There is no cure for the third leading cause of death among people our age. Nor is there a clear understanding of why it is especially prevalent among college students. Many teenagers, staring despairingly into the future, choose to take their own lives and leave us questioning ours. Suicide is not a rare occurrence - an Ivy League student plummeted off the Empire State Building last week and a nine-year-old hung himself in January. Suicide is an emotionally delicate subject and a very sensitive issue. If we want to pursue happiness, we must first understand our Great Depression.\nSuicide, and its precursors of depression or philosophical despair, has long been a subject of inquiry. Common explanations include psychological disorders or mental conditions. Others point to circumstantial evidence: a traumatic experience, impoverished conditions or a difficult chain of events. For the elderly, it could be dissatisfaction with aging. For adolescents, there might be hatred emerging from prolonged bullying. Some scorn self-murder as an act of weakness or selfishness, while others romanticize suicide as the ultimate exercise of free will. These ideas are all important, but limited; they cannot explain many of the suicides among the youth. All of these notions imply causation - something has triggered this to happen. But I think we mask the horrific simplicity of the matter.
Suicide is not always a dramatic experience accompanied by a letter or expression of outrage. It is a much colder decision. In a society with such powerful technology, in a planet of such wondrous beauty, an individual may just not be impressed. A rational person, perhaps in broad daylight, weighs his desire to please his tastes and satisfy his wants against the costs of existence. He may dispassionately think that the costs of growing up outweigh the benefits. And in the literal economic sense, he finds that life is not worth living.
We depict suicide as a rare act in a benevolent world. We cast the burden on the individual who has wrongly chosen to neglect life. Our treatments for depression include talking to the person or providing medication, as if there is a malfunction with them that must be fixed. What is much more likely, and far more haunting, is that something is wrong with our society. We ask our psychologists about individual depression, but we must turn to our economists to understand depression on a larger scale.
What then has caused this modern malaise, this Great Depression? A rise in suicide rates typically follows an increase in the unemployment rate. During the 'Lost Decade' of economic recession in Japan, the number of suicides reached record-setting levels. Competition may be another reason. Studies have depicted a correlation between adolescent unhappiness and academic antagonism; several elite colleges have above-average rates of suicide. However, you cannot discuss economic depression without mentioning inflation.
Inflation, in basic terms, is when a large amount of something exists. Thus, each individual thing loses its value. There are several tangible forms of inflation in our society. As more people attain an undergraduate degree, your diploma may reduce in value and compel you to attend graduate school. High marks mean little when there is rampant grade inflation. One begins to see the cyclical nature of this process. The cost of living has increased, so we strive to improve ourselves, hoping to find fulfillment in a career. But many people have already done what you hope to achieve. Your individual efforts may lose their value. You may begin to feel worthless.
The digital age has caused destructive inflation in numerous forms. Inflation of knowledge: We have spread the flow of information, so learning is irrelevant in the age of the split-second internet search. Inflation of emotion: Our social networks have ensured we are "friends" with everyone, but our amount of close friends has declined. There is the inflation of words: Messaging and blogging all the time, our actual words mean less. There are numerous others, but most threatening is the inflation of experience. All that we hoped for is readily attainable. When everything can be technologically simulated, reality loses its value. By adolescence, we have encountered so much; the novelty of life fades and we have become bored. Despite being full of content, we are so empty.\nFulfillment is too difficult for us to achieve, entertainment is so easily encountered that we do not cherish it. Economic inflation reduces the value of the dollar; social and digital inflation reduces the utility of living to adulthood. Suicide no longer seems like a poorly spent decision.
But then our economist reminds us: The dollar is a fiat currency, just a symbolic piece of paper. It is only worth what we make it.
Aaron Eisen is a senior associate editor for The Cavalier Daily. His column appears Wednesdays.
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