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[Drkirby]

Hey, fuck you buddy, I nearly did die. Wasn't a pleasant experience.

And so did I.

Like I said, it is a very grim reality, that will likely become a bigger issue in a the coming centuries, unless medicine can come though with anther major breakthrough, and not the kind in the form of a pill or an injection.

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

I think a better question is why do men commit suicide at such a ridiculously higher rate than women? That really surprised me actually, because all you hear in the media is about how the media makes girls feel insecure and depressed.

To make things short, women tend to kill themselves non-violently. Usually by overdosing on aspirin or what not. In other words something where it isn't likely for you to die. Also women are much more likely then men to get help. Hell many of female suicide attempts are a cry to help.

Men on the other hand mask their emotions. Counseling is for pussies. And when they try to kill themselves its usually with a pistol to the head or jumping off a building.. In other words stuff where you're as good as dead.

 

[fredrancour]

When you can take day-to-day survival for granted, you have to find something higher than that to strive for. it's a process that's very easy to fail at.

 

[ElectricBlue187]

Because we work too much and don't enjoy life like we are meant to. The endless inhuman drive to get more productivity out of every individual has left us empty husks where humans used to be unable to feel or truly experience anything outside the few weeks a year we can escape and actually do something worthwhile.

 

[Escape Goat]

Africa is a utopia confirmed.

 

[neojubei]

The world is a horrible evil place confirmed

 

[Devolution]

Because we work too much and don't enjoy life like we are meant to. The endless inhuman drive to get more productivity out of every individual has left us empty husks where humans used to be unable to feel or truly experience anything outside the few weeks a year we can escape and actually do something worthwhile.

This post totally sums up how I've been feeling lately about life in general.

 

[greycolumbus]

Hasa Diga Eebowai

 

[Pandaman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

 

[Freshmaker]

I bet the Indian women resent that.

 

[Rad-]

Because the developed world has topics like this.

 

[kinoki]

P - Positive emotion
E - Engagement
R - Relationships
M - Meaning
A - Achievement

Basicly what we're lacking when we say that the western world is miserable. We try to fill our lives with positive emotion and want to simplify things down to "that's the one that matters". But being engaged in projects, having valuable relationships with people, have a sense of meaning or a goal and working towards that achieving these is much more important since it represents the bigger picture.

Being hedonistic works to a degree but without some substance we're left to wallow in the feeling "Why doesn't this make happy today when it made me happy yesterday?".

 

[Drkirby]

I bet the Indian women resent that.

Well, it does say White Man and all.

 

[Freshmaker]

Because the developed world has topics like this.

It would seem to me that in general once your survival needs are met, your mind turns to other problems. The less challenge you actively face in life, the more minutiae starts amping up in your mind to give yourself some jot of friction to work against.

This is why old men are so worried about punk kids on their lawns.

 

[GCX]

Saturday nights are getting depressing at GAF. "Why is everyone so miserable in the developed world", "Anyone ever try suicide?", "Existential crisis on a cosmic scale", etc and that's just the front page!

Cheer up emo kids.

 

[davepoobond]

they're too busy killing each other to kill themselves, of course there's no suicide in Africa... its not like tyrannical warlords and tribal warfare isn't anything to be depressed about. in fact, if we adopted the same society in america, we wouldnt be nearly as miserable!

 

[Always-honest]

So there are no suicides in afrika?


And everybody in the developed countries is unhappy?


Really now?


I'm happy as a motherfucker and i realise i am lucky, blessed and happy all the time.

 

[Freshmaker]

Saturday nights are getting depressing at GAF. "Why is everyone so miserable in the developed world", "Anyone ever try suicide?", "Existential crisis on a cosmic scale", etc and that's just the front page!

Cheer up emo kids.

Shame there isn't a thread with a jackass 20 year old complaining that they're now old too. That'd be the emo quadfecta.

 

[Secks4Food]

P - Positive emotion
E - Engagement
R - Relationships
M - Meaning
A - Achievement

Basicly what we're lacking when we say that the western world is miserable. We try to fill our lives with positive emotion and want to simplify things down to "that's the one that matters". But being engaged in projects, having valuable relationships with people, have a sense of meaning or a goal and working towards that achieving these is much more important since it represents the bigger picture.

Being hedonistic works to a degree but without some substance we're left to wallow in the feeling "Why doesn't this make happy today when it made me happy yesterday?".

I'll agree with that list, and it's pretty much in order: you need positive emotions to make friends/meet significant others/get along with family, the people in your life are often times the source of meaning, and anything you achieve in life really isn't worth anything unless you have someone to share it with (or perhaps people are the achievement: raising a family, maintaining relationships, the students you might teach, etc.).

When it comes down to it, you're probably going to be miserable if you're (forever) alone no matter where you are in the world. I've seen some posts on GAF that say 'I'd be much happier if I had a million dollars'...or even worse, that thread where you sell out all of your relationships for like 10 million dollars...so many people said they would do that...really disheartening. "Money doesn't buy happiness": it's as cliché as it is true. Sure, it can help you feel positive emotions, build relationships, and achieve goals, but most of the stuff that money buys isn't inherently satisfying.

So yeah, pursue relationships instead of money and you'll probably be pretty well off happiness wise.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

This whole thread should be archived at First World Problems.

 

[caramac]

Too much work makes Jack a dull boy.

 

[Zibrahim]

This whole thread should be archived at First World Problems.

There is no such thing. The three worlds theory is archaic and irrelevant now.

 

[tino]

Im just glad people stop posting "cute puppy was raped twice, got kill and eaten alive on camera" thread hyjinx, for now.

 

[Hylian7]

Oh. Right, facts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

Stubborn things, facts.

I'm a little surprised to see South Korea at #2, assuming that list is accurate. North Korea isn't even on there.

 

[Kinyou]

I'm a little surprised to see South Korea at #2, assuming that list is accurate. North Korea isn't even on there.

I extremely doubt that any data we would get from North Korea would be accurate.

 

[Sylver]

The Somalia situation is very sad but in terms of suicide ratio Scandinavian countries wins by far.

 

[zoukka]

Media imposed definition of beauty.

It makes so many people feel ugly outside and inside. I hate it and wish our society will some day grow up.

(I'm quite happy atm)

 

[Hylian7]

I extremely doubt that any data we would get from North Korea would be accurate.

Probably true, I imagine it would be pretty high there though.

 

[Zaphod]

No one commits suicide in Africa. Are we not meant to live this way? Is comfort just a path to dissolution?

Dear OP and the first world crew,

I lost a friend once to suicide. Depression is a fucked up thing and has nothing to do with first world problems. It is a medical problem that can show up anywhere. Attitudes like yours helped pushed my friend over the edge. The one person he confided in had a similar attitude as yours. She tried to tough talk him out of it by saying that he had no real reason to be depressed and he should just get over it because other people have it worse off. He took two bottles of pills that night. Had she known that depression was real she might have referred him to the proper help. People with major depressive disorder don't bring it on themselves, their brains don't handle the neurotransmitters properly.

I others words, fuck off with this ignorant bullshit.

Thanks,

-Zaphod

 

[Korey]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8yh81XkHYE

Yea, no.

 

[kottila]

Well, let's graph it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

I used the IMF 2010 GDP per Capita estimates, and the total population suicide rate that happened to be listed on the Wikipedia page. No, I didn't bother to look up the GDP information from the same year as the suicide rate information for each entry.

No regression line or correlation coefficents?

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Morrissey invented suicide in 1985 as a marketing gimmick to promote a new Smiths album and it got out of hand. Africa was always more into U2 so it never caught on over there.

 

[Frankfurt]

People want more in the "developed world".

You want a better job. A new car. A better girlfriend. A 3DS. A new apartment. Less annoying neighbors. The new season of your favorite show to be better written. To win Internet arguments. Whenever people get something, they start looking for their next objective. Also, city folk have the problem of not wanting to have problems (best way to be miserable).

Add the fact people don't walk (since they can order through the Internet or phone and prefer to drive even to the neighbor store), dont get their 15-40 daily minutes of sunlight and only eat shitty food...

Miserable 24/7.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

No regression line or correlation coefficents?

Well there doesn't appear to be a strong correlation based on eye-balling it but I believe that there would be many confounding factors like age and income inequality. A teenager might be more likely to end their life due to pressure to conform while an old person might end their life because of poverty and isolation.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

B-b-b-b-but we had the SUPERIOR CULTURE!

Spoiler

I want to travel back in time and be a Native American!

The first African country is #7, after that there is South Africa which is like #10.

that's Guyana, in South America, you're thinking of Ghana, in Africa.

 

[accx]

Oh how i love topics where the OP talks out of their ass and make up bullshit facts and can't even bother to reply about it once proved wrong.

 

[Sennorin]

I bet the Indian women resent that.

Sigh, so you attempt to make a sexist issue from that? Because of the "women did all the work" line? I guess you didn´t read that he also said men would spend the day hunting and fishing.

 

[tino]

Grew up in a develop country. My opinion is that people's happiness may have something to do with the fairness of the society, or the GDP grow rate, but definitely not the GDP itself.

 

[dinazimmerman]

where white man went wrong?

ha! that's fucking hilarious, even if i agree with the sentiment.

where indian man went wrong?

he couldn't defend himself from disease, starvation, and the white man's weapons!

 

[LiK]

No one commits suicide in Africa. Are we not meant to live this way? Is comfort just a path to dissolution?

dude, that is the most ignorant comment evar.

 

[Pachimari]

The Somalia situation is very sad but in terms of suicide ratio Scandinavian countries wins by far.

You got anything to back up this claim?

By the way, Denmark just collected 110 million for Africa's Horn last night, amazing. Back on topic.

 

[dinazimmerman]

looking at this graph, I have a better question:

why is everyone so miserable in eurasia?

 

[Combichristoffersen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnVf8we1kWc

And now I'm gonna go feel miserable thanks to this thread

 

[Raydeen]

No one commits suicide in Africa. Are we not meant to live this way? Is comfort just a path to dissolution?

Fuck off I don't want to talk about it.

 

[Conciliator]

A Tibetan Buddhist explaination for suffering is that people hold expectatons of a future state, and when those expectations are frustrated, one is unhappy.

Well what could breed more expectations than the modern world?

"You're gonna be a rich, famous millionare when you grow up.. just like on reality TV!"

These are great...I can see what the OP is getting at it, though we've all seen that his data is sketchy. Air conditioning, easy access to food, mattresses, roofs over our heads, tons of guaranteed individual rights, and infinite entertainment in every direction doesn't seem to make us happier in a big-picture way. I'm not quite able to wrap my head around this phenomenon, but the points above make it a bit clearer.

Here's something that I've been thinking: I wonder if, once we have basic physiological security, our happiness, or at least our sense of satisfaction, is largely dependent on how we view ourselves versus how we view the people around us('the people around us' could include figures on TV, fictional or non-fictional). That is, where we think we are in the pecking order. If this is true, it doesn't matter how much you have...it matters how much more you have. It doesn't matter how smart or beautiful you are, it matters how much smarter, how much more beautiful, etc. etc..

 

[Pathetic Basement Virgin]

It's human nature not to be happy.

 

[Medalion]

First world problems meme

 

[ElectricBlue187]

looking at this graph, I have a better question:

why is everyone so miserable in eurasia?

They live in Eurasia. Ba-dum-psssh

 

[CornBurrito]

I think a better question is why do men commit suicide at such a ridiculously higher rate than women? That really surprised me actually, because all you hear in the media is about how the media makes girls feel insecure and depressed.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that men are criticized if they act "too emotional." Those suffering from suicidal depression may already have a hard time seeking out help for fear of being seen as weak. I'd imagine males have it even harder in that regard since society deems that men should be the emotionally "tough as nails" gender.

 

[elsk]

People living in developed countries should get a year in a 3rd world country by rule. Then they wouldn't complain ever again.