South Korea: Suicide Nation

A good short piece to think about, accompanied by a 25-mins long video.

Second last paragraph goes into a little more detail about suicides & some causes of it, & they all paint a picture of any so-called modern country. Modern, Westernized countries from North America (US & Canada) to Western Europe (Germany, France, UK etc.) to Asia (Japan & South Korea) might have achieved economic successes but they have come at a great social cost of hyper-competition, isolation, & mental illnesses.

Most people in these countries are busy in the rat race. There's hyper-competition at every level of school & career, & at every age group. Every parent is running from one task to another to make themselves & their children look "successful" in the eyes of the society. Children are enrolled in all kinds of extra-curricular activities & parents are trampling over anyone who come in their way to achieve their own economic / career successes. Of course, with such busy lives, who can have any time to take a peaceful time when one can sit down to reflect upon life in general, talk to each other among family members (including elderly family members), talk to neighbours (to actually know them & not merely talk to them to boast of one's own successes), & ultimately, self-reflect & take a breather.

All this hyper-competition & this worldly race to be better than that another guy leads one to nowhere. This "pursuit of happiness" actually leads one to chronic mental illness & other side effects of it; stress, fatal diseases, anger issues, loneliness, marriage breakdowns etc.

Now, this problem of hyper-competition is quickly creeping into developing countries of Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile etc.), Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa etc.), South Asia (India, Sri Lanka etc.), China, & Vietnam etc. They are developing fast & their populace wants to emulate the Western countries, unfortunately, right down to the horrible side effects of development; mental illnesses, loneliness, marriage breakdown, suicides etc.

Although, the piece ends with a question that we may never know the real reasons of why South Koreans are committing more suicides than say, people of Namibia or Iceland, I can offer my opinion, here. The comparative countries stated in that statement are the wrong countries to compare to, in the first place. Anyway, there are several other factors at play, here. Iceland is not considered as much of a developed country as, even, South Korea or Japan. Iceland is not even a G20 country. Plus, it's much smaller in size in terms of population (329,000) compared to South Korea's 51 million (both 2015 stats). Of course, population size has a direct relationship with that society's level of competition. Mix in the level of economic development & you get a potent environment for mental illnesses. Similarly with Namibia, economic & population size (2 million as of 2011) play a huge part why South Korea is more susceptible to mental illnesses.

Besides the level of economic development & population size, religious affiliation of that country's population also affects how much hyper-competitiveness leads one to commit suicide. Religious people often ask for divine help when they are in problems. But religion is on the decline in industrialized world, & as such, people of the modern, industrialized, Westernized countries are far more prone to suicides than say, Uganda or Panama or Hungary or even Saudi Arabia.

There's one more problem with people around the world. Most of the people want to compare their lives against their colleagues, neighbours, or extended family members. But they forget to look & see how great their lives are compared to their own compatriots, & even people in other countries, who are living in worse conditions than them. South Koreans, in general, are in much better condition than millions in South Asia, Africa, & in Latin America. Heck, even in industrialized countries of US, Canada, UK, Australia etc., millions are homeless & live way below the poverty line. We humans are forgetting to count our blessings, whatever & however many / little they are, & prefer short-term successes over long-term consequences. If we start to take a long-term view & always look to the person who is less fortunate than us, then we wouldn't be having these mental illnesses, since we will always know that we are in better condition than that other person.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2015/08/south-korea-suicide-nation-150827070904874.html

Loneliness, poverty, chronic illness, losing one's job, the death of a loved one or the breakdown of a marriage - there are many reasons why people fall prey to heartbreak & despair, but most of us, thankfully, will find a route out of that unhappiness or at least develop ways of dealing with it.

Even for those who can not, whose sadness turns into the 'black dog' of overwhelming clinical depression, the right help can still make a crucial difference to being able to cope - be it medical care, the understanding of therapists or the love & support of family & friends. Eventually some sort of recovery takes place, some balance & perspective is restored.

Yet for some the experience of depression can be so profound that none of this works, that all remedies & assistance seem valueless & there appears to be only one way out - to end it all & takes one's own life. Such a step is, of course, a mark of absolute & final desperation, a tragic, wasteful act that can often be cruelly devastating for the people left behind. But people still do it, many thousands around the world every year; lost souls whose mental health has been damaged & stretched beyond breaking point.

Curiously though, some societies & cultures seem more prone to suicide than others. Take South Korea, for example, where suicide has become the fourth most common cause of death, with up to 40 of its citizens taking their own lives every day. For the last eight years it has had the highest suicide rates in the industrialised world (and the second highest in the whole world behind Guyana) & it is now, astonishingly the number one cause of death for its citizens between the ages of 10 & 30.

Delve a little deeper into these statistics (gathered as the nation has become more concerned about the phenomenon) & you will find that men commit suicide twice as often as women; that children & young adults will cite the stress of living in a hyper-competitive society or pressure over exam results & college entrance as the main reason for contemplating suicide; that middle-aged South Koreans most often turn to it through concern over personal economic problems; & that the elderly will kill themselves (or consider doing so) because of isolation as a result of the breakdown of the traditional family unit.

Each of these facts & figures, so easy to write out, conceals a sad personal story, a life that has somehow lost its purpose & meaning or an unbearable anguish that has been crying out for relief. And they still do not explain why South Koreans are more susceptible to suicide than, let's say, the people of Namibia or Iceland.

Russell Brand rant about Jihadism makes some sense

Although, I don't care much what Russell Brand says or do (don't follow him on social media), some of what he says in his YouTube rant is correct. So before we summarily dismiss what Brand is ranting about, we should still at least examine what he says.

The West & Western media is constantly failing to understand why young people from Western countries are so enthusiastically joining ISIS. ISIS & its activities are only on the radar of the Western government for fear mongering (golden opportunity for military-industrialist complex) & on media for ratings.

But nobody is trying to even understand the root problems of why ISIS is so successful in recruiting Western youths. And until we don't understand the root problems, we won't be able to resolve these situations.

Some problems Russell Brand points to:

1. Brand: "The kernel of truth in the sprawling, bewildering, bramble of ISIS madness is society isn't working, the system isn't working, it’s totally corrupt."

Now, Russell Brand may have confined the corruption problem to bankers (at least that's what I got from his video), but I will expand it to include racism, anti-immigration, income inequality (not only between genders but between races & classes, too), corporations / business elites controlling governments etc.

Brand does go into an important problem of youths feeling alienation, loneliness, & isolation from mainstream society. Be it because of our obsession with smartphones or simply, evidence of Western corruption is now more widespread & easy to see.

a. Racism: prejudice against other people based on skin colour, religion, languages, beliefs etc is rampant in the West. This racism is evident to the youths. We clearly saw the examples of these last year all over US. Canada isn't immune to it; it's just Canadian population in far more homogenous than US & several European countries & far smaller in comparison (only about 10% of American population), so we see a lot fewer incidences of prejudice in Canada or Sweden or Finland or Norway or Netherlands etc.

Now, if we look at one root problem / reason of why Egyptian youths gathered in Tahrir Square almost 5 years ago to oust former President Hosni Mubarak, you may see that they were educated BUT they were either unemployed or underemployed. They blamed state "corruption" for them being not securing their preferred job.

Ironically, this same reason (one of many) has been echoed from the White House for why Western youths are joining ISIS. Admittedly, White House was talking about jobs for jihadis in the Middle East, but we need to look to resolve the problem of youth unemployment, in general but esp. in minority groups, in Western countries, even before they feel a need to join a group, like ISIS.

Take the example of legions of young minority Canadians (esp. South Asians & Africans) graduating from Canadian universities in droves. Now, we can further divide these groups based on religious beliefs (Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians etc).

When we look at the educated youths in our countries in the West & the employment numbers, we see similar problems. These youths from minority backgrounds are taking on thousands of dollars of education loans to study & gathering letters after their names but when they venture out in the world to secure a job, which matches their qualifications, they are hugely disappointed.

They are then far more disappointed when they see their Caucasian / indigenous colleagues, graduating from same universities with similar qualifications & securing jobs that these minority youths were actually dreaming of to get in, by using their parents' & friends' networks; they feel hatred towards the Western society. They see a huge gap between their expectation of getting a job on merit & actual reality in the society & labour market. This creates feelings of alienation & isolation for these minority youths, they start to withdraw from the mainstream society.

Another blog post by the Professor of Political Science at University of California-San Diego states that "Muslim women in Britain are up to 65% less likely to be employed than white Christian women. Even if a young woman receives straight A’s from a good school — as was the case with the three women who recently left London for Syria — she is still more likely to face unemployment, job discrimination & low pay." She further states that "Muslim men in Britain were up to 76% more likely to be unemployed than white male Christians of the same age & with the same qualifications."

Then, the organizations like NCCM (National Council of Canadian Muslims) keep coming out with numbers that how many Muslims are being harassed by authorities in Canada (MPAC - Muslim Public Affairs Council - in US coming out with similar stats for American Muslims). Take the recent case of a Quebec judge refusing to hear the case of Muslim woman because she was wearing a hijab.

Would Muslim youths feel more love for the Western countries with these harassments? We have heard stories about racial profiling of African-Americans for decades now. A large majority of African-Americans don't trust law enforcement agencies one iota. Similar situations with Muslims in the West. They don't trust law enforcement agencies thanks to their constant & unreasonable harassment of the Muslim minorities. Btw, here I am not even talking about fundamentalist Muslims, & actually, several youths who have gone over to ISIS were actually not even practicing Muslims, far from fundamentalism.

b. Anti-immigration: Thanks to military-industrial complex (Russell Brand also alludes to it, "to engage in foreign military activity in that region of the world for economic & corporate ends,"), these minorities & immigrants see the obvious link between defense companies selling arms & weapons to their dictatorial countries, e.g. Canada selling armoured trucks to Saudi Arabia in a secret deal, & then those countries' dictators using those arms & weapons on their own population, which results for those people to emigrate from their own countries to these Western countries.

However, when those people immigrate to the West, they feel more aggrieved due to racism & general prejudice in the West. That sinking feeling of hopelessness start to take root, because they can't go back to their own countries & they can't make a successful life in their new country ... where do they go from here? Suddenly, the world becomes a very small world for them. On top of it, indigenous populations of their new adopted country make their lives harder to live in these countries through restrictive laws (Canada's proposed anti-terror laws) & the rise of far-right, anti-immigration parties in Europe.

c. Topic du-jour of 2015 has so far been lay-offs. Corporations are laying off people without suffering any consequences. Governments are failing to do anything about all these layoffs. Heck, it's only going to get worse, thanks to TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership), which is NAFTA on steroids. In North America, jobs will go to the cheapest labour market in this trade partnership.

Who will benefit from this? Corporations, elite investors, elite corporate execs (who are overwhelmingly Caucasians / indigenous population), bankers (hmm, Brand talks about Bankers & their acts in financial crisis & recession, too).

Who will lose from this? Minorities, a large chunk of uneducated indigenous population who will blame minorities for their job losses, which will create more tension in society & more isolation for youths with a certain religious or ethnic or racial background.

Who will be unaffected from all this carnage? Governments. Ministers' salaries won't decrease. Governments will simply increase taxes, esp. on populations, which are reeling from losing their jobs (essentially, what Greece is going through, but on a far bigger scale).

To me it seems even more youths will be joining militant groups like ISIS in the near future because hopelessness for their future is only going to increase. They are made to feel worthless in the West. Groups, like ISIS, pick up on this, successfully market this, & give a misguided sense of belonging to a group, & hope & purpose in life of youths by making them believe that they will be doing something extraordinary if they move to their war-torn regions. By the time these youths realize what they have done or whether that dream comes to fruition for these youths, it's too late for those youths to turn back then.

2. Russell Brand also talks about disenfranchisement of youths in the West. The Western society is failing to properly assimilate the minorities & esp. their hot-blooded youths & they are acting out as a result.

For instance, let's look at France. Immigrants from former French colonies, e.g. Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal etc. have never been accepted wholeheartedly by the indigenous French population. Kids of these immigrants who have never even seen their native / their parents' / their grand-parents' countries, & born & bred in France, are still made to feel as foreigners. They are still called, "French-Arabs." That hyphen never goes away. These youths are physically marginalized (living on the outskirts of Paris) to mentally marginalized (being called "French-Arabs", underemployed, heavily criminalized etc.)

As explained above, these attitudes of indigenous populations of French are also similar to the attitudes of indigenous populations of Americans, Canadians, & other Europeans. Minorities (first wave of immigrants & subsequently, their offspring) are never fully accepted in their adopted countries. They are made citizens of that country but they are still eyed with suspicions, made to feel worthless through underemployment, laws are made to essentially keep the minorities "in line", made to feel alone & isolated etc. They are essentially made to feel like "second-class" citizens.

Although, the list of root problems may not end here & this might be just the tip of iceberg, the Western society has to start looking into this far more seriously than for purposes of increasing ratings & expanding military-industrial complex. Since, it's a social problem, everyone, regardless of their ethnicity, religious beliefs, skin colour, language, or socio-economic status, have to equally get involved in this discussion. And, not only discuss the problem, but actually take some concrete actions to resolve the situation. Blaming a religion or a few misguided youths will only inflame a burning situation & further disenfranchise the very same group of people who are at risk.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2978621/Jihadism-corrupt-Britain-s-fault-says-Brand-Comedian-rants-YouTube-society-forcing-young-turn-ISIS.html