Robin Williams and the Question of Suicide

Robin Williams is in the news.  Suicide.  But, there are thousands of others who’ve done themselves in.  Most of all, he was a public personality, surrounded with all the things we put in the list of successes.  Fame. Wealth.   But, what about the other, less fortunates who snuff out their lives?

No matter the person’s station, those left behind ask the same question:  why?

In Robin William’s case, newsreaders, and the media in general came up with immediate answers.  Fading fame.  Yep, he’s got four movies coming out this year, and others in the planning stage.  Fading wealth.  Yep, had to sell one of his multimillion-dollar properties.  Fading health.  Others have Parkinson’s, Michael J Fox, to name one, and choose to go on living.  Lou Gehrig, retired from baseball and facing the bleak future of the disease which bears his name, called himself “The luckiest man alive.”

Depression.  Plenty of that going around.  Most of us have a short pity-party, then kick our own ass and get over it.

The conjured reasons just don’t hold up. To paraphrase Nassim Taleb, in his book, The Black Swan, it’s part of the human condition to construct a narrative.  But, does a hasty narrative really put the lid on the question:  why?

Every depressed person puts a belt around his neck, or ops for a fist full of tablets to dreamland?

Williams pops out at us (and scares us) because he had everything that’s supposed to lead to a happy life.  Wealth. Fame.  Friends without number. A wit that automatically made him the center of attention.

What about wealth? Hard to put an economic tag on suicide rates.  Greenland has the highest suicide rate and the U.S. is 34^th, with 12 suicides per 100,000 people, which translates to a rate of .00012.  Haiti, one of the very poorest nations, ranks 109^th, while many of the wealthy nations are in the top ten.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

According to the Huffington Post, the U.S. suicide rate increases for those moving into an upscale neighborhood and make less money than their neighbors. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/suicide-rate-rich-neighborhoods_n_2102777.html

Lots of other social 'certainties' follow the same bumpy logic as suicide.  Poverty causes crime.  Poverty causes societal eruption/revolution.

Except that most poor people do not commit crimes, and noted revolutionaries almost always come from middle to upper class families.  Fidel Castro.  Che Guevara.  The U.S. Founding Fathers.  Napoleon Bonaparte, Marx, Mao Zedong.   Those are just a few.

Suicide, it seems, is not successfully explained by any of the issues previously mentioned.  As Albert Camus famously wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.  Judging whether or not life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”  He goes on to point out he has never seen anyone die for the ontological argument and even Galileo recanted as soon as his ideas endangered his life.

Of course, Mr. Camus, no one has ever seen someone die over your rational philosophical argument either.

In the end, the explanations, by the media, and family members, and social scientists, and philosophers ultimately fail.  The reasons are mere attempts to inject rationality into what is an irrational act.

So, the question remains, why does an A-lister, or anyone else choose to take his own life?

As an aside, which professions have the highest suicide rates?  Top 5 in this order:  Dentists (5.45 times more likely), Musicians (3.60), Actors (2.80), Dancers (2.67), and authors (2.60).

http://www.businessinsider.com/jobs-commit-suicide-2010-10?op=1

Perhaps the answer to 'why suicide' is embedded in attitude.  King David grieved for his dying son for seven days. His servants couldn’t get him to eat or drink.  Worried?  They were freaking scared stiff.

Then King David’s son passed on.  On hearing the news, David snapped out of it. Ate. Drank. Made love to his wife. (She later bore him a son).  Led his army to a victory over the Ammonites.

His attitude was one of:  Look, I grieved and fasted and prayed and did what I could.  My son is gone and nothing will bring him back.  NOW, let’s see what happens next.  Talk about a ‘bounce back’ philosophy!

Another puzzler is that people sometimes turn to self-destruction, not over mountainous dilemmas, but over what most of us would consider emotional paper cuts.  Teenagers come to mind.  Have they lost great fortunes?  Found that fame is fleeting?

Lots of people are bullied, or fail to achieve their goals, or lose loved ones, but very few decide not to answer Let’s see what happens next, but choose instead to answer Camus’ ultimate philosophical question with a rope, a belt, or a gun, or a fist full of pills.

Face it, we don’t know the why.  Perhaps it’s looking at what appears to be insurmountable odds, but maybe it’s your former best friend telling you to go have intercourse with yourself.  That’s the way it is with irrational acts.  No rules, no boundaries, and ultimately an overpowering internal (and unfathomable) reason to die.

I look at Robin William’s clips on youtube.com and know immediately, that someone with half his talent, wealth, and fame would have kept on truckin’.  That’s right isn’t it?  If I just had a little more of this and a little more of that, I’d be happy, right?

The Bed of Procrustes - Don't read this book! It'll only upset you!

Who the hell is Procrustes and “Are you going to bore me with another book review?” 

Grow up and get wise!  Procrustes is a figure from Greek Mythology, or ancient religion, if you prefer.  Here’s the short version;

Procrustes was a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs.

A book about a weirdo?  Not exactly.  Nassim Taleb’s view of the modern world, as expressed in this book of aphorisms, is that humans are being modified to fit technology, reality being bent to fit economic models, diseases being invented to sell drugs, and the breadth of intelligence being limited to what can be tested in a classroom.

Taleb’s inventive and often humorously pithy remarks will wake you up, make you think, and make you laugh out loud.  Don't like to laugh?  Pick another book.

Sounds a bit too New Age, or maybe esoteric?  Check out this tidbit:

The best revenge on a liar is to convince him that you believe what he said.

Or how about this one:  If you want people to read a book, tell them it’s overrated.

Part psychology, part insightful, part surgeons knife slicing through marriage, economics, politics, and everyday life, you could read this book in an hour….but you won’t.  Your brain will catch on a phrase and stop your thoughts like a rowboat’s bow hitting a rocky shore.  Your mind will churn.  Often you’ll look around for someone to share these darts of logic, these reflective mirrors.  You’ll come across:  Nothing is more permanent than “temporary” arrangements, deficits, truces, relationships; and nothing is more temporary than permanent ones.

The book gets laid aside. Your attitude swings this way and that.  You mentally review and ponder.  Hours or days later, you once again grab the book by the throat and your rowboat floats free of the shoals.

Nassim Taleb’s books are like that.  They challenge, but at the same time entertain.  Have preconceptions?  They’re sure to be twisted and blurred.  Think your persuasions won’t be carved with Taleb’s scalpel?  Think again.

But, try as you might, you can’t forget this book and the sometimes obtuse approach that unravels things you’ve previously thought about and things you’ve never considered.

The Bed of Procrustes.  Pick it up once and you’ll pick it up again and again.