Suicidal Society

In Germany the number of suicides is extremely disturbing and rising. The reasons mostly are lack of money and lack of self respect, which are interconnected: no money, no value, no self respect. It is terrible that people consider themselves worthless only because they have no money. The last concrete figure I have is 12225. The number of people who took their own life in the year of 1996 in the Federal Republic of Germany - one of the world's richest and most developed nations. Almost four times the number of victims of 9-11. Most of them just didn't see a point in living anymore. Only two weeks ago an uncle of mine who happens to be an MD had to cut a friend off the rope - the friends business had failed. He left a newly built house, wife and two little children. When I was a child, a friend of mine who was merely 12 years old threw himself in front of a train. Another friend of mine died by his own hand last year because he considered himself a failure and his life pointless. Humans need to see a point in living. A reason. They need respect. A purpose in life. I am suddenly thinking about the Jehovah's witnesses. These are really determined people and they did find a purpose in life for themselves. I perfectly understand that people completely loose (or find?) themselves easily in obscure sects these days - even if this sect revolves around selling a product as often is the case in quasi religious chain marketing schemes. A community and something to believe in. The ROOT factor. The emotional attachment to a group, an idea, a corporation or merely a product. Almost anything can substitute the lost sense of purpose, community and respect. The famous British Zoologist Desmond Morris (author of "The naked Ape" and the BBC series "The Human Animal"), who treats Humans as the Animals they are in his research, calls our large cities "Human Zoos", because the city is not our natural habitat. Our instincts and senses are not prepared for the onslaught of impressions in the cities. But interestingly the situation is worse in small dysfunctional communities. The world's highest youth suicide rate is to be found in Western Samoa, where a very authoritarian Polynesian subsistence village culture collides with the "free" Western consumer culture. A state of being clashes with the world of "having". Traditional knowledge is challenged by modern media and school systems. Old beliefs that grew over thousands of years were radically pushed aside by a new religion. The result is: extreme lack of self esteem for an entire culture - a culture that had sustained itself with limited island resources for Millennia. Fact is that WE probably could learn a lot from THEM.