The latest suicide stats are out and it’s difficult to know what is the most horrific part of them.
Is it that those numbers are the highest ever recorded?
Is it that those are the official stats and that the real numbers could be twice that?
Or is it the never endlessness of those stats that betray our hope? The refusal to ever acknowledge that the 30 year neoliberal experiment in society, culture and economics has reaped a bitter harvest of mostly men who are so alienated from themselves that their loneliness and grief swamp the daybreak of the present.
We ignore and shun these statistics because it says something so unholy about us as a culture, the malaise of rugged independence at the heart of NZ is a wound that never heals.
Every mention of suicide comes with trigger warnings and a plethora of phone lines in a never ending repetition of desperate virtue signalling with little virtue.
As NZ looks to pass legal suicide law with the Euthanasia legislation, the virtue being signalled is less an honour and more a hollow lie.
Meanwhile the Labour Government have still not delivered upon a new mental health system and simply continue to nod their heads piously with concerned language and no solutions.
In the land of the long white cloud we wearily dig our own graves and beg for ending to close the midnight of our internal rage against ourselves.
‘Meanwhile the Labour Government have still not delivered upon a new mental health system and simply continue to nod their heads piously with concerned language and no solutions.’
Martyn, the ‘war’ was lost in the early 1800s, when the English village-oriented system was broken by industrialists and their colleagues; traditional industries were decimated and the common people were forced into factories and coal mines to avoid destitution. Those that opposed the industrialism, the Luddites, got ‘exterminated’.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a huge number of people in overcrowded nations sought new opportunities overseas-mostly focused on the chance to ‘own’ a piece of land. That, of course, largely wrecked the indigenous village-oriented societies in colonies. .
Yes, 30 years ago the people of NZ were conned into accepting the dismantling of the semi-socialist state of the 1970s, with the faux promise of increased wealth and consumerism as the rewards.
So, of course the Adern government has ‘no solutions’. The solution s a return to the socially cohesive village-oriented society of the past, which is impossible now.
The best the Adern government can do is offer more ambulances at the bottom of the cliff while making jumping more likely. And the Adern government will continue to do what it is required to do by the globalists who run the system, which is keep the populace misinformed, deluded and consuming for as long as possible while it all turns to ‘custard’ throughout the world.
By the way, it seems that the ‘lucky country’ across the ditch is not lucky any more, and if significant rain doesn’t come soon the suicide rate there is likely to burgeon beyond belief, whilst those that don’t kill themselves will be trying to get to NZ, increasing the pressure here. It’s not a pretty picture anywhere now, I’m afraid, but some pictures are worse than others.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=totals&period=daily&area=nat
Mental health is intimately connected to nature and to a purpose in life.
What’s the per capita rate doing?
The nominal rate is meaningless.
Did you look at the link?
‘New Zealand’s suicide rate – the number of suicides per 100,000 population – is at the highest level since the statistics were first recorded in 2007 and has increased for the fourth year in a row.’
‘The suicide rate per 100,000 people was 13.67, up from 12.64 the previous year.’
‘There was a spike in suicides in Auckland
Provisional suicide deaths per 100,000 people, years to June’
Narrative always follows statistics. Want to jump ahead and forcast the future? Then you kind of have to ask what drove an almost doubling of suicide rates. Just focusing on technicals is next to useless. So from the top in the legislative arena in the previous year to 2016 we saw massive cuts to social programs and hours worked, the number of workers went up but the hours worked atayed the same. At the bottom righting wallets meant low end consumers had to make tough choices between food and shelter. So because there’s been a change of government and a change in how economic indicators is gathered in the last year. Do I think these prevailing economic winds will continue under the current government, probably not. Do I think we’ll see an easing of suicide rates dropping off to management levels over the next 10 years, probably. Do I think the turning economic winds will sustain and grow the economy, yes, probably.
‘dog eat dog’ neo liberalism has created a country where too many people know the exact count of their Fly Buys points, but zero about empathy and solidarity with other citizens
the people experiencing all the worst today, and the generations that have led blighted, unfulfilled lives, are effectively the children of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson…
objectively we need a revolution–a fundamental shift in class power–from the parasites to the people
I really don’t get it, why the people in charge, the people in general, are so cowardly and cannot face up to this dismal reality in their own society.
This country lacks something. The tough rugby players, the disciplined cricket players, the finger nail biting race horse and betting enthusiasts, the ‘hard working’ Kiwi, the bla, bla, bla so idealised average ‘Kiwi Battler’ and his and her society may be SICK at the core.
A people and country need a heart, a spirit, some time to let go, to let steam off, to be passionate and emotional, but here in NZ Inc, that is hard to find. Often it is only happening when laced with alcohol or other drugs. At least they need lots of adrenalin, to ‘function’, it seems.
At least such poor countries like in Latin America have their carnival, their catholic condoned time of the flesh and foolishness, I note there is NO such tradition here.
There is not even much of a new years celebration, except getting drunk and tumbling somehow into the new year.
Can people show emotions, without being embarrassed, can people share a space where they are allowed to be foolish for a moment, can people be human for a change?
It seems in NZ Inc it is all designed to simply fit the norm and to ‘function’, or else you are classed as being a ‘failure’ or drop out, and thus not up to it.
Something is wrong with the ‘culture’ here, I am sure Maori and Pasifika have some outlets, but for most, it is not there, a grim society of stereotyped battlers and achievers and people forced to fit into the mold or bugger off. Sad really.
The suicide rate in most industrial nations (including NZ) will increase enormously in the not-too-distant future.
Here’s why:
The current lifestyle of most people living in NZ is dependent on the importation of huge amounts of petroleum.
However, conventional extraction is in terminal decline and the global supply of oil is currently being propped up by short-term strategies such as fracking to extract ‘tight oil’. Fracking wells have extraordinarily high depletion rates -as high as 80% within 2 years of drilling!
This is extreme short-termism, and the long-term implications are obvious.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-25/what-if-there-isnt-enough-energy-going-forward
Politicians always put energy depletion into the ‘too hard basket’ (along with environmental degradation). Yet the longer NZ remains locked into the petroleum economy, the worse health of the nation and harder the fall will be when the crunch finally does come.
Re: opps pissed my self laughing lol suicide is for quitters,…
As a retd. NZ registered nurse (psychiatric & general, with other relevant qualifications) I have striven to help those who were suicidal AND I’ve myself been suicidal 3 times – each time with “good reason” – like knowing I could possibly go blind & thereby not be able to work as a nurse; knowing that there’s no cure for Multiple Sclerosis – caused by mercury in vaccinations I had to have so as to become a NZRN; having a “friend” whom I helped with oppressive legal challenges, who stole more than $200,000 dollars from me – practically all that I had & acquired by selling my home; (long story, that has caused me to never trust another “man”;), I can assure Rickoshay & like “thinkers” that I’ve never known a “quitter” & I am certainly not one. Rather, I’m a survivor & I think there are many thousands of us.
Lots of us live close to the brink too much of our time. Some of us have fewer coping strategies than do others. My major strategy is to live as much as possible with an “attitude of gratitude” & to say “thank you” to the universe as often as I can. I also swallow lots of B vitamins – real cure for depression – unlike the toxic, poisonous chemicals called “antidepressives” by ignorant, allopathic “doctors” who prescribe them.
Some find it impossible to walk even one step in another’s shoes & possibly Rickoshay is such a one.
Been in your boat my dear and my comments where a expression of humor not an attack on you or any other sufferer, my own wrapped sense of humor was what i was expressing i find a good laugh is the best medicine for me.
We have moved the ancient boundary stones that marked a Civil society – turning from God and disdaining the Way of Jesus Christ.
No more “love thy neighbour” and “feed the poor and oppressed” the neoliberal experiment has been an illusion of liberty while reinstating the law of the jungle.
Our ancestors built walls to keep monsters at bay, and now like naive children we think there is no such thing as evil. The malaise is spiritual and the answer is God. We need to return to Him and restore the mana of the Tangata Whenua who were largely a peaceful Christian people when the NZ government began slaughtering them and taking their land and their future.
https://www.huiacomehome.co.nz/book
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