Are we killing ourselves?
I'll explain.
I've been a keen amateur student of day-to-day sociology for some time now. I've no formal training and have no kind of qualifications in this field; if I can rid myself of some personal debt in the near future I plan on studying a degree which will incorporate sociology, but until that day I remain an armchair philosopher, if you will.
So understand that the only qualifications I have for these musings are as an adult male human who keeps eyes, ears and mind open.
Beginnings: Ancient and Different
There are three primary schools of thought surrounding the nature of our prehistoric ancestors, both early Homo sapiens and the various subspecies of hominid that preceded us.
The first camp believe our ancestors were animalistic, brutish and violent. They believe we have, as a species, been getting consistently less violent as time has progressed. It is their belief that ours is the most safe and peaceful time, and that those before us were far more likely to make war, to murder and to act brutally towards one another.
Camp two holds that the opposite is true, and that our ancestors not only fought less and that wars were exceedingly rare prior to the advent of agriculture, but that there was no real reason for them to fight, and far more reason not to. Humanity was, in their opinions, far less aggressive, and has been growing dramatically more so.
And the third camp, of course, doesn't really care and wonders what the point of all this academic bickering actually is. There's plenty to bicker about in the here and now, after all.
Which of these camps I belong to isn't the question. The fact is that, irrespective of which camp a person falls into, everyone agrees that our ancestors were different. Some argue the differences are fundamental and that something at the core of our species is changing; others opine that the differences are superficial and that people are, at the heart of it all, still people.
But nobody argues that they were the same as us.
I mean, it makes sense. They had very different surroundings. Of course they were bound to be different. But it got me to thinking.
Silent Killer
It's common knowledge that stress is the cause of an immense number of woes in our current world. The causes if stress vary only slightly more than theories as to why it makes such an impact and how much of it is avoidable, but everyone knows that it is the scourge of billions (in the same way that 'everyone knows' that the sky is Up There and is at least reasonably unlikely to collapse on our heads, Chicken Little notwithstanding).
But my question to you is coming.
I'm part of what I've heard is a minority: I'm male. According to various statistics that you can bloody well find yourself the exact ratio of male humans to female humans varies from culture to culture but as I understand it global population is estimated as being approximately 49.5% male, 50.5% female (or it might be 49% to 51%). Either way we males differ somewhat from females in most societies by being taught that emotions are something to be hidden and guarded, not shared.
Our interpersonal emotive communication skills tend to be subpar to that of females. Whether this is the cause of the male discouragement I've described or caused by it is a chicken-egg discussion I'm not going into, at least not right now.
Certain other areas of our communication tend to be very well-developed. Again, this isn't really the point, though. On the whole men are taught to be strong and to Keep On Keeping On. Both men and women enforce this ban on the squishier feelings; I had long conversations deep into the night, once, with a girl who honestly got angry and sick at men these days for 'acting like girls' - by which she meant, I found out at length, that men should go out and work, provide for the family, be strong in attitude and dominant in bed.
An extreme example of women upholding that view, perhaps... But only by modern reckoning. My generation's parents grew up with that opinion being enforced upon them, either strenuously or only coincidentally, but nonetheless the stereotype of the indomitable male was there. The further back you go the more powerfully this stereotype was enforced, too. Next time you're watching one of the BBC's very excellent movies of, say, Pride and Prejudice - anything written around that time, really - you'll find that men take the reins by default (as was done in that time) and that if he didn't he was treated with scorn by women and men alike, or was at least not very well respected.
Men are strong. Men are powerful. Men are aggressive, too, if you listen to the right people. You'll never guess how much that baffles men like myself - who greatly dislike aggression - to be told that despite what we think we are, the 'truth' is that we're actually violent and savage. Uh... Right.
Women's Liberation: A Type of Equality They Never Intended
Okay, now let's see who's aggressive.
Women's Liberation and similar movements all around the globe were long overdue and of tremendous benefit, not only to women but society as a whole. The terrible atrocities women were suffering prior - and still suffer today - are honestly abominable and should be abolished with all speed. Yes, I do believe that; no, I'm not 'just saying it'.
But there's something that Women's Lib brought with it that was negative. They didn't intend it but it happened anyway. Some might argue that it was already there but if nothing else changed the focus and perpetrators certainly did.
Women in many places of the world were suddenly allowed to strive for positions other than 'office girl' or 'indentured housewife'. That was the good part, but the bad cousin of that trait suddenly reared its head - expectation.
You might not know it but all over the world (thanks to global instant communication) women are battling other women for the right to be housewives, and to not want to work. They're denigrated as 'letting the team down' or even 'traitors' if they don't strive to be 'as good' or 'better' than men in their fields. And most of the people trying to hold them to this rigorous standard are feminists.
Once upon a time women worried about household things and men about work things. Women's Lib gave women the right to worry about work things but many, many well-meaning people saw (and still see) women that don't want to be full-time workers as sending the wrong message or being downtrodden or submissive... when sometimes they just want to live their lives the way they want to (which, in my mind at least, is what Women's Lib was really about - the right to choose).
So there came to pass a whole generation of women expected to bear burdens that men had borne (for the most part) previously. The enviable social dynamic flowing between women in which troubles were shared and thus lessened was threatened by sheer expectation that women are some kind of superthing and can do anything a man can do.
Which they can. But the expectation that they will was a brand new thing. All of a sudden men and women both were being buried under the same woes. For men it was simply expected; for women it was a badge of honour (but nonetheless still expected).
Closer To the Point
Whether you believe in evolution or creation (or both) is mostly irrelevant to the next bit. Arguably, though, it's not irrelevant at all. I'm going to go with the premise that it is irrelevant but first I'll explain why.
We are not our ancestors.
Whether you believe we crawled out of the primordial ooze or that a deity formed us from mud doesn't change the fact that we live in an intrinsically different world than that of our forefathers. A better world, some say; a more perilous one, others claim.
Better or worse the world is more different now than most people of the time of our prehistoric ancestors could dream the world could be.
Here, then, is my proposition: are we, as a species, killing ourselves with a level of stress we are simply not equipped to deal with?
Think of the nature of our stresses. The kids, the job, the house, the car, your performance as a lover, your position in society, money, fidelity, honesty, taxes, cancer, death, the number of hours in the day, the weather, traffic, computer, boss, uniform, diet...
Look around at any bookstore. If it has a self help section then the shelves dedicated to those books will be crammed full of tomes from slender to chunky and almost every one of those books is either openly or covertly addressing stress issues.
Think about the sheer volume of it. The average Western adult human is awake around sixteen hours in every twenty four hour day. If you're honest with yourself then you may well agree that the majority of that sixteen hours is spent addressing some form of stress or another, and much of that is also spent contemplating stresses we're not addressing - be it thinking about the upcoming bills while you work, the trouble you're having with your kids while you're on a tea break, or how much you hate your boss/partner/partner's family/own skin while you're working out.
Stress has a measurable biological impact. Science has advanced to the point where we cab scan brainwaves, monitor heartbeats, breathing, pupil dilation and even hormone release during studies on various forms of emotional and physical pressure - literal stress-tests.
Stress is recognized as the leading cause of suicide and is considered one of, if not the, biggest contributors to a host of health problems both mental and physical. As a result we can, without bringing social changes between ourselves and our ancestors into the matter, test for the average human's capacity for dealing with different forms of stress over a short or extended period of time.
I would love to see an independent and reputable analysis group do a study on how well we deal with the stress we put ourselves under daily. I'm willing to bet that the results would run something like this: that it's truly incredible, even inspirational, how much sheer unmitigated shit a human can deal with... but that we can't cope with such stresses for long.
Are we just wearing ourselves into the ground with horrendous tension that we are biologically ill-equipped to cope with?
Miley Cyrus vs Kate Bush
I heard a Miley Cyrus song on YouTube the other day called Can't Be Tamed which prompted a rant about a few things to do with the music industry that I have issues with. Today I was listening to Kate Bush singing a duet about depression and suicide.
I respect Miley Cyrus's talent. The song is catchy and it has some merit for other reasons but the core of it is a song about a woman who 'can't be tamed'. She's strong, she's independent, she's indomitable.
Kate Bush's song, on the other hand, is a woman and a man (the wondrous Peter Gabriel) talking/singing. The man is suffering terrible, crushing depression and has lost all sense of direction in life. The woman is desperately trying to bolster his flagging strength, telling him 'don't give up'. It not only hits me on a powerfully personal level due both to my own depression and thoughts of suicide but also due to the suicide of one of my brothers.
But I was reminded of Miley Cyrus when I was listening to it. Not only is it about male depression (an important point as we're far more likely to commit suicide than women) but it's a complete and perfect counterpoint to Miley's song. She tells people that it's good and right to be mighty and strong and unbeatable; Kate's whispers soulfully that it's okay to be sad sometimes, it's okay to feel weak and that you need help or support - something that we men sorely feel that we lack, sometimes - that we all have the right to need a helping hand... or even something as simple as a hug.
I wish Kate had been there to whisper those words into my brother's ear that night. I wish he'd been able to hear them. But I'll always believe, I think, that if people were more willing to tell us that it's okay to need help, that it isn't shameful or emasculating, that many people who kill themselves might still be alive.
The Point
Are we killing our own with all this damn unnatural stress? How high does the body count have to get before we realize that what we're doing is wrong? To continue develop as a species, as our community gets more and more global with every SMS, every email, every natural disaster that gains international recognition and aid, we need to ascertain how, what and why we're behaving - and how much of that is intolerable.
When will it become intolerable to foster a way of life in which our own can become so stressed due to work, bullies at school, heartbreak or what have you, that turning away from others and ending one's own life is actually preferable to seeking help?
Sing on, Kate, sing on.
No comments:
Post a Comment