Desultory Life

A conversation in a bar concerned the vacuum that is music today. Today is not the 60's or 70's. Pathetically, it is not even the 80's. Society has been dumbed down. The musicians of the 40s and 50's appear today as savants, as geniuses. Or simply, they devoted the time to learn a craft. Loss is a four letter word, but eventually loss compounds and the desire to go on ceases. As a society we are confronted with a staggering amount of loss. Quality, integrity, deep relationships, contact. In its place we have mobility, wide networks of weak associations, and a consumer economy. As a society, we are bound for a fall. Yes, there is a slice of people, mostly in universities, that challenge their perceptions of life. Aging takes its toll on creativity. I know, I can barely think anymore. Compound this with the lack of a sympathetic environment, not encouraging mastery, not encouraging transformations of material goods, or if so, not teaching the arts that drive that transformation. Yes, I can boot up my computer and make music with the help of software. This process will not teach me music however. Will not say when to go the 7th or the minor 3rd, and never, never, will drive the saxophone solo.

God help us all. The end is near.

Men 85% -- Women 15%

The ratio of male to female suicide is 85/15. This seems to hold in all age brackets, from the most likely time to do yourself in 15-24, to the it's all over anyway except the pain so why don't I pull the plug elderly opt out.

Why this ratio? Consider that men are jailed at even a higher rate for homicide, typically in the mid 90th percentile. Men are more violent than women. It could be argued that men have more societal pressure to succeed, more financial burdens: these take a toll, especially when failure is involved. Genetically (and all is genetic here, perhaps) men are more likely to have mutations than women. So on the fringe, those suicides of genetic instability will skew towards men, simply because men express more genetic variations at the fringes. (why? women's more complex reproductive systems select against variability). Though this accounts for only a few percentage points off the norm.
Perhaps men in general have fewer deep intimate ties to other people. Certainly pregnancy, carrying a child, etc, is wildly influential in women, and absent in men.

And of course, deep down, men know they are expendable. So they act like it.