Back again to our theses we have to prove, by examinig the features of the phenomenon, that suicide, besides having a genetic basis, is one of the factors of population regulation. Starting from the numbers of suicides, we notice that the epidemic feature is all the more dramatic, if to the so-called official suicides, we add the dramatic increase of the so-called” masked suicides”. They are mostly ” tests of courage” among teenagers such as to result, very often, in a tragedy .In fact, these tests, eventually, become gambles where the bank, like in a casinò, always wins. James Dean was the forerunner of these masked suicides in the cult film”Rebel without a cause”. Yet in this movie, besides courage, there was, at least, the alibi of the pilot’s ability. The boldest, but also the most capable one, survived and was entitled to reproduce. It was Dean himself to show the suicide feature of such tests, dying in his real life, in a car accident which was indicated by many people like a real suicide.
In the present tests of courage the probabilities that death may be the winner are all in favour of the latter.
At a summit on emerging psychiatric pathologies among adolescents Dr Mauro Ferrara of Rome University says :” 10-15% of adolescents suffer from more or less serious moments of disconfort. Most of them can manage on their own, they can overcome their difficulties. 2-3% are really suffering from a serious depressive pathology or behavioural troubles.
Unfortunately not all the experts are so clear in accepting and describing reality: some persist in denying the evidence by hiding themselves behind a complex mental reasoning.
Let’s consider the case of a teenager from a village near Reggio Calabria who should have been 15 after few days. An intelligent and studious boy,well integrated with his schoolmates and friends, with a good family, died playing Russian roulette.
Some days before the accident, the boy, while talking to his schoolmates, asks them whether they would have come to his funeral and sends a letter to a friend where he expresses his intention of committing suicide. On the fateful day he locks the door of his room and turns the stereo on at full volume; he has a Smith & Wesson into which he has inserted only one bullet. He writes a note to his uncle and wishes him to graduate with first class honours. Another letter is for his younger brother: he will have to finish his book of poems and find an editor.
The explanation of what he is about to do follows: pressing the trigger five times, levelling the gun at his head, if after the fifth attempt he isn’t dead, he would become a missionary. He ends the letter begging to be forgiven and with a generic”I love you” to his parents. Then he starts the execution of himself. Every time he presses the trigger, he jots down the time and the sentence” all right “. So it is for 5.15pm, 5.20pm, 5.25pm then…nothing.
A psychologist’s explanation for what we are interested in, the umpteenth attempt to deny the evidence of the absolute suicide will, is this: Maybe this adolescent didn’t decide to commit suicide, but rather to decide when the meeting with death should take place, where, with what instrument and how many chances of survival he should have to leave to himself”. It would be interesting to wonder what would have happened if even the fifth shot had failed. Are we sure he wouldn’t have pressed the trigger again or after some days he wouldn’t have tried again as it happened so many times?
In Verona, for example, another adolescent, always with the Russian roulette, had to press the trigger three times before committing suicide. From time to time the separation of parents, boredom, television or a word so banal as to become ferocious in cases like this, the so-called youth unrest, have been evoked.
Any system may be useful for a mortal game: crossing the lines before a train passes, surfing on a running train, crossing street junctions by mopeds at full speed. Among all that was written about it, I found, very interesting, Roberto Di Caro’s article on the weekly”L’Espresso” of 17th April 1997.
All challenges to death are defined a catalogue of stupidity, starting from the classical race across the city at 200 kilometres an hour to the head-on-collision between two cars equipped with air bags. They can rush down a deep descent towards a crossing with a busy route, they can lie down on railway lines or simply throw themselves from the roof of a building while driving a moped.
The interest of the article lies in the refuse of superficial explanations on the causes of such behaviours; in fact when people speak about youth unrest in advanced societies, they forget that running on the roofs of trains are all the rage in favelas of Brazil, as it is in our rich North East. The article maintains the impossibility of western society to contain, within rational limits, aggressiveness innate in man.
Other cases in which, instead of committing suicide, people try to be killed, cannot be considered masked suicides, but only one of the so many ways of committing suicide or the espression of an absolute will of committing suicide. If we include, therefore, all the cases of masked suicides in the new way of suicides,the epidemic appears like a real pandemia.
Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci
To be continued in :
5°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Fifth part)
6°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Sixth part)
7°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Seventh part)
8°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Eighth part)
9°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Nineth part)
10°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Tenth part)
11°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Eleventh part)
12°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Twelfth Part)
13°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Thirteenth Part)
14°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Fourteenth Part)
15°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XV part)
16°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Sixteenth part)
17°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XVII part)
18°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XVIII part)
19°) (Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XIX part)
20°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XX part)
21°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Twenty-first)
See also:
1)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre First Part)
2)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Second part)
3)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Third Part)
Ferdinando Gargiulo offers you a new perspective on why new viral epidemics, assaults, infanticides, suicide epidemics and even environmental catastrophes. Always engaged in his research decides to create a blog to offer his readers content of high value.