In Syria and Iraq the young are killed by ideologies, by
other minds. In America, it is the mind that kills. “Why Do Doctors Commit Suicide?” (NYT, 9/4/14)
was the title of a Times Op-ed piece by a recent medical school
graduate, Pranay Sinha. Why would a graduate of a top
university who has succeeded in being accredited in one of the world’s most
respected professions end his or her life? And it’s not only about medicine. There
was a period when Sweden, a country which provided semi-Utopian conditions to its citizens, experienced the highest suicide rate in the world (Sweden no
longer heads the list). Can we hypothesize that perhaps a society where outward cares are
less an issue becomes more inward turning? And is this not somehow the case
with America where the jihad can come from within? In his famous Suicide: A Study in Sociology Emile Durkheim argued that suicide was less evident in highly structured
societies. One wonders about the prevalence of suicide in the Taliban
controlled portions of Afghanistan, among Boko Haram in Nigeria and naturally
ISIS and al-Qaeda controlled territories. However, horrible the idea, can we
say that jihad itself, with its hatred of the other, is an insurance against
self-annihilation (with the exception obviously of suicide bombers)? And is it possible to conclude that in societies like Sweden and the United States which preach
tolerance and freedom, and which demand relatively little social conformity,
that the thanatos or death drive which Freud described as a natural
part of life (Todestrieb) is more
likely to be unleashed on the self?
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