Originally Posted by
Ludwig
Unfortunately, suicide is stigmatized in the West where Christian culture characterizes it as a sin. We can compare this to Asian cultures, particularly Japanese, where suicide is regarded as atonement for dishonor.
It's interesting how one culture views suicide as shameful while another views it as atonement for shame.
Much of the psychological maladies of modern society is connected to one's personal status in one's social group, which can be measured in diverse ways, and often ways which we are not fully cognizant. In this sense, we are not very different from our primate cousins that exhibit similar behaviours related to status.
Loss of status, effectively failure of some sort, especially failure to meet one's own expectations or those of friends and family, can usually be traced as the source of anxiety, depression and related syndromes.
There is no easy solution to these problems, as depression and suicide are are on the increase in many countries around the world (but on a sharp decline in China, by contrast). What needs to change is the way we value status in our society. The value of one's status or worth is determined by others, so we often feel locked into a lifestyle where 'failure' may have a relatively high probability. Alternatives, like 'dropping out' can be difficult and also viewed as failure. To leave the group and seek a life on one's own is not a natural state for most humans (something identified by Erich Fromm, for example).
Perhaps we can view Danny Frawley's death not as a tragedy, or even with sadness, but rather a rational choice to depart the world with respect and not have that respect diminished by an impending loss of status. The real sadness is that our society is unlikely to head in a direction where such outcomes are less likely.
Perhaps we on RWO can place less importance on winning, swim against the tide of footy industry mouthpieces, and enjoy our Swans for just going out and playing football, and find pleasure in whatever the numbers on the scoreboard might be. We are brainwashed into valuing our team in terms of success, failure and ladder position (status), thus mirroring the value system of society as a whole, invoking anxiety, depression and frustration when our team is seen as failing.
We have in our power to measure success and failure by the metrics we choose, if we take the freedom to do so. We have the capacity to eliminate failure as one of the options. Let's do it.
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