicide Cleanup Narrative
"Staying in what" becomes the question.
In these writings I cover the more obvious aspects of suicide and the not so obvious. Since I have had the privilege to enter homes of many suicide victims, to observe their belongings, to move their treasures, I have gained some insights not otherwise available to most people.
I write about suicide for a few reasons. Among these reasons I include my own mental health. Like everyone else I have considered suicide as a "way out" and I always come back to "staying in." Everyone with a mind must consider suicide at one time or another and as an on-going test of will. As it turns out, the number of suicides world-wide remains insignificant compared to other forms of death.
Just the same, human suffuring for the many touched by suicide merits our sympathy and respect.
I too have read the French Existentialists and understand what they seek to define about human existence, the human condition; for me life need not have meaning to choose the struggle for existence and society's absurdities. After all, time passes faster than I could have ever imagined. I'm in no hurry, but it's easy enough for me to make this claim.
Many of my Vietnam infantry comrads chose their way out long ago and continue to do so. Many other veterans choose their way out by suicide today. One's self-esteem plummets when insights grow with age. "How many villages did you burn" takes on a new perspective with distance created by decades. "What's it all about?" crushes the insightful, self-critic. "So why go on?" may just as easily be "Rage against the night."
To my benefit, I'm a privileged white male and profited from years of formal and informal education. In fact, education remains one of my big pluses for "stayiing in." Then I have a terrific wife with whom I've lived for over 41 years. My health is so-so, but good enough to move king size mattresses single-handed. So I am indeed "privileged," "blessed" some would say.
Of course my work comes hard because of local government corruption in Orange County and Los Angeles County. Cronyism grew rapidly across the United States whe the big money became apparent to coroner and medical examiner employees, but that's no reason to end it all.
So "Staying in what" becomes the question, at least from my perspective.
It seems too easy, but the truth is that Perspective accounts for leading so many white males to their pre-mature end. Because we learn from those around us, and we all learn from mass media, we learn that the meaning of life involves outdoing the "Jones." White males learn early in life that their status as human amounts to their ernings and material wealth.
I belong to the one demographic group, white males, with the highest suicide rate in the United States, in the world for that matter.
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White Male Suicides - White Female Suicides - Black Female Suicides
Suicide became the first thoroughly studied and documented subjects by one of the first sociologists, Emile Durkheim. He published a blood with the title, "Suicide."
In his book, Durkheim writes about statistics and how they apply to different religions and suicide numbers among religious groups. He showed many interesting connections between religious affiliation and suicide rates. For example, Catholic Italians showed lower suicide rates than Irish Protestants.
Durkheim's work became the foundation for what we call "Positivism" is the social sciences. Thanks to Durkheim we now have methods to help understand the larger connections between social groups and suicide.
Note: I use the term "American" for US citizens while I understand that all of the North, Central, South American geographical areas have "American" inhabitants.
If you have wondered about which group of people in our society commit suicide most often, you will not be surprised that single, older, white males lead all other sociological groupings. This group leads older, white women, a group accounting for the second most suicides. By now you may have begun to piece together what's going on in your life and anyone's life that you have lost to suicide.
Of the various sociological groups studied for suicide, black women have the greatest number of suicide attempts, but the lowest rate of suicide.
If we were to consider the broader, more obvious conditions these three groups experience during their lives, we might look at what follows as something to contemplate, add to, and further discuss with others.
White American males in our society have some baggage others do not have when born into the world. Granted, white males have many privileges others do not share, but they carry expectations others do not share. I will not write on male privileges, which have only come into the social discourse during the last generation. Whiteness also accords privileges not part of the social discourse until the last generation, except in scholarly books and journals.
White males suffer emotionally at times from the dominant ideology's "competitive" drive and "individualism." Whether or not these individualized relationships actually exist in our American society misses the point.
The point shows that the dominant American ideology places males at the top of the power hierarchy while expecting the most from white males' performance. Not all males buy into this ideology, or at least do not accept this part as applying to them. For these fortunate few, life goes on without the unmentioned pressures bestowed on those American males indoctrinated to the competitive, acquisitive, individualism of the dominant ideology.
So for the majority of males life in the US means competition and individualism from boyhood to manhood. The strident individualism came across the Atlantic with the Pilgrims, especially the Protestants. (See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.) With these colonialists came gun powder and firearms, which were used for game and dealing with indigenous populations.
Firearms happen to be the weapon of choice among American males choosing suicide. Handguns take the prize as the preferred firearm. We should expect this outcome because part of the dominant ideology bases itself on the romanticized American Western story so popular in the middle of the last century. The detective and murder mysteries have replaced the western, but not its formula of individualism competition, and violence.
Popular westerns like "Have gun Will Travel," "The Rifleman," and others captured young males' imaginations. College courses on film began using The Six-Gun Mystique to explain the power of the western and handgun. Commercialized interests profited wildly from this "mystique" and before long it became deeply interwoven in the American consciousness.
Some will point to penny western novels like Lewis Lamore's work and Jack London's work, to name a couple. These two played a role, but nothing like commercialized television role fallowing the end of Edward R. Murrow's genuine news television for profit beginning with the "I Love Lucy" series.
The emerging western set the bar for masculinity, and that bar reached for guns, competition, and individualism, all components of the American Western.
Add the above social and cultural baggage to surviving as a white male, and the outcome becomes apparent during periods of social change. Economic hardship cuts into the white males' ability to maintain the image of the individual succeeding by their own wits and skills, like western heroes. Add the handgun to the floundering while males' picture of the world and the prospects for suicide increase.
Naturally, we look to older white males left alone in the world by divorce, death, and simple single lifestyles. Disease and other physical problems add to the burdens of life. Old age becomes the last issue to consider here. Often older people become objects of derision and scorn among the young, especially now that Social Security and other social services appear to go forward on the backs of the young. Needless to say, environmental collapse adds to these hostile feelings toward older generations.
Whatever we might believe about the above, white males account for about 73% of suicides in the USA. The majority of these use handguns. In Europe, the noose remains the preferred means of suicide for white males.
White Females
White females survive in "a man's world" and patriarchy set the tone in almost all areas of American life. Women divorce abusive husbands and become the sole means of support for their children. Women remain married to abusive husbands "for the sake of the children" and survive as punching bags for a child in a man's body, their husband.
When these women become lonely in their older years, they become at risk for suicide, especially by overdose.
Black Women
Black women figure highest in attempts and lowest in suicide. If we compare and contrast the two worlds of black women and white men we come up two staggering different worlds.
While white men bend toward individualism, competitiveness, and violence (football on Monday nights), black women bend toward community, cooperation, and religiosity.
What I've said about white women will apply to black women, and sometimes, many times, with sharper edges. Black women attempting suicide elicit concern from others in their community. The black woman's community usually has less wealth, fewer resources, and less social power in most situations outside of the government workforce.
Because of their poverty they live more closely with others and find solace in the comfort of others nearby "in the same boat." In brief, it's loneliness and powerlessness for both white males and black females that leads to suicidal thoughts and action.
It's the males' competitiveness, guns, and attitude toward violence that leads to their suicide.
It's the black women's shared experience as description objects and derision in white culture, until recently, that gives them a sense of surviving together.