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Paradox of Suicide

In: Social Issues

Submitted By elaine2602
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Phuong-Trang Nguyen SOC 101 _ Instructor: Tai Woo Recently, the matter of suicide has come up in several conversations and throughout a media. Yet, the question as to why people commit suicide remains controversial and boundless. There are twice as many suicides in the U.S each year than homicide. After listening to the intrigue podcast “The Paradox of Suicide”, I have developed some thoughts and some new understanding about suicide. So the first thing I ask myself when I think of suicide is why do people do it? This seems to be the question on everyone’s mind. It is extremely hard for me to understand how something can drive a person to a state of mind where they outweigh the value of living. What has pushed them to the limit where the only solution to relieve themselves of the pain is to kill themselves? In the podcast, they interview college professor Dante Everest who has travelled to a tribe in the Amazon jungle to learn more about how people there take on suicide. After Dante tells about his mother’s suicide and explain how it made a huge impact on him to the people of the tribe, they burst to laugh and feel as if the concept of a person voluntarily killing themselves is lubricous and unheard of. It is hard not to compare the tribe in the amazon that has a zero suicide rate, to the U.S which has a 35,500 suicide rate each year. So the next thing comes to my mind is why? Why does the community in the small Amazonian tribe have a zero tolerance for suicide? The people of the tribe have explained that it could be because they don’t have to suffer from the high level of stress in comparison to people living in modern life. But I beg to differ, how are people in the U.S considered to lead a more stressful life then the Piraha people? Average families in the U.S live in homes with easy access to clean water,

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