A little blurb at the back of Discover magazine got me thinking... more people suicide in New York City than are murdered. I got to wondering what effect that has on humans as a species. Here's what I considered: Evolution is having (or not having) traits that help you survive to pass on your genes, if you have a trait that gives you a leg up on passing on your genes that trait will tend to be passed on, if you have a trait that makes it less likely to sucessfully reproduce that detrimental trait will tend not to be passed on. If you die before you reproduce your genes will not be passed on. The fundamental cause of suicide is an inability to cope with a mental stressor, usually social in nature. (i.e. "I just can't deal with this") Your genes determine a goodly bit of your basic personality i.e quick reactor, calm deliberator, fearful avoider, etc. The latest studies that I've read about place the amount your genes influence your basic personality at 20-35% For tens of thousands of years the overwhelming majority of peoples environments didnt change much, their life was near identical to their parents life. Mental adaptability was not at a premium, in fact it could be downright detrimental to your health is you started asking odd questions or rebeling about your lot in life. Now physical adaptability was another matter, starvation, disease, etc all made it tough to survive, those with traits that helped them out had a better chance to pass on their genes. Now in the last 150 years (in the industrialized nations mainly) physical survival is increasingly easy but the pace of change is placing an increasing premium on humans mental ability to cope with a ever greater pace of change and social stress. There are other ways of mental inabilty to deal with stress to also influence reproductive success, mental hospitals are filled with people who will tend to not pass on their genes. So my question is this: are people who suicide self-culling themselves, thus contributing to a gene pool that is better able to cope with change and social stress. Even though physical body evolution will probably slow way down, will our new mental environment prompt a evolution in human mental coping abilities.
interesting post and good question. i think a person's decision to take their own life is probably more personal to them than the wider context of the human organism acting to "cull" its less adaptive genes as you put it. I think suicide may have more to do with the cessation of pain and suffering. whether this coincidentally has the effect of the species refining itself is a possibility, as cold as it may sound. it could lead perhaps, to people who are "sensitive", being more prone to suicide. But when you talk of a gene pool better able to cope with change and social stress, would this lead to an evolution which you would be in favour of? it could be that people who cope by being more aggressive, or people less likely to help others, will end up more likely to survive, and this doesn't sound like a direction i'd prefer. the species might change or evolve in some way, but it might not be the way we'd like.
As long as man judges himself using genetic criteria his psychology will be genetically determined. Pain and suffering is what life is and is a consequence of a lack felt as Need. How one feeds a need or can feed it determines his success or failure to adapt within an environment, and what he uses to construct his identity determines what he thinks of himself and his value. When his identity and the need to fulfill the procreative need (within which many needs participate in unison), is directly attached to the group and dependant on it, then their judgment of him becomes his judgment of himself. The other’s opinion becomes superior to his own. Then the needs of the whole supersede the needs of the self or the one. This can result in self-culling. Human coping abilities will always lag behind the faster evolving environments. I would say the gap is getting bigger and the need to return to previous times and the need to separate one’s self from this whirlwind is the drive to slow environmental evolution down and return it to, or escape it to, more familiar environments.
My premise that that the root cause that (non terminal illness) suicide boils down to an inability to cope with mental anquish from a social stressor (divorce, job troubles, money troubles, new school, inability to perform, etc. basically a traumatic change for the worse). What suiciders want is a permanent fix to their emotional pain. 1. All the suicide prevention training I've received semi-annually for the last 15 years; as a senior enlisted NCO, one of my main functions was to take new enlisted kids and mold them into their new life - which is highly stressfull for them. 2. Personal experience, my best friend suicided (divorce), my youngest brother attempted (divorce and lost his job), and one of the new airmen (couldnt deal with the demands placed on him, missed his family) That it has an effect on reproductive success and evolution is from the statistic that the second largest killer of people ages 15 to 24 is suicide, which is before most people have children. Link
BTW, I believe that, should suicide be promting mental evolution, the end result will be a somewhat calmer populace
Some of the suicides are by artists whose job it is to explore the edges of the universe and report back to us. It's easy to figure out that some of the people who are willing to do that might not be "normal" in some other important ways. And they fall over the edge. We need those people. I'll put up with having to give them antidepressants, hire people to be their friends and family, and have 24/7 live-in physicians and bodyguards. Just please give me back Laine Staley and Kurt Cobain... going all the way back to Jimi Hendrix and Marilyn Monroe. Hell, I was sad to see Elvis go and I wasn't even much of a fan, but so many millions of people were so hurt by it. Yes I don't see much difference between a drug overdose and suicide. Drug overdoses are the way we euthanize incurably ill pets and it's certainly the way I would want to go. I'm sure many people who are not artists contribute just as richly to the lives of those who love them. If it were possible to keep them happy so they could keep doing whatever they're doing, rather than making them prisoners of their flesh, I don't see anything wrong with it. If Jimi Hendrix had a gene that contributed to his artistic talent, I really would rather not lose it no matter what the down side. This is a similar argument to the one over whether we should have let Stephen Hawking die, or at least not let him reproduce if he could have. What idiot would have made that choice? We're not all Stephen Hawking (or Elvis) but we all have value. The ability to cope with the advances of civilization is only one of many important abilities, and we can't all have all of them.
I would like to add that it's not just NYC. The suicide rate is almost double the homicide rate nationwide. And on over 50% of suicides, the person had substances (alcohol or drugs) in their system. People who contemplate suicide are much more likely to follow through while in an altered state of mind. Most people, at some point or another in their life, will think about suicide at least once. Some just think about it more often, obsess over it, and are coupled with mental illness. Anything that messes with thought process (substances) would make them more likely to do it. I think a better and more viable answer to the "mental evolution" is that with crowding and industrialization, mental illness is more prevalent (primarily depression). With this depression comes suicide. Just my .02 Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The root cause of suicide is depression. Sometimes that is from inability to cope with stressors. Sometimes it is clinical depression (chemical imbalance), that has no triggering event. Sometimes the job loss and divorce come secondary to depression. People who are severely/clinically depressed have difficulty in several areas, including concentration, irritability etc. These symptoms affect their functioning in other areas of their life. My bet is that depression had set in before the job loss or divorce, otherwise its simple adjustment disorder. Few people kill themselves over adjustment disorder. A series of events and chronic depressed mood can also hinder ability to cope.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Is there a point in one's life when "suicide" could be considered a intelligent choice?
