Suicides of The Day: Durkhmeian Quadrant, Anomie, Need for New Value Consensus, ‘I’ and ‘Me’, Non-positivism, The Infocide, Distant Kinships and Familial Burden

                The news of a suicide no longer staggers us so much. It has become the new normal unless it happens to our near and dear, that unfortunate is our society’s take on mental health. When it does happen to our near and dear, we lament ‘Why did he/she have to do that, I was always there for him/her’. This encapsulates the distant kin that we have become, fictive or familial, only to believe they are as cheerful as their new profile picture or status update, only to think we are so close and understand them, yet miles away from their minds.

                

              If Emile Durkheim were alive, he would be ironically pained and content of his quadrant of suicides still flourishing in the 21^st century. The collectives of family, marriage and religion eroded by politics, economics and everything else ‘that matters’ throwing emotional security to the wayside heralding an era of egoistic suicides.

           The Suicide Bombers of the many terrorist organizations of the day on the other hand bring to light the altruism in suicides wedded to an extremist ideology. The many farmer suicides we keep hearing due to indebtedness or price crash are sad realities of Anomic suicides when faced with a crisis situation with the added familial burden and the social price put on breadwinner tag that crushes their self-esteem.

                 

                  

                  India’s prisons are also facing an issue of suicides with many succumbing to the control of their movement and freedom just as several kids are giving into excess pressures put on by parents. These fatalistic suicides of the day complete the Durkhemian quadrant of suicides. It is thus clear, the society and social institutions have been set into a sense of chaos or Anomie as Durkheim himself would call it, where the system behaves like it has an Auto Immune Disorder.

                At places and times, it exerts too little control, other times, too much, this balance between the individual and society and social institutions upsetting the whole apple cart, i.e. the life of the individual. A social value exists which places a premium on good mental health and seeking medical help in matters of mental health and depression continues to be a taboo. It is this discourse of the old that must be replaced for a new value consensus (knowledge) to dawn on a society yielding more power to the mentally ailing brethren borrowing from Focault’s theory on power.

             

                 A new value consensus needs to be nurtured to create a favourable environment to express depression rather than supress it. Seeking mental health should be normalized and society as a whole must grow in the mould of empathetic liason to understand the other rather than reinforce stigma. The decriminalization of suicide and Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 are some positive changes through which the state is pushing the society to break free from these negative stereotypes.

               Suicide is also a curious case of the ‘Me’ and ‘I’ killing each other. ‘Me’ is the socialized self, one who unwittingly takes in the idea that mental health issues are delinquent, vulgar and seeking help in that regard is akin to falling down from the social ladder. While the ‘Me’ prevents seeking help, it is the ‘I’ that commits the final act in a moment of impulse burying the socialized norms of sustaining life in the process. The worst of both worlds of the ‘I’ and ‘Me’ conspire and the self bleeds tragically to death; alas if only we could change the ‘Me’s in the first place.

               

            Yet it is not that easy either, surely suicide can’t be a social fact as Durkheim would have liked it to be. It is without question an object of non-positive study, such is the galaxy of thoughts that appear in the universe of the human mind.  Each case of suicide is thus different from the other and we should resist formulating laws or configurations that does grave injustice to the human mind that thinks, interprets and acts in ways it deems best. This is why Max Weber placed the individual mind at the centre of analysing Social Action radically departing from the positive thought of yesteryear sociology.      

              

                The individual mind these days is prey to the virtual realm of social media where social acceptance assumes form of likes, retweets and rejection assumes the form of vile comments or abuses. Moreover, the relentless information influx through digital media means the worst of the world often piles up in front of our eyes burdening the mind. The suicides among Covid +ve patients fearing death or misery and the Bois Locker room related suicide cases are prominent examples in this regard.

                Suicides are not just an act of the overthinking or ill thought mind of an individual alone, it is time we understood it is neither just the individual nor his/her mind alone that drove the knife in. The society and social constructs have created an Anomie in our social system that threatens its dynamic equilibrium that must be restored by nurturing a new value system that values mental health and openness. This social change though revolutionary in extent, would be evolutionary in nature knocking at the doors of Parsons Cybernetic hierarchy transforming the cultural system and restoring order through adaptive upgrading and binding value consensus in this evolutionary universe of ours.