From the Gen-Z suicide thread. Bringing it here to get the lounge's feedback, which are hopefully deeper than
the generation is inherently weak, therefore nothing can be done to help them, therefore fuck 'em, therefore I am justified in fucking them over
That is a fair point but I also think the mere fact that young people are so preoccupied with these large scale problems is part of the issue. Not that being aware is bad but because of the nature of the news cycle and how it interacts with social media we're plugged in all the time to stories about terrorism or climate change or wealth inequality and we're disconnected from more local issues that probably preoccupied the attention of previous generations more. I like what Zizek once said about what he really has nostalgia for is the era when we got the news once in the morning through the paper, discussed it briefly, and then we were free from it until the next morning. Now we have Twitter where news is not only constantly relayed to us but also where the news itself is increasingly made.
I also think a big difference is in the breakdown of the family and locally rooted communities. Before people had local and familial support networks but capitalism overtimes breaks those down and now without those its harder for young people to cope. This is perhaps a controversial point but I suspect the decrease in church attendance isn't helping. Church is a unique institution, its locally rooted and in theory a mixed demographic space at least when it comes to age and gender and of course is centered around the sacred instead of the profane. It may be boring but I suspect that weekly social interaction is probably helpful on some level. I don't have data to support this mind you but I'd be surprised if young people who went to church aren't less likely to become depressed than young people who don't.
Something that the topic made me think about was that Gen Z kids have a very different sense of humor compared to other generations. They really lean into Absurdist style humor. Your comment on Church made me think of Kierkegaard and Camus's takes on Absurdity, which admittedly I am only casually familiar with. People more familiar with them, please chime in and correct me.
Absurdism is roughly defined as a conflict occurring when people feel a need for their existence to have deeper meaning when the universe tells them existence is meaningless. When faced with the absurdity of trying to find meaning in a meaningless existence, the main resolutions are:
1. Escape existence (suicide)
2. Believe that meaning can be found in a realm beyond this existence (religion or spirituality)
3. Accept the absurdity (create your own self-fulfillment)
Given this kind of framework, the rise in suicide rates makes complete sense. Religion, while having benefits for community building, often falls apart under scientific scrutiny. Someone who cannot mentally close that gap for solution 2 will have to turn to 3. Next, if you look at the people trying to find their own fulfillment, they might see that the things that brought meaning to previous generations, like education, a career, attaining wealth, owning a home or having a family, are further out of reach compared to previous generations. The combination of an illusion of spirituality being harder to sustain with traditional self fulfillment milestones being out of reach mean that people are going to turn to other forms of community building with low barriers to entry, such as focus on online communities and/or political identities, or suicide unfortunately.
I'd love to hear people's thoughts.
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