Statement on Blog Updates
Schedule:
November Article will likely be postponed indefinitely.
December Article will be on track for Christmas or New Years, undetermined.
Topics:
November’s “Merrell-Wolff Book Dissection,” may be translated into a follow up of this article.
December’s “Anthropomorphics Book Dissection” is going to be replaced with an essay for the Anthropoetics Journal. May or may not be posted here.
Introduction
Let’s keep this short and sweet. We’ll talk about the narrative reality of material-assisted suicide; the problems of indifferent responsibility and an accurate, sustainable research on completed suicides; and finally, more generally, the Anthropology of Suicide .
We’ll be accessing these through minimal discussions of gun control and urban suicides.
Initial Summary and Commentary
Suicide is oriented to practitioners and leaders of a specific field of inquiry centered around the provocation of suicidal or self injurious inflections. Highly condensing the original material forces us to pass up most of Suicide’s intended purpose and audience, so why bother?
Counteractively let’s consider the following: What’s more important, the number of suicides or the quality of suicide as an act? Anybody with a quick, dedicated search can raise statistics on leading causes of death, with suicide high up there. Further even so the torment of the lives afflicted by suicidal acts and tendencies. Again, what’s different with the quantity or quality of these imperatives?
Establish no particular terminal destroying our communicative impulse and find no one altering an impulse to death: or to say the excess of communication marginalizes the other.(1) This hypothetical or real ‘other’ is always a participant on the scene since their presence dictates a type communication(or data); yet, the other still needs there to be an opening beyond this fundamental commune. One in which they can fulfil an imperative of the center.(2)
The point I’m making here is that suicide as an option can only be opened by successive, prolonged (perceived or actual) inability to fulfil imperatives from the center. Looping around now, this is the main reason why we will use Suicide as a resource but be able to omit most of its ‘intended purpose’. As it deals with particulars(cultural, cognitive, biological, etc.) inabilities that aren’t particularly useful to an updated historical perspective, like the one we set out to build.
Shall we?
The Data
Gun Control
Rural Suicides are greater than City Dwellers: See table
The trend is still there, not merely a product of the early 2000’s historical landscape (See Here) for a clearer picture, literally, you can juxtopose population density graphs with suicide rates per US county. This is, albeit, a less accurate but more visual representation of the above research.
They also, not so coincidently, include a graph in the article:
Which, also correlates to Rural suicides-by-firearm:
Suicide brings up a similar statistic in Chinese access to dangerous pesticides. Either way, with the Generative Anthropological definition of suicide we gave previously, it implies the more ostensibly real the method of death can be accessed, and becomes, that’s naturally going to be the preferred method.(3)
Take a look at this graph, where we can see this darastic change in preference for the elderly.
There may be a lot of reason for this: death by other non-intentional means could be the largest reason, and given the lack of access to emergency care facilities. We could also say that simply age is a startling aggregate for a methodology of suicidal tendency. I wouldn't say that this “necessarily proves our definition” but it reinforces very strongly.
Take Gun Control: while perhaps the best means is taking guns out of the hands of the elderly, the data also seems to suggest that another method of preference will simply take its place.
“Sacrificial Rituals” in a Post-Sacrificial World
The main problem here is the effect of placing ourselves as ‘the other’. Here are some of the more general problems with gathering data, for possible prevention, in these studies:
Intervention research with suicidal patients is a complex and risky undertaking. The elements required for ethical intervention research with suicidal patients are similar to those for other types of clinical research: social and scientific value, scientific rigor and validity, fair participant selection, favorable risk–benefit ratio, independent review by a data and safety monitoring board, informed consent, and respect for potential and enrolled participants (Emanuel et al., 2000).
The greater the accuracy the more moral obligation is placed on the researcher for not preventing a suicide from happening. There’s hardly any conscious acceptance of a generative solution to this paradox (one in which no amount of externalities can justify the seemingly “necessary” act).
I won’t pretend to over simplify, as I make my case in the introduction we aren’t necessarily here for the actual pragmatic discussions for professional, industrial analysis. However, do note the “data and safety monitoring board,” inclusion. There is an interesting intersection on that externalization of agency. Where coherent groups are formed and designated tasks to the completion and enactment on the expansion of the scene(in this case profane, scientific knowledge) without the degradation into violent-regressive representation. It isn’t necessarily that we “need a board to secure safety,” but that there isn’t an imperative from the center in research trials that ensure safety of the participants. Neither is there an imperative for the death of the participant, so delagation becomes a must if we are to charge through.
Much like love is, and Frost right, the only way out is through. Whatever winding path that may be.(4)
Conclusion
Ultimately the discussion comes down to the occupant of the centeral authorities’ ability or inability to creatively integrate new methods of communication to participants of the center. In a lot of instances society will continue to churn, like wheels within wheels, however if the framing is ruptured and we can offer new pathways through space, then we can also offer alignment with the center again. Offering a more transparent dialogue between ourselves can be difficult and complex. Try not to be too hard on yourself.
To end, I’ve had a personal history with this subject, so I’d say throughout writing this it was strange. I’ve got a better sense on what I want to do with this project. A sense of purpose, maybe. So, better times, writings and projects to come. Don’t despair. Remember, the strongest steel needs the greatest fire.
FOOTNOTES
(1): Assuredly anyone in the industry will make the, albeit noble, case that this aphorism is exactly why we should struggle to help.
Pardon the fire and brimestone. This rather short sided, hopeful perspective only really makes sense to the ambitionless bourgeoise. How often are we told to hear, truly think, the importance of awareness of mental illness? It really only seeks the perpetuation of itself for its own internal validity.
(2) One could think of ‘the other’ in terms of the legal framework where it fills both the jury and judge. Such that, the other is constantly on the margins “looking” for imperative gaps to fill, much like an algorithym combing data. This is a fantasy. The power is in particular people, particular judges, and particular financers funding defendents and prosecutions, not the “validity” of this algorithmic other. See to Bouvard's blogs (1 and 2) for more discourse on algorithmic governance.
This discussion is also invariably linked to economy and “social media”. The three primary indicators of modernization or the inclusion of other-ness into all aspects of a societies’ nexus of imperative exchange. This is also, not so coincidently, the need for ostensible foundations in traditionally declarative sciences. Such as the inclusion of Complex Adaptive Systems into Durkheimian conceptions of suicidal growth rates as we discussed in Nonlinearity.
(3) I’m purposefully using muddied language here. Whether it's more important to say that this internal imperative to death comes from the center is a bit of a misnomer. The collective absence of ostensive completion of total imperativity may be seen as an imperative for the person to take it upon themselves to “complete the absence of ostensive”. The authority to banish the center itself, which now must be confusedly merged onto their own identity. Perpetuating the aesthetic of resentment at the emptiness and dissolution of reality itself must present a particularly cruel fate.
(4) And likewise, it is men of steel nerves who see these “poisoning” positions as room for growth. Where you can’t fear criticism, where a mistake has no one to blame but you. The temperament and work required to take upon a task like that research is no easy feat. Quite the opposite. Most people don’t actually “want the smoke,” so to speak.
Hope the rest of y’all have good tidings and pleasant merry making(😉).
You ready?