The system is failing even for those well positioned to ride the success of (but not hold stake in) the general market. The first upper-middle class runners are coming across the line to find nothing there. How does that effect the tipping point? Is this a marker of a Late Stage?
Does anyone even subscribe to the American Dream anymore? Maybe there isn’t a big pack running behind these first place white men to find a cliff at the finish line.
Is it the last remnants of an experiment burning out, or is it just the first car to crest the rollercoaster?
Or is the suicide stat meaningless and the power structure still favors inherited white male privilege so significantly that it’s dumb to grasp at minor perceived cracks forming? If this then what’s the stat about?
Yeah, more like everyone gets told to take some time off and do self-care. Something totally compatible with working multiple jobs, or working one job with horrible hours, or working and trying to job hunt, or living with kids...
I think some strains of that self-care talk are pure poison. Not all of it, but the stuff that reduces the entirety of one's life into a little individualist box irks me. It seems like a pretty way to keep the status quo going.
That said, my mental health issues have definitely affected my abilities/capacity as an organizer in the last few months, and I wish I was a little better at self-care to maybe calm the whole thing down a bit so I can get back to work and can stop feeling like I'm letting my comrades down constantly.
So you're not actually saying that depression would magically go away post-capitalism right? Just that it would be significantly reduced?
even for those well positioned to ride the success of (but not hold stake in) the general market
"White men" are not well positioned to ride the success of the general market. People born with accumulated capital are well positioned to ride the success of the general market.
White Americans have no community and barely have a nuclear family let alone any extended family connections. That's why this is happening. Until very recently you where expected to get the fuck out of the house you where raised in by 18. You where expected to live alone till you found a partner. And than you where expected to raise the child by your selfs with the grand parents dropping in once in awhile to spoil the baby talk shit about your partner etc offer little to no help than leave.
White Americans are not set up to survive with out the whole system working in their favor. So it's going to be very rough for many of us.
Is that really true? I grew up working class in the UK and it was all about big families, grandparents looking after us kids after school before the parents finished work, etc.
Fair enough, didn’t realise it was such a different experience. I wonder why.
Puratain rugged individualism. A nation formed from people that left their families and homeland to start a new else where. Individualistic capitalism.
Seems like it became the norm post ww2. No need for community or family when everyone is on the up and up.
I think the poster put those words in scare quotes because they’re not their own words. It’s more that they are repeating the observation that capitalism has no use for people that don’t fit the category of “productive worker” (that is what capitalism itself considers productive). It’s one of the reasons capitalism must be overthrown.
The second half of the comment I’m not gonna touch with a ten foot pole lol.
those well positioned to ride the success
I don't mean to start a struggle session, but even if straight white cis proletarian men sit at the top of the shit pile, they're still part of the shit pile.
"The Lives of Others" is a German Stasi drama in which the Stasi tries to prevent the publishing of an article about rising suicide rates in the GDR. The implication is that these rising rates imply the failure of the GDR system. The film was produced as a general statemant against mass survaillance, but also an outright condemnation of the security apperatus of the GDR and the whole system. People rather kill themselves instead of continung to exist within the system. That it was made just before the manning/snowden leaks and suiciderates in the west starting to take off is really :marx-ok:
Thank you so much. This community is amazing. Appreciate the recommendation
There are a few things to be said about the movie, but I am too tired to do so. Basically it presents a lot of socialist stuff to negative and on the other hand invents the good MfS officer who starts to write poetry and helps liberals, so the watcher is actually a guardian of the watched.
Bear in mind, many, possibly even a large majority, of white men don't realize that they're well positioned for success. Many view themselves as victims of things like affirmative action and "reverse racism". I don't know how this would affect suicide rates, but all I can confidently say is that the thought process isn't "I still hate my life and I'm going to do this even though I won the privilege lottery". I also don't know how the suicide rate goes with social conservativeness, so this is kind of just food for thought or inspiration for further research.
they’re well positioned
They're better positioned, not well positioned
100% this. They have a relative advantage but that is often times still absolute shit
It's not just American white men, though. Nordic countries have long had high suicide rates, with it also being disproportionately men.
Seems possible that many white men have a subconscious awareness that they are advantaged in Western capitalism, thus dissatisfaction comes with deeper shame.
Capitalist alienation is still a thing even in capitalist nations that are doing well economically, that’s something we shouldn’t overlook.
I always thought that had something to do with their longass winters
Some parts of Nordic countries do not see the sun for months at a time. This jas a great affect on many people
If you’re a white man who didn’t graduate college and can’t get into the trades then you’re just less underprivileged instead of privileged. I’m not sure what the income distribution of the suicide rate is but “deaths of despair” are on the rise among whites in general.
The first upper-middle class runners
You're conflating "white male" with "upper-middle-class," which is inaccurate. (I'm a lazy bitch and unwilling to look up the stats, but significantly more white men are poor or working-class than upper-middle, especially depending on geographical region. Think Appalachia, the Rust Belt, the former Confederacy - any deindustrialized area.)
Anyway. White men's life expectancy has been falling since 1999. In fact, white men kill themselves at twice the rate of every other ethnic group, excepting Native Americans. There's two scripts here: the "traditional" psychoanalytic approach of why men kill themselves in middle age, versus the post-2000 rise in suicides.
The reasons ascribed for the "traditional" suicides are maybe sufficient for that type. The motivating factors ascribed to the "newer" type, which has driven the massive increases post-2000, are quibbled over but in some rough hierarchy it's agreed that they're economic (loss of industrial jobs), substance abuse (esp. opioids - think Sackler), and interpersonal (as neoliberalism drags on, their family structure continues to disintegrate).
TL;DR It's a bit of a misnomer to think that the epidemic is among the PMC - rather, as always, it's a massive and growing problem among working-class whites. The stat isn't meaningless: as you say, it's the canary in the coal mine. The takeaway is that neoliberal economic governance levels any liberal assumptions of racial "privilege" in a classed manner, to such an extent that more whites of the working class commit suicide, year after year. You're right in thinking this is a crack in the foundation.
both a result of that disintegration and a cause for increased suicides
This is absolutely true, good point. They have no social bonds to fall back on, at least not healthy ones, which exacerbates the ruinous effects of their worsening material conditions.
Is this about the paradox where black Americans have less mental health disorders despite having worse physical health, more stress and worse socioeconomic status?
there are a few theories, such as black people having more buffers against mental health such as higher self esteem and religiosity as well as generally better social support systems, but this is not supported by data. some people think the tests may not be accurate due to a cultural bias in diagnostics, ie, the same diagnostic interview might apply to white people but not to black people, but afaik this has some evidence but not enough to explain the paradox. one of the more promising theories is that black folk tend to have worse health behaviors than white folks. they are more likely to drink as a coping mechanism for instance, trading possible mentall illness for worse physical health. this one is supposed to be the most promising, with some studies supporting this one.
thats what i learned in college
I am pretty sure that black class status is actually falling. I think I learned about that a few quarters ago in some anthropology class.
Lemme rattle some shit off. You commit suicide when:
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Your dad succeeded easily and you can't
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You have fewer friends than any other demographic, because
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You don't really have a shared experience of anything with anyone - you're absolutely atomized
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You lack the class consciousness to attribute your awful life to capitalism
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You can't attribute it to racism or sexism - some reactionary white men try do this, but they know it's bull shit.
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You're not a woman, you literally cannot touch anyone past a handshake,
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Let me reiterate, depending on your circumstances it may be impossible to touch another human being without committing a serious crime or being attacked
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You're not a woman, you can't talk to anyone about your feelings
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You're not a woman, knowing those feelings are there is a secret, and a great source of shame
When you can't find anyone to blame, maybe you blame Mexicans for a while but it really doesn't have purchase. You don't even know a Mexican. You blame yourself and then maybe you shoot yourself.
You lack the class consciousness to attribute your awful life to capitalism
Yeah this is why I keep saying that Chris Hedges saved my life. If you lack tools to come to an understanding of the structures that control you, why the walls are closing in, and why nearly everything you were told about society growing up was a lie, it all seems like "it's my fault."
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Neolibs don't understand that giving at least one concession to the masses will extend their capitalistic world for at least a couple more decades. Imagine giving public healthcare? How many problems would be curbed while still continuing basically every other shit policy
Are there certain struggling industries in the US that are majority white? I can’t speak to American capitalism, but in Australia the highest rates of suicide have been “middle aged (presumably white, the country is 75% Euro descent) men” for decades.
I was taught that white men out in the country are massively overrepresented because of farmers, dealing with decades of on-off drought, exploitative relationships with big agribusiness, all the other pressures of being a petit-boug producer under capitalism. Men who operate the farm that their great-grandfather started 100 years ago or whatever and lose the whole thing, stuff like that. Or just the pressure in general gets to them. Plus I’m sure in these country areas there’s a lot of “ok, there’s like five cattle ranches, a pub, and a store within 100 kilometres of town”, probably not much employment going for people leaving school. Meth is huge in regional/country Australia too (our medical professionals have been a little less forthcoming than yours with the opioids).
nah its bullshit. Intelligence isn't like a fixed stat on a rpg character sheet. People can literally learn to improve the speed and accuracy one can compute and process information.
