Why Are Suicide Rates Higher in Wealthy Countries?

It's good news. I'm an optimist. Yeah. I'm about 100% glass is half full person. Yeah. Have you ever tried to turn other people into an optimist and been successful? No. I don't think, I think it's real hard to turn a battleship. Even if I've made an incremental push in the direction, I've moved in one or two degrees to the right. Over time, maybe it'll change their direction. But the reality is you got to want to change yourself. And sometimes someone's inspirational words could be the thing that you needed. And that sets you off on a good path. And then you do make change. But for the most part, when someone comes to you and tells you you have to change, it's really hard for people to accept, just like you were talking about in your episode on changing your mind, which I really loved. But I'm sure that a lot of people who've listened to this podcast or who watch this podcast have, you know, drawn in the both the explicit and implicit optimism. Yes, for sure. But I haven't had any specific reaction with them. I haven't had a specific interaction where I got them to change. They're changing because they're hearing me, but they're also probably hearing a million other people. They're hearing David Goggins and Cameron Haynes and, you know, fill in the blank, all these different people that do incredible things. And they go, why I got to fucking do something with my life. I got to get my shit. I got to stop drinking soda. I got to stop doing this. I got to, you know, I got to just starting healthy, taking vitamins, maybe one workout class a week. Just one. Start with one. There's also, though, I guess a danger. I don't mean to be a downer because I'm an optimist, I'm an optimist too. But the downer or the danger potentially is that, and this relates to suicide. So, you know, suicide is a little bit of a mystery because it's such a tragic thing if it affects someone that you knew or even, you know, even people you don't know, it just seems like such a drastic solution to a problem that is hard to imagine, right? But if you look at suicide rates through history and around the world, there's a lot of variance, but there's one trend that's pretty strong, which is suicide rates tend to be higher in countries with more prosperity, which would seem nuts, right? You would think that if your life is kind of very, very difficult on a kind of Maslow's hierarchy level, right? Not enough to eat, worried about paying rent or being safe, that you'd be more likely to be suicidal. But it turns out it's generally the opposite, not always. And what one suicideologist deduced from that or the kind of theory that he came up with, it's he calls it's the no one left to blame theory of suicide, which is if you live in an environment where let's say you've got a spouse that's cruel to you, or you've got a terrible work situation, or you live somewhere where the government is repressive, whatever, you can always kind of see a light at the end of the tunnel. And you can say that, you know, when that problem is done, my life will get better. But if you live in a society like ours, where you've never had to worry about having enough to eat, you've never gone too cold or too hot, where you're surrounded by prosperity, and you look around at everybody else and like, they're not depressed. And you think, what is it? It's me, the no one left to blame theory. And that's one argument for why there's like right now is a lot of teen and young people suicide in a country like America where the riches are the prosperity is boundless. Have you read Jonathan Hates work? Yeah. Yeah. So his take on that is that these kids are experiencing social media, and they're experiencing this addiction to the internet. And this cruelty that they experienced the bullying, the meanness, the coldness, and that when it's targeted on people, and when they're losing their position in the social chain, and they feel left out, they don't have the tools to cope with this, they're developing minds. And this is the reason why you're experiencing this uptick that's directly correlated to the invention of the iPhone, and the invention of smartphones, the invention of social media applications. There's all sorts of correlations where you see the inventions of these particular things that have changed everything. And then you see the uptick, particularly with girls, particularly with girls in suicide. And they see them trying to keep up with the Joneses, and this feeling that they're inadequate, or judging themselves against girls that are supermodels that are photoshopped, and they just feel inadequate. I hear you on all that. We have to be careful about correlations proving causation, because it's really tough, because I totally hear you on it. It looks like they both travel together. On the other hand, history is full of correlations that looked good. We were talking about polio, the vaccine earlier. Polio, for reasons that are still not understood, by the way, because they never really figured out the disease, they just figured out a vaccine. They never figured out what caused the disease. But it turns out that polio would always spike in the summertime. So there were a lot of theories, maybe it had to do with being outdoors, so parents would keep their kids indoors. Maybe it had something to do with swimming pools. People keep it out of swimming pools. But then there was one theory that what else happens in the summertime that doesn't happen in the wintertime? Ice cream consumption. So there was a theory for a while that polio was caused by ice cream. On paper, the correlation looks pretty good. So I'm saying, look, internet and depression and suicide are a little bit more complicated than ice cream and polio, but it's hard to tease out effects for sure. No, you're right. But it's also hard to ignore the effect of social media on people's self-esteem. People are addicted to phones. People are addicted to likes. It's a real occurrence. It's also been engineered in order to attract the most eyeballs. And the best, turns out, the best way is to get you outraged. I agree. But again, just to bang the same drum again and again, where there's costs, you got to look at the benefits. And this is what I hate about politicians is they'll talk about a policy that they like, they ignore the costs, they talk about the opponent's policy, they ignore the benefits. So with social media, for instance, I know a kid, a boy, who was a friend of the family, who if he were born 30 years earlier, and there were no way to connect with people other than in person, or phone, whatever, he would have had a very disconnected life. He just had some issues with doing that, with kind of in person, kind of behavior that's a little bit on the spectrum, just would have been very difficult. As it turns out, because of the digital revolution, he was able to build a community that is unbelievably good for him. Are there downsides to these things? Absolutely. But you got to look at the benefits. No, I do. I do. And I agree. And I know, I don't mean to- I think we're adapting. I think human beings are adapting to a new normal. And the new normal is constant connection with all the people around us all the time, if we so choose to engage and look at our phone. If we so choose. The problem is when it becomes more invasive than that. Right now, it's if we so choose to engage. But if we get to some point where we're wearing something that transmits stuff into our brain all the time- Or where someone's wearing us. Or if you don't, if you don't do it, then you can't be a part of this corporation, because we're about succeeding. And this is the best way to succeed, is to connect yourself to the network, to uptick your bandwidth so that you can keep up with us. Come on, Steve. What's up? You know what I mean? It's team. Let's go team. And then next thing you know, you're wearing the fucking headband that makes a real mind. Are you optimistic about the future in a general way though? People are awesome. It's a great time to be alive. I love it. I love people. How old- I think a lot of people love people.