Suicide

We dont need official figures to know that suicide rates have gone up significantly since the 19th century. In fact, it is probably true that with a high level of education, a country is likely to have a high rate of suicide. I didnt devise that hypothesis, but it might be explicable in terms of human psyche.

What I think, though, is not so much that education indirectly, or directly, induce more people to consider suicide as a viable option, but the crucial factor lies in another vaguely related, altogther more widespread medium: the media.

In a way that resembles advertising, the media constantly portrays people committing suicide - to reflect the society the producers see maybe, to create dramatic endings maybe, for many reasons, some forgivable. What this amounts to is to create a acute awareness of a seemingly viable option on how to "lead one's life" if in a rather warped sense, when things get worse.

Of course, I am not accusing the media of first instilling the idea of suicide in people: most people would probably get the idea of suicide after the first death they witness, and there are countless of it, of animals dying, of relatives passing away etc. The media may have influenced a few kids to contemplate suicide, but that is probably only a fraction of the sea of people who actually were considering suicide.

The fault of media, as I see it, is the fact that media only portray the before and after decision to suicide, neglecting the middle segment, thus giving its audience the false impression that suicide is an easy and painless course of action to take.

It is natural, on the part of the producers, to cut down on the scenes leading up to any decision making on suicide: deciding on suicide is afterall, a boring thing on the surface to any observer. Moreover, they couldnt really capture the falling of bodies from great heights accurately, and the great anxiety suiciders feel at the moment of jumping/slitting their wrists, the tremendous fear while falling, the near overwhelming fear while in mid air of slamming into the hard ground, and the great pain that does issue from doing so at the end.

For viewers, and hence potential suiciders, the decisions to suicide only amounts to a few scenes: decide on committing suicide, standing on th edge of a building followed by a jump, and a scene cut, whereby the person is shown sprawling on the ground 30 stories down (in reality, most suiciders dont die that prettily either).

We add into the mix, the novelty of bungee jumping, thus giving people the illusion that the fear one experienced while in mid air isnt really that great, for thrill seekers do that all the time, and with relatively low casualties. Then, subconsciously they might think, the actual thing to fear during the whole process is merely the instant of slamming into ground, which isnt that great, for it is afterall, an instant only. Suicide becomes a quick and clean process of solving one's problems in life.

But what do we know about dying, really? Do we really die that fast? With great pain that the brain cant comprehend and thus shuts down the entire functioning of the body in an instant? What if we really couldnt die that fast? Maybe at the end of a fall, our limbs flew apart, our mouths refuse to work properly, but for a second or a minute, our brains continue to experience the immense agony of -censored- ?

Less vividly, we know that Time is relative. In a simple manner, time passes slower when you are doing things you dont enjoy, but faster when you are doing things you like. How far can we carry this notion? I like to run with it, and think about time while dying. No one would really like dying that much. Perhaps when one is dying, time stretches out for you: what seemed like a split-second to an observer may be an eternity of pain for you.

That may sound like some works of fiction, where everyone simply stops in time at the point of dying, forever in a state of limbo. The concept, however, isnt that elusive to grasp, for we know that advancing into Black Holes creates almost the same effect. While in the case of dying, I postulated the dying would experience a lengthening of time, for the case of black holes, it is the observer who have that experience.

Titbit: For a spaceship which is advancing directly into a black hole, the occupants will feel as normal as any regular person moving forward into their death - crushing death at the end of this one. For any observer, however, who is observing from quite a safe distance away, the spaceship would never reach the blackhole: it will first slow down, then stop entirely on the event horizon. For more on this, you should read it up on your own and not trust any of my details.

My conclusion is that, dying may not seem to be the quick, painless event that the media portrays, the illusion that it is may have encouraged more people to choose suicide as a viable option than we ever suspected.