668 NZers took their own lives last year – the malaise at the heart of us

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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.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

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.

 

23 COMMENTS

  1. ‘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.

  2. [Comment declined for publication. You have been banned previously from this Forum and trespassed accordingly. – Scarletmod]

  3. I was lying in bed the other morning as a cold,cruel west wind hissed around my house while I counted up the number of people I know who’ve killed themselves. Was far more fun than snuggling up with my Baby, I can tell you that for nothing.
    Now, I don’t know that many people. I’m no social butterfly. I’m more a social dung beetle. I roll about in my own shit while others stand back looking on in horror. But I’m happy, so who gives a fuck, right?
    I got to seven people. I knew seven people who took their own lives and buggered off with them.
    And what surprised me as I lay there pondering those lovely souls was that those people were from a cross section of society. Of various ages, sexual orientations, incomes and social standing.
    A couple of Gay friends, a young woman, a young man, a couple of drug addled emotionally damaged people…They all seemed uniquely different and yet they killed themselves?
    There’s a ‘Thing’ going on. But what, exactly, is that ‘Thing’?
    I feel with my dung beetle feelers and my feelers are enough for me to navigate past, through and around bullshit. They’re not always right, but they’re right often enough to allow me to survive in this weird/warp/harmonics/vibrating-void we most commonly know as ‘life’.
    And I can say without fear of criticism that when neo liberalism was injected into us by those now well known bloodless scumbags back in the 1980’s, ‘life’ began to feel ‘ different’. I’m very much a ‘feelings’ kind of guy and I trust my ‘feelings’ even when what I see and hear may differ from those ‘feelings’.
    So, what the fuck is that about then? Why is that…?
    When things ‘feel’ different. Sometimes those ‘ things’ feel lovely. Like when you go to a city in a country and it ‘feels’ amazing! Exciting! Alive! Thriving on good energy! And then there’s Balclutha in South Otago. It ‘feels’ like nothing. It ‘feels’ dead. No disrespect to people who live in Balclutha. I truly don’t believe it’s the fault of those who live there at all. The town, the immediate surrounding country side… It feels …? Unpleasant. A bit yuk. A dead zone.
    And there are other places about like that. Places that feel unpleasant.
    Post neo liberal NZ/AO? Where we’re now all competitors, where we’re now all workers or labeled bludgers in a rotting system killed by Banksters and liars who gloat about their monetary wealth, which is really just a special kind of insanity, but to us? It’s a flag we must wave, like it or not, which has Loser written across it. In Post neo liberal NZ/AO the afore mentioned have murdered our beautiful New Zealand / Aotearoa’s spirit. They’ve sold its soul. And it’s that, that very thing, that’s causing some people to unwittingly succumb to that invisible energy, now an ugly, greedy rapcious thing which should nurture us and fill is with vitality is now killing us off or mutating us into monsters.
    I wrote about those few people I knew who killed themselves in the above paragraph and pondered why such a diverse range of people from different walks of life suddenly removed themselves from it.
    Why?
    I can tell you why, in my view. They all had money problems. They either knew they’d never be able to have millions of that they’d lost significant amounts of money, or they knew that they’d be heading into retirement penniless and vulnerable to rising (greedily inflated) costs of living to eventually die broke and consequently in poor physical and mental health.
    Here’s the kicker humanoids…
    THAT, IS ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE!
    GET OFF YOUR ARSES AND GO FUCK UP A FOREIGN BANKSTER!
    TODAY!
    THERE ARE MONSTERS ROAMING YOUR STREETS AND SUBURBS AND THEY’RE KILLING YOUR LOVED ONES AND THEY ARE THE BANKS. THEY TAKE EVERYTHING AND GIVE NOTHING BACK EXCEPT MISERY,POVERTY AND DEATH.

    • Solid. Yeah NZ is a white settler aberration. No better today than the 1840s when Aotearoa was invaded by land hungry Brits, the fallout from industrial Britain, trying to recreate the yeoman’s paradise of a bit of stolen land to subsist on.

      But escaping the workhouse onto the land was going backwards. It kept alive the peasant mentality – look down on farm workers and Maori gang labour, and up to the big white gentry on the hill. It gave us our Eurocentric racism, patriarchy and small business mindlessness.

      Fast forward to now. The land is dying because its been stolen, corporatised, capitalized and bought up by the giant banks. And everything else is self-employed slavery, wage slavery, or parasites living off rising land values paid for out of workers unpaid wages.

      Suicide is a natural response to alienation from nature, society and ourselves. Because if we cannot hold the real perpetrator of our fate – dying capitalism – responsible, we are powerless to change our circumstances and our actions self-implode in interpersonal abuse. In the end those who cannot live with using and abusing others, take the little power they have left, to blame ourselves and abuse ourselves to death.

      Return to nature, nationalize the land, make the Maori right of usage the basis for leaseholds. It you don’t use it sustainably and for the benefits of the collective, then risk losing it to those who can.

      Banks would vanish along with their money because who would need them for a loan? A single state bank to supply credit without interest like student loans.

      Collectives on the land which cooperate in production and which equalize the rewards would be the springboard for an Aotearoan socialism, able to trade with other countries that go down the same road.

      The moral? Don’t kill yourself. Kill capitalism, and live full lives in harmony with nature and humanity.

      • A lot of what you say has merit, but turning on your ancestors is simply a form of self hate, probably caused by some guilt about who you are in the greater scheme of things.

        Our European colonialist ancestors were not all from England, many had been chased or starved off their own ancestral land by English expansionist colonial policy & actions. Remember Anglo Saxon England was colonised by the warlike & bureaucratic Normans. They extended their systematic hegemony over the British Isles first to Wales & Scotland & eventually too Ireland. This is where the long heritage of English colonialism began.

        By Victorian times Great Britain was the worlds greatest power & not too be trifled with. As they say if you can’t beat them you join them, & much to my distaste, many of my Scottish & Irish ancestors joined them in their world dominating crusade, as did many Maori when they finally made it downunder.

        I had an Irish ancestor who, due to starvation in the famines, pretty much had no choice but to join the British army to survive. He ended up out here as a corporal fighting against the Maori & received a medal & a small plot of land for doing so. Of course, the patriotic thing for him to do would have been to stay at home & fight the bloody poms, but in hindsight, he did what he did survive in a time of crisis & who am I to judge him for that.

        The point I’m trying make is that we can’t be held responsible for the actions of our ancestors. When I lived in Germany I saw first hand the demoralising effects this ongoing (US Jewish lobby & Israeli driven) anti German propaganda has had on their baby boomer generation. If we succumb to guilt generating moral force used against by those who would weaken us in order to pursue their own agenda through peaceful means, then this can result in ancestral & self hate & probably some kind of identity crisis. I know, I’ve been there.

        There is a tendency, especially among well off liberal middle NZ who have succumbed to such guilt, too see those who identify as Maori as some kind of chosen people, which is very counter productive to us moving forward peacefully together as a nation. To be honest it’s time put the Rousseauian ‘noble savage’ idea to bed, as we’re all of made from the same mixed blood stuff, & every ethnicity has their fair share of goodies & baddies.

        • I don’t hate my ancestors, especially the working class and small farmers among them. I hate capitalism because of what it did to them, and to the peoples they colonized, and is still doing to the descendants of both today.

          I don’t recognize nations as anything other than geographical states that serve the interests of the ruling classes. Those ruling classes couldn’t care less about the working masses, whether they live or die, as long as they die working to make the bosses’ profits.

          Working people have no nation because their interests are global. To oppose worker migrants, whose countries have been destroyed by capitalism, from contaminating your own national culture, is to side with ruling class national chauvinism, as a means of dividing and ruling the working class globally.

          Only a working class united internationally can dispense with capitalism and build a society which allows humans to escape alienation and survive in harmony with nature.

          • Very naive, discredited 20th century neo-marxist thinking, which in today’s context offers no meaningful solutions to the enormous challenges we face. Marx may have been a bright spark in some areas, but his understanding of human nature was abysmal. If you don’t recognise nations, then I suggest you burn your passport & all ID documents & embrace your statelessness. This a reality you may have overlooked.

      • Jesus Dave that’s bleak albeit very perceptive.
        No east fix there, what do we take from that? It’s ok to not be able to fix the worlds problems on our own?
        Love the one you’re with?

      • Return to the happiness of hunter-gathering? Ag was the wrong turn — diminished the many for the few. Such brighties — Dave Brown, Countryboy — in the universe but none in my neck of it.

    • opps pissed my self laughing lol suicide is for quitters, 5 mins of reading a country boy post will keep you going for ages

  4. Afewknowthetruth – nice to see you harking back to village days. We have a few oddballs around here, most are harmless. Two I know and like. I am bone weary of telling people that there was a time when people accepted the village idiot and often accommodated them very kindly. Now they can be judged far too harshly. So can we all.

    Thatcher said there was no such thing as society, and she certainly helped dismantle it, and NZ followed suit. I see nothing changing. This has never been a good country in which to be different, but our consumer-based society creates problems for people, does little to address them, then criticises the damaged and far too often turns its back on them – the “feelings” which Countryboy describes sometimes seem to me to have been bred out of people.

    Most of us know someone who has killed themselves; the type of effort needed to effect meaningful societal change doesn’t align well with neoliberal philosophy or economics – but one day a decent high calibre political leader may appear on the horizon, who knows. It happens.

  5. The 30 year experiment you speak of is now a deeply ingrained reality. A whole generation has been socially engineered to function within the framework of this pernicious liberal capitalist ideology. The children of this neo-lib generation are now undergoing the same treatment, & the disastrous consequences of this soul destroying dis-ease are to be seen right across the board.

    E.G. Broken, alienated & desperate individuals – callous societal indifference – weak willed & ineffectual political leadership – foreign influence, ownership & control – out of control consumerism & personal debt – exorbitant banking profits – amoral advertising & sponsorship – erosion of localised & cultural identity – liberal MSM complicity in perpetuating the liberal elite’s globalisation narrative – failing infrastructure & environmental degradation.

    Frightening stuff, it’s no wonder some of us are getting really pissed off & thinking in revolutionary terms!!

    • Good synopsis, as we called it in High School. Though talking shop is always the best way to go, despite the strong’s antithetical stretching of it. I think the main point is the elite, no matter meritocratic, are bought off. Which is why ’84 in the first place. Bought off by ignorance of where they came from.

  6. Is it that those numbers are the highest ever recorded?

    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.

  7. ‘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

    • Quite right, if we can get over the hump of them (45% if you include 44% hangers-on). Division. That’s what the rich do.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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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