When Death Trumps Life

Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.
~ Tao Te Ching, portion of Seventy-Five ~

This particular passage is very timely. With the US economy in free fall, a recent article posted on AlterNet, "The Financial Crisis Is Driving Hordes of Americans to Suicide" only underscores how more and more people are viewing death as a viable alternative to life.

The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, and layoffs, the economic meltdown has taken a heavy toll on Americans. In response, a range of extreme acts including suicide, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson have hit the local news. By October 2008, an analysis of press reports nationwide indicated that an epidemic of tragedies spurred by the financial crisis had already spread from Pasadena, California, to Taunton, Massachusetts, from Roseville, Minnesota, to Ocala, Florida.

In the three months since, the pain has been migrating upwards. A growing number of the world's rich have garnered headlines for high profile, financially-motivated suicides. Take the New Zealand-born "millionaire financier" who leapt in front of an express train in Great Britain or the "German tycoon" who did much the same in his homeland. These have, with increasing regularity, hit front pages around the world. An example would be New York-based money manager René-Thierry Magnon de la Villehuchet, who slashed his wrists after he "lost more than $1 billion of client money, including much, if not all, of his own family's fortune." In the end, he was yet another victim of financial swindler Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

An unknown but rising number of less wealthy but distinctly well-off workers in the financial field have also killed themselves as a result of the economic crisis -- with less press coverage. Take, for instance, a 51-year-old former analyst at Bear Stearns. Learning that he would be laid off after JPMorgan Chase took over his failed employer, he "threw himself out of the window" of his 29th-floor apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Or consider the 52-year-old commercial real estate broker from suburban Chicago who "took his life in a wildlife preserve" just "a month after he publicly worried over a challenging market," or the 50-year-old "managing partner at Leeward Investments" from San Carlos, California, who got wiped out "in the markets" and "suffocated himself to death..."

These sobering facts should cause those in Washington, D.C. to take pause. Whatever legislation they end up passing to deal with this new Great Depression (and let's be honest about what's happening -- it's not a fleeting economic downturn -- it's a bona fide depression), it must contain strategies to get lots of people back to work. If not, then articles like the one above will become...ho hum...commonplace.

The only way for death to become a popular avenue is when people start to view life as unbearable. Being out of work with no realistic prospects of finding a decent job, lacking the ability to pay one's monthly bills, having no health care or no roof over one's head and being unable to feed one's family are surefire ways to make life unbearable for many.

Where there is no hope, there is no joy.

Where life seems like death, death itself becomes a perverse joy.