After you lose your job, and your kid gets addicted to heroin, and the only job in town is either at the WalMart or the MacD, is there any wonder at the number of suicides?
I think these folks are on a steady diet of fear, fear, fear and despair – takes a toll. I wish I could feel more sympathetic.
Other experts have speculated that middle age can be a particularly hard time for whites, who — compared to some other racial and ethnic groups — commonly don’t have as many supportive relationships with friends, family, or religious communities.
Though security in a decent-paying good job is a big deal, so is this – the supportive networks point. As a white male who fits right in this whole statistic, I can vouch for its accuracy.
Fox News shouldn’t kill it’s demo so quickly.
Horrible business model.
Horrible.
I believe that some, possibly a lot, can be blamed on mass media. 60 years ago, if you wanted to do anything other than watch the dust bunnies, you had to leave the house. You joined a bowling league. You got involved in your church. Today, people hang out on Facebook, TPM, write stupid comments, get into flame wars, and what is the meaning of all that? And after they get tired of facebook, they watch the sports on TV, or the cooking shows. Churches are diminishing. I am a UU atheist, and yet am highly involved in my small church, not out of belief in a higher being (like our minister, also an atheist), but because it is a social relationship which has value to myself and my wife.
Another huge factor is the types of businesses which are out there today. Where in 1960 there would have been a complex of shops doing things, and upholding the community, today there is Walmart/Target/Kmart/Sears/JCPenney (each replacing 20 small proprietor owned businesses) and MacD (replacing proprietor owned restaurants). I blame chains, which started in the 1970s to have a big impact, for a lot of these problems.
We used to be a nation of church-going shopowners. We are now a nation of Facbook-using part-time clerks.
This is clearly the result of Obama’s plan to marginalize whites to encourage self-genocide. I’ll draw up the terms of impeachment now.
I agree with a lot of your comment – we do have so many options today, that we rarely have to leave our homes if we so choose. Unfortunately, that does help to break down human contact, face-to-face communications. I know people today who cannot have a one-on-one conversation with me without having that damned cell phone on. I absolutely hate it. It’s funny you mention the Unitarian Universalist Church because I’ve been strongly considering going to the one here in Charlottesville. I, myself, am a pretty lonely person (though, part of that is on me and I do like my alone time) and I miss being around like-minded people. I left California a decade ago and miss it all the time, but I cannot afford to live there. I’m not a theist, but pretty squarely agnostic but not religious. Social contact with like-minded people is what I’m needing right now – that and to potentially find a partner. Anyway, I can totally relate to this CDC report and your comment caught my eye even more so because of your mention of UU. Thank you.
I wonder what percentage of these suicides are via firearms. It’s always good to have a gun handy when you are feeling especially despondent.
I suspect the number is pretty high. I’ve known people who pulled the trigger --and, yes, they were white men.
I encourage you to try out your church. We have moved a number of times. Whereever we go, we find the UU church, and join it. While I don’t agree with everything in the church (and that is part of the UU deal), I usually find reasonable, sensible people. I enjoy music as well, and churches have a lot of good music. Depending on the church, you will find some that are somewhat more deistic (where they use the G-word occasionally), some very humanistic, and some quite pagan and atheistic. Most have a social justice outreach. UU churches are LGBTQ-friendly - our church has quite a few lesbians, and we are having a big wedding for a couple of ladies in a week or so. We don’t have many gay guys, for whatever reason. If you are not straight, you will find an accepting place at a UU church. If you are straight, same deal. The only persons who might not feel accepted would be strong Christians who feel the evangelical fervor, but those are already at the local Baptist or Pentacostal church.
The fact that you attend a church as your best form of social group points to the real problem. It’s not that people stopped joining groups because they’ve become Facebook zombies. It’s that there aren’t many good groups to join anymore.
Because even if I wanted to join a social group of like-minded people, I definitely wouldn’t want to join a church or even have it be atheists. I mean, I’m atheist, but find that many atheists can be insufferable when discussing religion. And if we’re not talking about religion, then we might as well not be an atheist group and just say it’s for some other purpose.
And the thing is, there already are places you can go to hang out and talk to all kinds of people, including those you agree and disagree with; and they’re called bars. You can go to a bar in every town and find someone to talk to if that’s your sort of thing. That’s what I do, and it’s way better than joining a social group. Especially for me, since I prefer to talk to people I disagree with, because I find that’s far more interesting. And alcohol makes that all the more fun. And after that, you might never see them again or they might become your best friend. And there’s no commitment and you can change bars at any time…
And I don’t see why you’re knocking Facebook. I’ve got a lot of good friends on Facebook who I’ve never met, but know quite personally. And I know they also have friends and social lives, because they post about it online and I see more about them than I even want to sometimes. Television is the problem, because it’s intended for you to shut off your mind and veg out. But Facebook lets you engage with people you might never have met otherwise. Plus, it helps stay in contact with relatives far away without even trying. I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t use it, just to stay in contact with family. But whatever. To each his own.
Makes me wonder what people used to account for a third and why that wasn’t in the news.
Thank you. I really appreciate your input. I’ve spoken with a couple different people here and everyone encourages me to check it out. I’ve done little research, and they’re a pretty good-sized church. I think I need it. As a child, I went to a Southern Baptist church, but quit in my early teens due to their racist ways and my sexuality. I did enjoy the community, though, and would welcome the community feel in my life. Again, thank you.
Whatever. I have found my interest in alcohol dropping somewhat. My wife and I used to drink 4-5 bottles of wine per week, and we are now down to 1-2, often less. We get very sleepy after a couple drinks.
The point of joining a group is not to discuss religion, or to discuss politics. It is usually to find a purpose which is a little larger than your own small world of interests. Most churches have a social mission. They help homeless people, they contribute to the local food pantry, etc. This can be a reason for existence.
What leads to suicide? A lack of hope and lack of purpose.
What can help lead away from suicide? A larger purpose in life, a plan for the future.
Facebook, with the prospect of endless cat videos and recipes for making weird dishes, is not a way of planning for the future or of gaining a larger purpose. It’s just mental masturbation, really.
Another thing about the UU church - we do discuss religion. But what is religion? It’s not really a belief in a higher power, which I don’t have. It’s much more to do with your understanding of life, your place in the great wheel of being, your confrontation of your own mortality. That is what we talk about at my church. The teachings of great spiritual leaders are discussed, but we have a wide view of who is a great spiritual leader.
Many larger communities have several UU churches. Some are “fellowships”, which don’t have a minister. Some are minister-led. Your community may have several, and they have very different “vibes”. Do a little church-shopping. Enjoy the up-time, as they say on the ads.
Out here in Marin County, where I live, they’re called dog parks! I’ve made some really good friends at the dog park – some people I even get together with outside the park (and others I prefer to avoid). We hang out, talk about any topic, have volunteer days to do maintenance work in the park, all the while our dogs run and play with their best dog friends. We even have Friday afternoon happy hours!
It’s all of the above with unemployment a huge factor, way out of proportion to the other ones. A job is not just a source of income. It’s a definition of who we are. Huge numbers of men who find themselves kicked out of middle mgmt also find out they’re virtually unemployable. What they did has beeen obsoleted or replaced by some outside service.
In the 1980’s, I went from middle mgmt at a Fortune 1000 co to selling furniture and had to virtually beg the store mgr for the job. There was just nothing out there.
Lose that job and pretty soon your wife stops fucking you, family and friends treat you like some Biblical leper with a cowbell. I’ve seen divorces in 30-yr marriages, descent into alcohol, husbands and wives hating each other – all because the economic support of the tie is gone. The wife suffers vicariously with the husband.
But “I have the church” you say? If it works, good. It doesn’t for others and “support” groups can have the unintended consequence of deepening one’s despair.
Any wonder we have a disproportionate # of suicides in this cohort?
When a white male looks for an organization to join, or even a suicide prevention line, he’ll probably encounter a well meaning blurb like this:
We welcome women, people of color, and LGBTQ; and he reads that as not me, not me, not me.
The modern equivalent of the old southern shopkeeper’s sign, “No colored”.
It is disheartening that organizations will go to the trouble of welcoming women, every skin color but white, and every flavor of gay, but somehow can’t include “white”, “heterosexual”, or “men”.
No, no, no. I did not say that churches replace this. I agree with you 100%.
What a church can do is give you something of a purpose. But without a job, you are still in a bad place.
I go to many stores, and see young, vigorous men, stocking shelves. WTF!!?? These guys should be building houses, but those jobs have all been taken by illegals. As I noted above, we have stopped being a nation of shopkeepers, and are now a nation of part-time clerks. That is dreadful for men, in particular.
I make the point, frequently, that illegal immigration is a huge factor. I continue to make that point. When you take a community with X jobs and X workers, and you add in even 10% illegals who will work for much less, you will see social disruption.
What we have seen, BTW, since the mid-90s (when NAFTA took all the manufacturing jobs to Nogales), is a HUGE increase in men on SS-disability. As you noted, no real jobs left, where a single person could feed his family. Plus the women in the workforce are, for good or ill, a huge competition as well.
This is EXACTLY why Trump is doing well. If Democrats continue the hispandering illegal pimping, we will lose a lot of support.