as a single leaf turns not yellow
but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong
without the hidden will of you all..
And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him,
a caution against the stumbling stone.
Ay, and he falls
for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot,
yet not removed the stumbling stone."

Alumstafa speaks these words about Crime and Punishment in Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. These words apply most aptly to the crime that is most directly its own punishment: suicide. According to the Surgeon General, the person reading this newspaper is more likely to be a victim of suicide than homicide. Imagine being more likely to die by your own hand than another’s. Suicide is the ninth leading cause of death in America. Between the ages of 15 and 24, it is the third leading cause of death; between the ages of 10 and 14, it is the fourth. The FOURTH!

What is it about this way of life that makes ten year olds want to kill themselves? In indigenous cultures, Australian aboriginal cultures, Native American cultures before colonization, the jungles of South America, suicide has never been an epidemic. Rather, like small pox and alcoholism, it was brought from the old country to the new. In indigenous cultures suicide is non-existent; in all other ‘agriculturally revolutionized’ cultures born of the fertile crescent, from ancient Greece, Egypt, and Japan to modern America and Portugal, suicide is. Therefor, suicide is a cultural disease. In one culture, grouped by those evolved from the fertile crescent, the one culture to which all nations in NATO belong, suicide is a very real disease. In all other cultures, all those that were destroyed and taken over by the culture born of the fertile crescent, suicide was not.

The core reason for suicide is an issue psychologists call self-continuity. Self continuity is simply the ability to imagine one’s self continuing on in time, while being able to remember that one is the same person he was in the past. Regardless of financial situation, love, life, mental illness, or addiction, when a person cannot imagine being able to continue on in time and cannot imagine being able to make the necessary changes to their situation to make them continue, suicide becomes a viable option. Suicide is a cultural disease. We are extensions of the culture in which we live. The split in the mind, body, and soul of humans who end their own lives is a crack fallen into created by our viral way of life. If it is a truth that lack of self-continuity is the key factor in suicide and suicide is a cultural disease, please compare self-continuity with cultural-continuity. Who among us can imagine our culture continuing on in time the way it is now? Moreover, who among us feels he can do what it takes to make our way of life sustainable? Keep in mind that continuity is the key factor in determining suicide.

Dr. Micheal Chandler, a cognitive development psychologist at the University of British Columbia cites a study of suicide on Canada’s indigenous people “any claim of selfhood that does not include some measure of self-continuity is fundamentally nonsensical.” Our way of life is unsustainable (gross reliance on nonrenewable resources, covering the earth in asphalt, damming rivers, world war, toxic waste, holes in the ozone layer, masses of poor and unprivileged, sneaky governments, deforestation), therefor our way of life is fundamentally nonsensical at the present time. Each day can be a struggle to find meaning in this, our viral culture. Suicide is a disease the world over. Every government knows it is preventable but is unable to prevent it.

Is suicide a condition of human behavior? Canada’s government, like America’s, has systematically tried to eliminate its indigenous cultures. Canada’s natives are politically called First Tribes. There are 196 First Tribes left in Canada. Each tribe is as culturally different to one another as an Italian is to a Chinese. The suicide rate for First Nations is five times higher than Canada’s national average. However, when looked at individually as Dr. Chandler did, some tribes showed suicide rates up to 800 times the national average, while others showed no suicides at all in the study’s five year window. Being the categorizers and statisticians that humans are, Dr. Chandler found a remarkable set of conditions that separated the First Tribes with no suicide rates and the First Tribes with exorbitant rates. What he found in his massive study was this: there are six similarities of suicide-less cultures, they are: Self-government, land ownership, education, health services, cultural facilities, and police and fire services. Self government by First Nation tribes provides “the greatest protective value” of life. Youth that lived in tribes with “some degree of self-government” enjoyed 102.8 fewer suicides per 100,000 than communities with no self-government.

Take the time to think of the one you know who killed himself. If he had a court of his own to address his grievances, would he have killed himself? Who runs our government? No one at whom you could point a finger, nay 10,000 fingers. Self-government on a cultural scale affects lives individually. We should be outraged we have less of it. Suicide rates are grossly lower in First Nations that either own their own land or are aggressively battling to. Apply this to our American way of life. There is nowhere for a suicidal 17 year old to go in this country to escape the culture that is killing her. This culture has already been proven nonsensical on the basis of lack of continuity. By virtue of logic, in this country, a nonsensical culture is at the present time inescapable. We should be outraged that years of toil in a nonsensical culture is necessary to live freely on a small parcel of the earth. First Nation children who attended schools run by First Nations have lower suicide rates. Suicide is a cultural disease; the educational system is a very large contributor to the culture. How many adolescents are thrown dizzy when they figure out on their own that our government is not angelic, commits evil crimes, that our way of life is killing the planet on which we depend?

This schism between what is taught in schools and what is the truth is a contributor to the third leading cause of death for American humans aged 15-24. To avoid being long-winded, the same (lower suicide rates) is true for First Nations controlling their own health care, cultural facilities, and police and fire services. Moreover, EVERY First Nation with all six qualities (self-government, land ownership, health care, cultural facilities, and police and fire services) had NO suicides in the study’s five year window. To read the Surgeon General’s call to Action to Prevent Suicide (1999) is a lesson in double nothingspeak. Listen... “The action steps presented in this document were prioritized from among a variety of recommendations developed through a public-private collaboration of non-governmental agencies, corporations, and foundations and public health, health, and mental health experts.”

The target is just, but the aim is grossly off mark. Our nations top physician in 1999, the Surgeon General wrote a paper a high school English teacher would have failed for content. At one point he says, “Clear progress has been made in the scientific understanding of suicide, mental and substance disorders, and in developing interventions to treat these disorders.” At another point he says, “between 1952 and 1996 the reported rates of suicide among adolescents and young adults nearly tripled.” The rate among kids aged 10-14 grew by 100% from 1980 to 1996. To thinking individuals, our progress is not so clear.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Health Resources and Services Administration(HRSA), Indian Health Services (IHS), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the office of the Surgeon General, the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and the Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network (SPAN) sponsored a national conference on suicide prevention which, in turn, is the basis of the Surgeon General’s Call to Action. With the might and intelligence of all those acronyms sponsoring a joint conference, one hopes some measure of progress is made in eliminating this disease. However, the action plan is very disappointing. What took experts months to say should have been brain-stormed by eight graders in health class. For example, many suggestions are similar to this one: “Institute training for all health, mental health, substance abuse, and human service professionals (including clergy, teachers, correctional workers, and social workers) concerning risks assessment and recognition, treatment, management, and aftercare interventions.”

Why? Why, why, why can this disease kill 85 people a day? It can kill 85 people daily because suicide is only a symptom of our viral culture. As long as we keep feeding the virus, the symptoms will worsen. Who among us cannot see the symptoms worsening? This is the first in what I hope to be a long list of articles on a multitude of diverse topics all relating to a single larger fact. Our culture is a virus. This virus in some people causes suicide, or causes the factors that cause suicide the way smoking creates the conditions necessary for cancer. I realize few are listening; nonetheless, as an alternative to the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent Suicide (1999), I ask the residents of Seattle to realize that our way of life is a virus on the planet, not humans ourselves.

Make this case for yourself, whether it be because we are covering the earth in increasing amounts of asphalt and concrete like an out of control rash or because 10 to 14 year olds are killing themselves rather than grow up in or culture. I call to action the residents of Seattle: help in small ways to figure out how to govern ourselves, to own our own land (taxes on land are rent to the government), to control our own food supply and police and educate ourselves. I assert this will result in a suicide-less community. Somehow someway, residents of Seattle, we as Americans can cure our viral culture.