Shocking. Not surprising.

I recently read the following article in Wired titled “Obsessed With the Internet: A Tale From China” written by Christopher S. Stewart. Appalling but affirming at the same time, this article talks about the story of a boy in China was ‘internet obsessed’ so his parents dropped him off at a one month long ‘internet rehabilitation camp’ where they would ‘fix’ this boy’s addiction.

I’ve always believed that when something developmental psychologically that is natural in a human being is repressed over a period of time, especially from a young age, that a normal life with the standard set of ups and downs is no longer possible, at least without a massive recovery effort. One myth among certain cultures is that if you repress a behavioral trait in a human that you don’t like or that just isn’t acceptable, it’ll just disappear….and this, is where shit goes sideways. The bigger problem is that those natural behaviors still do exist and they still need to be exercised somehow, they still need to develop. So….they find a way. Unfortunately those natural behaviors, whether they be sexuality, sociability, anger, etc…become warped, skewed and are responsible for a rippling effect of psychological damage that is almost irreversible, including influencing crime rates, etc. If children live in a culture where repression of some of the most basic fundamental behaviors is repressed in them, you are going to get high suicide rates, addictions to fantasy worlds where there’s freedom of thought and experience. Your brain will always find a way to follow the natural progression as best it can, regardless of the tools it was given going out of the gate. The result of your brain having to make the call without you present emotionally on how to deal with developmental growth is most often not pleasant.

China, while a beautiful place to visit, has been known to have high teen suicide rates and I believe the upswing of the information age is probably only adding insult to injury. The governmental thumb pushing down hard on their own people there has to create a pressure cooker in families because of the competitive workaholic nature, with an emphasis on minimizing emotions and outside influence because they aren’t ‘efficient’. I think this Wired article is a little bit of a window into the implosion of the teen psyche after exposed to how other parts of the world have the opportunity to live more or less free. They are definitely privy to how much information is being hidden from them and now the government is trying to fight the internet side of it by blocking sites like Twitter and Facebook, whose entire premise is free-flowing thought with little to no limitations.

A post from back in 2007 written by Xie Chuanjiao (China Daily) has a few stats that are pretty mind-blowing.

“Half of the suicides on the mainland are of women in rural areas, who commonly drink pesticide to end their lives. They may do so because of family disputes, low-educational levels and restricted social communication.”

“A two-year survey by researchers at Peking University found over 20 percent of 140,000 high-school students interviewed said they had considered committing suicide. And 6.5 percent of the students surveyed said they had made plans to kill themselves.”

Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not limited to China. Check out this page on Wikipedia, “List of Countries By Suicide Rate“. The possible pattern I’ve noticed and that others of have noticed is that the highest rates are in the communist and ex-communist countries. I’m sure there are other variables that factor into this – bad economies, etc. Saying Communism is solely responsible for suicide is definitely an oversimplification and is not what I’m saying here but one has to wonder if the more extreme versions of communism that basically try and make everyone the same economically, also maybe trying to make them the same socially and emotionally, whether inherently or otherwise. If any part of what I say or speculate is true here, it’s probably a safe assumption that a good percentage of the population of these countries are living in an unnatural state of mind and being. This yields unnatural culminations of very basic behaviors and can be very destructive over the long term. We witness it in zoos and animals in captivity everyday. Unnatural behavior from unnatural environmental conditions. It’s obviously not working for simpler creatures, should we expect it to work on us?

There’s a really great discussion about this here:

“Why do the (ex)communist countries have the highest suicide rates?“

Tags: 47, china, china daily, communism, rich harris, social behavioral issues, suicide rates, xie chuanjiao