Suicide Boom In Japan
In the News (from rt.com): “A triple disaster on a scale the world has never known caused damage, destruction and uncertainty, forcing tens of thousands of Japanese refugees to leave their lives behind and seek shelter anywhere they can.
”Some people do evacuate,’ says Komae Hosokawa, a nuclear sociologist. ‘But the problem is they are the minority and they have been accused by their neighbors, by their classmates and of course by official personnel that they are causing unfounded anxiety among people, which is not good.’
“Though primarily a move towards self-preservation, this idea of desertion is defined by many as characteristically un-Japanese and has earned those who have evacuated the dishonorable title of traitor….
“’We hear some organic farmers committed suicide, because you know for organic farmers soil is everything,’ says Komae Hosokawa. ‘They nurture the good soil after many years of hard work and it is just contaminated in one night or two you know. So some farmers committed suicide, and I am very sad to hear the news. And many other farmers are also very much depressed.’…
“’The rate increases not in the epicenter, disaster epicenter, but in the peripheral areas,’ said Dr. Hirohito Hirose, a disaster psychology specialist, ‘Because survivors who have to reconstruct their life, they have no time to [contemplate] suicide.’
“This disaster has certainly taken its toll on Japan’s economy and such constant reminders of an intense topic can harm the collective psyche of the people who live here as well.”
My Comment: Perhaps, it seems heroic, but is it not an escape from certain problems, which they have no strength to solve constructively? A human being is a vulnerable creature, a small desire for self-preservation, fulfillment.
That is why a lack of fulfillment, a feeling of emptiness, is felt as suffering which one wants to get rid of, possibly, by an escape from existence itself.
[50461]
Related Material:
The Solution Is Between Us
How To Forestall The Blows Of Nature
The Whole World Is Mine
Laitman.com Comments RSS Feed
If people emphasize this kind of psychological guilt and shame and then elevate it to some kind of honor self anihilation becomes the highest form of behavior. At its root it may still be a desire for honor which will take us away instead of toward life. May this act create a distrust of basing one’s life on honor so these people’s lives were not lived in vain.