Althouse: "The Strong, Silent, Dead type."

April 13, 2015

"The Strong, Silent, Dead type."

"The number of people who die this way is shocking."

24 comments:

FleetUSA said...: 40 can be a time when dreams hit reality. If you can't adjust, it might be hard.; 4/13/15, 9:24 AM
Laslo Spatula said...: Two posts on Hillary leading to a post on suicide. Seems thematically correct in its progression.

I am Laslo.; 4/13/15, 9:27 AM
traditionalguy said...: A schizophrenic "hears voices" and fights them. But the suicidal listens to one voice as if it is his real self and lets it make the decision for him.; 4/13/15, 9:28 AM
Etienne said...: Many men go into their 30's with the final realization that they made terrible choices. Be it marriage, the family they were dealt, and the indifference to them at home and at work.

The high technology of today, has taken work indoors, and some men just can't deal with cubicles.

You don't find people who work outdoors as suicide prone.

Most men at 40 are trapped. There's no way out. Men at 50 are unemployable once they are laid-off. They cost too much, compared to younger people, and visa workers.

Bottom line, no one gets off the planet alive. If it's over, you're lonely, and you're hungry, it's time to die.; 4/13/15, 9:33 AM
BarrySanders20 said...: Monty Python's take:

Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it,
Life's a laugh and just a joke it's true,
You'll see it's all a show, keep 'em laughing as you go,
Enjoy it cause the last laugh is on you

Do British men kill themselves at a higher rate than other western societies? They've largent discarded religion, maybe there is a correlation. People who have hope, even if is the afterlife, seem much less likely to choose suicide.; 4/13/15, 9:38 AM
Gahrie said...: God could you imagine the war on women hysteria if the numbers were reversed?; 4/13/15, 9:41 AM
Moose said...: We must examine the effect on women and children first though!; 4/13/15, 9:57 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: It was about 10 years ago that I finally decided to commit suicide by masturbating myself to death but I can't even do that right.; 4/13/15, 9:58 AM
SGT Ted said...: Modern culture caters to women by shitting on men.

This is called "equality" by feminists.; 4/13/15, 10:01 AM
SGT Ted said...: Get rid of the monetary rewards to women who divorce their husbands. Eliminate anti-male and pro-female sexism in the courts.

That would go a long way towards men not feeling they are trapped in shitty lives in service to women that don't love them and a culture that views them as workhorses and ATMs.; 4/13/15, 10:05 AM
Etienne said...: @SGT Ted Get rid of the monetary rewards to women who divorce their husbands.

The whole purpose of state marriages is to prioritize the protection of women and children.

Otherwise just do a partnership contract, and split the losses/profits when dissolved.; 4/13/15, 11:16 AM
JSD said...: I’m going to a memorial service for a friend who killed himself a week before Christmas. He thought his life had turned to shit in his 50’s and was self-medicating with lots of pot and booze. He loved manly things like his Harley, guns, guitars and going to Sturgis, but the last few years he lost interest in everything. Anybody who tried to help him was politely told to “fuck off”. The holiday season and long Maine winters can be a deadly combination. His wife thought alcoholism was the problem, but that was just the symptoms of deep depression. Thankfully they decided to hold the service in the spring rather than the Christmas holidays.

Suicide is a guy thing. With longer life expectancy accompanied with declining quality of life, I think suicide will become more common; 4/13/15, 11:44 AM
Anthony said...: There's a lot going on with men when they hit their mid-40s. Their fathers have often died around then, almost always before their mothers. They are really starting to get the signs of aging and losing physical capacities that they used to take for granted. Testosterone production really starts to slip. They've been working really hard for a long time and start to wonder whether it was all worth it. Kids are often grown up and gone so there's the empty nest syndrome as well. They're losing sexual function, while women that age are just coming into theirs, in a lot of ways. and if they happen to lose their job, as someone else said, finding a new one can be tough, to put it mildly. I suppose you could call all this "Mid-life crisis" but that phrase has been kind of devalued culturally.

I've been through it -- just coming out of it actually -- although I'm not sure how much mine had to do with "Mid-life crisis" and how much with long-standing anxiety and finally getting out of graduate school. But I went through a lot of the same stuff. Well, thanks to being a gym rat the physical side of things hasn't taken much of a nose dive, but there's a lot going on in the 40+ year old man's head.

Neil Peart (drummer in Rush) captured a lot of it in his book "Ghost Rider" which was about his wife and daughter dying within a year of each other and how he dealt with that. I read it in my Dark Days and it was scarily similar. I never thought about ending my own life, but I will admit that the idea of just kind of poofing out of existence like I never was held some allure every now and then.

But yeah, we have a Rape Crisis on campuses that isn't getting more attention than an actual suicide crisis among men.; 4/13/15, 12:05 PM
Unknown said...: shit, do like I did, when you're 32 get a smart, hot 21 year old girlfriend, convince her to marry you, then 8 years later have a baby together, then other two years after that, then move to a farm, and when you are 46 you'll be the happiest you've ever been and couldn't think of being anything else but alive.

It really is a shame what the progressive movement is doing to men. Our society will be much poorer (in many ways) because of it.; 4/13/15, 12:53 PM
Ryan said...: T Rellis how do you pay the bills living on a farm?; 4/13/15, 1:00 PM
Unknown said...: Ha, id never pay $4 a dozen eggs as good as farm eggs are but lots of people do. 300 hens, about about 87k eggs per year is 7300 dozen, times $4 is almost $30k per year just for eggs, throw in the pigs and veggies (if you can actually do the physical work and have the working knowledge) and it's not a bad way to earn a living and Damned good eating.; 4/13/15, 2:22 PM
Larry J said...: Gahrie said...
God could you imagine the war on women hysteria if the numbers were reversed?

Since it's about men, almost no one gives a shit, except for...

Moose said...
We must examine the effect on women and children first though!

It's only considered a problem because of the impact on women. I saw this play out a couple years ago when a man set fire to himself to protest what was happening in his divorce settlement. The women who commented on the article complained about how he had cheated his ex-wife out of a lifetime of bleeding him dry.

As the old joke goes,

"Q: Why do men tend to die earlier than women?

A: Because we want to."; 4/13/15, 2:24 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Sounds like the men in the article killed themselves for different reasons. The author's father, for example, sounds like he killed himself out of shame (multiple affairs, financial problems about to be discovered.); 4/13/15, 2:37 PM
CStanley said...: It would be interesting to know if testosterone is somewhat protective. It may be involved in self confidence, so when levels drop it might precipitate depression- especially if external conditions like loss of job or loved ones, or shame and guilt as Freeman mentions, are involved.; 4/13/15, 4:39 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Gahrie,

God could you imagine the war on women hysteria if the numbers were reversed?

Well, no, actually.; 4/13/15, 5:11 PM
Anonymous said...: @CStanley

Andrew Sullivan thinks so. He was on testosterone supplements related to his HIV and has written extensively about how they improved his quality of life in, err, non-puritanical ways.; 4/13/15, 9:39 PM
Anonymous said...: I once made a list of the topics I should expect to find in every newspaper. It was an attempt to save myself the time involved in reading the same stories over and over. One of my points was that reading the news will show me, over and over, that suicide is surprisingly popular.; 4/13/15, 9:47 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I think it goes back to when we had to hunt to survive.

Now that we pay sports movies and other means of approaching something we once had, it doesn't work for everybody.

What are the girls lured by ISIS after?; 4/14/15, 1:39 AM
Etienne said...: Lem said What are the girls lured by ISIS after?

The question really is, what are they trying to get away from?

Their parents emigrated to the west, the kids found the west worthless, they want to go home to a nice man with three wives, who kills infidels and brings them goats to milk.; 4/14/15, 3:37 PM