Wednesday 21 October 2020

Write...Edit...Publish... + IWSG October 2020 : Grave Mistake

 

Cutting straight to the chase without the usual preliminaries, in keeping with the spirit of WEP Lite...






Blind Mole in a Black Hole


To be or not to be, that is the question…

~ Hamlet, William Shakespeare.

 

Mistakes. Grave ones. Yes, the mind makes them. The shape-shifting wondrous and wondering mind, capable of morphing from a homing pigeon to grasshopper and bulldog, capable of holding the most unimaginable thoughts, the most inexplicable, avantgarde visions, the most speakable and unspeakable ideas – that exact same mind can summersault and do a strange blind-mole-in-black-hole on itself. The same mind, which can drive the body to achieve peak success, can also torment it and goad it to blow its brains out or immolate its living self on a pyre. It can, in one catastrophic, grave moment, destroy its own housing and so annihilate itself.

 

Suicide - it’s as old and as human as civilisation itself. The first recorded suicide note goes back to 1900 BCE to Ancient Egypt (even this started in Africa, why am I not surprised?) – it is housed in a museum in Berlin and its title translates as The Dispute with His Soul of One Who is Tired of Life. Attitudes to life and death and the taking of life, whether by own hand or by some other means, were different in antiquity – some would call it more callous, some fatalistic, some maybe relaxed. It was not abhorrent in many societies. The pagan world was generally less hassled about suicide than we are now.


For instance, some Ancient Greek states allowed citizens to end their own life with a state sponsored cup of hemlock, if the said citizen dotted the ‘i’s and crossed the ‘t’s correctly in the application form. In general, suicide was frowned upon if it was uneconomic for the society, such as slaves or criminals prior to trial (criminals forfeited their property to the state). But suicide was perfectly acceptable if the alternative was a dishonourable death. 


In North Western India, Rajput women followed the practice of Jauhar, a ritual mass immolation, when defeat in battle became inevitable for their menfolk, so as not to be taken alive and abused by the enemy.  The first Jauhar is said to date back to Alexander’s time when some north western tribes committed mass suicide to avoid certain capture by him. Similarly insurgent Jews in Masada committed mass suicide rather than face capture and enslavement by the Romans in 74 CE. Famous individual suicides from antiquity include Cleopatra VII and Seneca the Younger.


With the rise of Christianity, attitudes towards suicide hardened and the practice became unacceptable. Suicide became stigmatised. The church excommunicated those who attempted it and the bodies of successful suicides were not permitted burial on consecrated grounds.  That started changing again during the Renaissance and by 18th/19th century the cause of suicide had stopped being perceived as sin and instead shifted to insanity, though it remained illegal in most of the world. Suicide was decriminalised in most countries in the 20th century. However, there is still much stigma attached to it.


***


It is better to burn out than to fade away.

~ Kurt Cobain.


Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, John William Godward, Mark Rothko, Robin Williams, Sushant Singh Rajput. Is there something within the artistic temperament that predisposes it to suicide? Does the creative brain come hardwired with the seeds of its own annihilation? There have been reams of studies out to prove or disprove this premise. No definitive answer, though. What has been established is a connection between mental health and suicidal behaviour. Our understanding of so called ‘insanity’ has deepened. But it has also become equally clear that mental disorders are not the only cause, the reasons are varied and many. We now know that there are signs of suicidal tendencies long before the person takes any definitive action to end life. Suicide prevention is possible if communities are sensitive - they listen and act proactively.  

 

Worldwide, there are around 800,000 lives lost to suicide annually. These are only the recorded deaths, many are suppressed due to the stigma or to avoid legal issues, so likely the actual figures are much higher. A majority are males, it is estimated that twice as many men take their own lives as women.  Not all have any history of mental health issues and/or substance abuse, although it is thought that in more than 50% of the cases depression/mental health/drugs have a role. Other causes of suicide include financial distress, romantic and academic/professional disappointments, terminal disease. In nearly all of the cases, the suicide is to avoid the resulting torment rather than to end life per se.

 

In the last decade or so, suicides among younger people have shown a disturbing, upward trend globally. The current pandemic has created its own horrific spike as well – in India for instance, suicides have risen among the youth in all segments due to job losses and academic uncertainties, for all that the public has been obsessed with the particular high profile suicide of Bollywood celebrity Sushant Singh Rajput recently. 


In some ways, a suicide of this kind opens up a whole can of worms about the wider society it happens in. What it has revealed about Indian society is not pretty. What is even more regrettable is that there were hardly any serious conversations on any of the underlying issues, instead the whole spiralled into a misogynistic witch hunt, trial by social media and an avalanche of hashtags. 


It is not just the suicidal mind that makes grave mistakes, unfortunately. The mindless public in many cases makes equally grave ones. A picking over of things in which all sense of privacy and decency are lost. Shameful!


***


Each one of us leaves an unfinished life.

~ Mary Oliver.


But that’s neither here nor there. Because this here is not about an error of the present, but one of the long ago past. A grave mistake that robbed the world of a genius. Whose mistake was it? And how did it come to be made? We still don’t know (WC 1000. FCA.)

...And clearly we still haven’t come to terms with the collective regret, that’s why we keep talking endlessly about it. More than 130 years after the suicide of a then unknown artist, it is still being pondered, researched and written about. There is a never ending stream of books and films and exhibitions, some going on even as you read this.


Credit : Van Gogh Museum


This is the last painting the artist did, he worked on it for the day, left it incomplete and shot himself. He died two days later in his room. A farmer found the gun in his field while tilling years later. And the exact spot where he sat painting on that fateful summer day was identified just this year from a postcard.  


It is tempting to attribute both Vincent’s creative genius and his ultimate suicide to mental health issues. A climax of crises somehow led to his suicide after his breakdown in Arles. But this is an incomplete assessment. He was always a misfit, always a loner, unable to settle down anywhere – in his relationships with women, in a job, in a place. He was, by the standards of the contemporary 19th century society, a failure - unmarried, his work mostly unrecognised and unsold, dependent  on his brother financially, isolated from the community by his nature, stigmatised  and ostracised by his neighbours and avoided even by some friends, always apprehensive about the next breakdown.


There is a popularly held view that epilepsy or syphilis or schizophrenia was responsible for his particular artistic vision and frenzied output. This is simply incorrect. Vincent was methodical in his work, he trained painstakingly - from studying other artists' works, in Fernand Cormon's atelier in Paris, before that under his cousin Anton Mauve, a successful artist in the Hague. Most of his canvasses were the execution of well thought out concepts, meticulous in all details. They leave no doubt about his mastery of colours and brushwork. His so called 'madness' prevented him from working, it did not result in a spike in output. His art in most part owed to training and forethought, it had little to do with hallucinations resulting from any mental condition or substance abuse. It is complicated by the fact that mental illness itself was little understood during the 19th century and van Gogh was never conclusively diagnosed. 


I feel – a failure – that’s it as regards me – I feel that’s the fate I’m accepting. And which won’t change anymore.

~ Letter to Theo and Jo. 24th May, 1890


Why did he shoot himself? Was it because of his changing relationship with Theo? Because the latter married and Vincent thought he would not be as financially available to support his brother's art as he had been? Or because Vincent was tired of the poverty, the hand-to-mouth existence, desperate at not being able to sell any paintings?  Maybe because he felt a breakdown closing in on him again, preventing him from working? Perhaps a combination of all three. Was it an attack of depression? We can only conjecture.  What is beyond doubt is that the signs were there, long before that July. The despair, the self harm, the restlessness. Could it have been prevented? Perhaps, if we knew then what we know now.


***~*~*~***



Thank you for your patience! Read the other entries here




Suicide Prevention Helplines in India



50 comments:

  1. This is a subject very dear to my heart. Despite volunteering on a crisis line I do not believe that all suicide is wrong.
    However, as a solution to a temporary problem it breaks my heart. The mother of a young man in Britain summed it up for me 'He wanted to die that day. He didn't want to die forever'.
    And yes, I grieve for all of the Van Gophs of the world. Misfits, unappreciated and with so much to give...
    Thank you Nila, for your usual spectacular use of the prompt.

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    1. I deeply value the work you do. It's people like you who make our society empathetic and proactive, sensitive to the suffering that's often invisible to family members and the general public. I agree that not all suicides are wrong, but the spiking suicide rates amongst teenagers and twenty/ thirtysomethings just turns my brain inside out. That's terribly, terribly wrong and we have collectively failed the young people.

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    2. Sadly, in my country and no doubt in others, suicide is (and has been for some years) the leading cause of death for people under twenty five. Which is emphatically WRONG.

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    3. That is a wholly excruciating statistic!

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  2. Wow - this was a deep dive, very serious, very well done. The comment above has a sentence - die today...not forever. It's a concept that's difficult to comprehend, I assume, when one is at the most dire low point of life at a particular moment. I confess to having a fleeing moment at one time or another, but easily pulled out of it. I feel very sorry for those that can't or won't. Well done and you chose a difficult path and subject.

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    1. I am so very glad you were able to pull out of those points in your life, deeply glad! My heart goes out to those who end their lives because they feel rejected or inadequate against some weird arbitrary standards an unfeeling society sets up.

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  3. Hi Nila. A deep dive, as Joanne says. Fitting for the prompt - so many suicides may be accounted a 'grave mistake'. Thanks for you treatise on Vincent. He had a lot going on. I wouldn't like to speculate too deeply into why he did what he did. But I have read that his brother Theo was removing some support. Is that true? Somehow I feel the reason is deep within Vincent himself. No wonder he felt a failure. Only ever selling one painting. Look at the fortune that awaited his death! Seems utterly unfair.

    The others you mention - Is there something within the artistic temperament that predisposes it to suicide? Well, I think so. So many writers tabulate their battles with depression. It's only a short step from ending it all if the depression is too deep. Many teens see it as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Sadly.

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    1. Far too many creative people end their own lives. Vincent is perhaps the most well known. It's a crushing pity that he didn't wait a few months. His work was just beginning to find acceptance and critical acclaim. Vincent's main problem was that he was before his time, had he been born just a couple decades later he would not have been an unknown, unappreciated genius. Life is excruciatingly unfair sometimes. His relationship with his brother Theo? - now that requires a separate analysis by itself. :)

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  5. Quite an insightful expression. I have some questions:
    1. summersault or somersault?
    2. In "For instance, some Ancient Greek states allowed citizens to end their own life with a state sponsored cup of hemlock,.." shouldn't it be 'their own/respective lives"?
    3.Is this creative statement, "In North Western India, Rajput women followed the practice of Jauhar, a ritual mass immolation," so that a need for 'a ritual of mass immolation'/ 'a ritualistic mass immolation' can be overlooked?
    Also, it would have been a better reading if sources of statistics would have been mentioned.

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    1. Thanks for your feedback and the questions. Attempting to answer them the best I can.

      1. Both are valid. Summersault is the less common variant, according to Merriam Webster.
      2. Life is both an uncountable and countable noun. It is uncountable when used to mean 'the state of being alive.' Lives would be equally correct to use in that statement.
      3. I don't quite understand this question.

      Great point about data sources! Most of the sources I've used are embedded as links in the body of the post. Personally I feel mentioning sources in the text disrupts the flow, and makes the reading feel too dry for a general interest essay. It would of course be different if this were a serious research paper or a business assessment. But ultimately what data sources to include is just a personal preference. If you'll indicate which specific one you want to know, I'll put that up here.

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  6. Hi,
    Your first paragraph brought to my mind the theme suicide and I was not incorrect. You have done an awesome job of researching this theme and then wrapping it around the life of Vincent Van Gogh.
    Shalom aleichem,
    Pat

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    1. Hi Pat! and thank you for the feedback, glad you liked the post. I'm a great fan of Vincent, and so he keeps hogging all the space here at every challenge :)

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  7. Nila, your skill and creativity to tackle such an emotional subject never ceases to astound me, and then you tie it all back to your overall thesis on Van Gogh and I am thoroughly impressed. Whatever personal issues people deal with, whether mental illness plays a role or not, I blame society for many suicides. If leaders of the world could allow people to feel like they are worthy to live just because they exist, perhaps desperation wouldn't take over. I've been desperate before and having someone make me feel worthy helped me get through it, but not everyone has that though they should.

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    1. I'm emphatically in agreement with you on society being responsible for many suicides. This whole idea that some lives are 'more equal' than others, is just plain unacceptable. Divisive leaders enabling an ecosystem of privilege and discrimination don't help at all.

      I'm so glad to hear you found the support you needed.

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  8. An interesting history of suicide, Nila. It seems that whatever drives humans to give up on life, is part of the universal human DNA, some driven to it as Van Gogh by severe mental illness. Thanks for your entry this month. It was very well done.

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    1. Thank you. It's unfair that some are driven to it by mental illness, when it could perhaps be prevented if society devoted equal energy and resources to supporting a cure as it does for other physical diseases like cancer or covid. And I never did understand why someone producing a machine part or a sack of grain is held in greater esteem than someone who creates a breathtaking painting/sculpture/story.

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  9. Suicide has been around a long, long time. Thanks for the history. Sadly, I think this year's numbers will beat the average...

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    1. Yes, way above the average this year. A global tragedy. Thank you for being here.

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  10. This is such a tough topic. I lost a good friend to suicide about 20 years ago and I have to say I'm still not over it. I've had too many students who've seriously contemplated it and some who have attempted it. There are so many reasons and emotions behind it all. We need to do better as a species at supporting those who need us.

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    1. Absolutely! We are consistently failing the economically and/or otherwise underprivileged segments of society. We need to shape up and step up, not just on this count but several other issues as well. The suicides amongst young people is just too devastating.

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  11. You've done a wonderful job discussing a heavy subject! It's true that many creative people have taken their own lives, and I've often wondered what was going on in their minds before they did it. Even the successful artists aren't immune to depression. Looking at Van Gough's life, I can see many reasons why he might have made such a decision. It's such a shame he never found success in his own time. If only he could have known how much his art would eventually impact the world. Would it have changed the outcome of his life had he known? It's impossible to say. Mental illness is a powerful thing, and it was so little understood in his time.

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    1. Mental illness is not fully understood even now, there is so much stigma attached to it. Where I come from, everything is lumped under 'insanity' by most laypeople. Not a subject that's discussed openly either.
      As far as Vincent goes, he was never properly diagnosed. He drank too much, he ate his own paints, he went without food, he cut off his ear. He was desperate. Would it have changed anything if he had found support? As you said, it's impossible to say. But I like to think maybe. Maybe if Gauguin hadn't left, maybe if Theo had visited more often, maybe if the critics had praised his artworks a couple months earlier...that's what makes it so tragic, so heartbreaking and unfair.

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  12. Hi Nila.
    I studied Van Gogh for High School art class. His brother was an art dealer and refused to sale his paintings. At the end, he didn't have any money for food and started eating his paints which were lead based. That had to play into his suicide somewhat.

    As for me, I have depression. Not because I'm artistic, but because my father was abusive. My siblings treated me like I was stupid because of a learning disability. So, suicidal thoughts come my way. However I have a trick. I tell myself the Native American saying. Life is a big circle, wait a day, a week, a month. Things will turn around. And they always do.

    You did a great job with this difficult subject.
    Nancy

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    1. Hi Nancy,

      Thank you for sharing your story here. I'm so glad you've found something that works for you. Childhood abuse isn't easy to overcome, applaud your courage.

      I have seen depression up close in my extended family, non-artistic people suffer from it too. I know of entire families ruined by suicide. But people can come out of depression given the right help at the right time, we as a community have to be sensitive and listen carefully. Unfortunately, many times we are deaf and blind to the suffering around us.

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  13. Such a fascinating and informative piece. Nila, I saved the limk to where I'm writing my ongoing story. Van Gogh and his paintings feaure in that as he has fascinated me for decades. Your historical and cultural observations are instructive, especially as it's a grave mistake to jump to conclusions about suicide. My first cousin took his lfe in his early twenties and that was tragic and complex - family pressure was a major factor; they didn't approve of his satisfying career, but he had talent.

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    1. P.S I believe the Kurt Cobain quote was used by Neil Young first - and the Kurgan in 'Highlander' ;-). Interesting discussion of sorts here: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.quotations/c/8DkufSQ3iZI?pli=1

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    2. I'm so sorry to know about your cousin. That must have been so hard! Families are our bedrock mostly but sometimes they can act contrary to their own interest. If we as a society did not insist on fitting people forcibly into neat little boxes many suicides could be saved.
      I am utterly fascinated by van Gogh and I love that the Sparkle series has him in it. :)

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  14. Thank you for writing this. As someone who struggles with suicide ideation (the planning part is pretty haphazard and so completion is not likely to be imminent) and has finally started figuring myself out (wish I could have done that 25 years ago) I have some thoughts on the matter.
    People like me--depressive and not able to remain cheerful despite others' best efforts any more than I'm able to remain thin despite others' best efforts to shame me into being so--are inconvenient and uncomfortable because we tell it like it is rather than lying with a smile.
    It's likely that I'd always have been a depressive personality. I think some of it is hard-wired, just like my ADHD is hard-wired. But a great part of my suicidal tendencies and self-loathing are due to trauma. I honestly didn't realize this until just this year, and then I started looking at some incidents in my life that I really preferred not to. I opened some old wounds.
    The truth is, I'm no more mentally ill than the next person who has been abused in various ways for much of their life and then had their pain minimized by others. After being sexually assaulted in 1997 and struggling with panic attacks that came one after the other, my own family said to me, "well, you got over this before, you'll get over it again."
    In other words, I'm not as crazy as people like to label me, and I talk about my truth. People don't like that. I'll never be popular because I'm not willing to paste a smile over a gaping wound and give the people what they want.

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    1. Thank you for sharing yourself so openly here, I'm beyond moved that you did so.

      In my limited experience, shaming people never gives the desired outcome, listening deeply while the person figures things out for himself/herself gets better results in the long term imo. Suicidal tendencies have many complex and difficult causes, not everything can be lumped under 'mental illness' but that's what we glibly do as a society sometimes, as that's the easy path. No one should be forced to stick a smile over a wound and pretend everything is alright when it isn't. I'm glad you're able to own your past in its entirety.

      In an ideal and fair world each one of us would be accepted and valued for who we are, flaws and all. Vincent wasn't popular because his community didn't accept him for what he was, and more than a hundred years later, we are still intolerant of people who don't conform to societal notions/expectations.

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  15. An excellent, timely and well thought-out piece.

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  16. A Grave Mistake, most assuredly. What a great essay on a subject that most find difficult to broach! Expertly written and the added information about Van Gogh, breathtaking. Your entries to the challenge all out do the other!

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    1. Van Gogh has been on my mind since Feb :) and the suicide of this young Indian film star has been on the loop in Indian media...so it seemed a natural choice.
      From his millions of fans' pov, a terribly tragic mistake.

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  17. Hi Nila - a very sad informative piece ... so true for so many ... many who feel they're at the end of their tether - nowhere else to go ... there is always a way - but it's never obvious and takes a really strong character to keep going. That young woman's note on her son ... 'he wanted to die that day' not for ever.

    The family and friends left behind have the real problem to get over the 'why' - and usually there's no answer as to why ... just an understanding, a sadness ...

    Depression and mental illness are both so difficult for us to understand ... so much has been written, portrayed about Van Gogh ... he really did have a challenging life - he could see and paint things most of us have no hope of understanding - but love looking at.

    I can see your link to the suicides in India and around the world ... a really empathetic post for this prompt: A Grave Mistake ...

    I'll be back to re-read ... take care - Hilary

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    1. Hi Hilary,

      That's so true about the suffering of the one who dies ends with the suicide while family and friends suffer and try to figure out reasons for the rest of their lives - awful traumatic all round for all parties...van Gogh was the way he was, a super creative and difficult to live with personality. Maybe he would have been treated with more compassion if he had been born a century later, but I don't hold much hope for that either. People can/could be plenty cruel in all centuries, despite the broadened understanding of mental health.

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  18. An informative and well-researched piece. Well done, Nilanjana.

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  19. This is such a sensitive and informative piece about a subject that carries so much stigma and avoidance. I've been touch by the suicide of family and friends, even had thoughts of it myself, at a time of deep despair. My personal motivation was not to die, but to stop the pain (hence the reason I'm still here, in part), however I think the motives are probably different for everyone which is why it is so difficult to understand.
    And, as always, you have skillfully brought us back to Van Gogh--great writing!

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    1. We have a long way to go with understanding suicide and its underlying motivations. I don't believe myself that all suicides can be lumped together under 'mental illness.' There are perfectly mentally healthy people who take that tragic path also for varied reasons.

      Thank you for sharing your thoughts here, I'm aware and deeply appreciative of how hard it must have been to talk about it.

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  20. Such a deep subject! My brother attempted suicide some years ago so this was very moving and personal to me.

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    1. I'm so sorry to hear that but so very glad he was unsuccessful.

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  21. Nicely done Nila. This is a topic worth the speculation and research. I personally believe suicide is the right of any individual, and nobody should need "permission." But I'm a social worker, and I am glad there are counselors and hotlines and other avenues for people who are so depressed within a situation that the permanent solution seems the only option. Religion, and by extension society, has made suicide less acceptable than suffering abuse, physical or mental pain, extreme poverty, or any other outrageous situation.

    People who seriously contemplate or attempt suicide are in desperate crisis, and society cannot always fix that. Individuals themselves cannot always fix that.

    You ask and contemplate deep questions here. Well done. I like how you expressed the concerns, put forth the research. Thank you for addressing this controversial issue with compassion. Again, well done.

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    1. I too believe that they are in desperate crisis and not every crisis can be resolved. Minimising their pain as 'insanity' 'mental illness' and/or any number of other odd reasons is glib and uncalled for. Why the society has these blinkers on for abuse, poverty, trafficking, malnourishment, terminal disease and any number of excruciating situations but finds suicide so intolerable I can't fathom. Victim blaming does not help. Thanks so much for your perspective and the feedback, means a lot!

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  22. To my understanding, suicide is illegal in the United States because of probable cause laws. If the police believe a person might be committing suicide, it's considered probably cause to break down a door to get to them to prevent the crime. Meaning it's really more of a loophole meant to save lives, not to make things worse for someone who is obviously in need of help.

    Excellent article.

    Funny thing about recorded history, there's rarely ever any of those "oldest" or "firsts" from the America's or Australia. Do you suppose it's because a lot of history was lost when explores were replaced with conquers who destroyed anything and everything (and anyone) that contradicted the history they knew?

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    1. Well yes, it's highly possible - history is always the story of the victor. As an Easterner, I've always found most of the history I was taught to be rather Eurocentric.

      I'm okay with any law that saves lives, but I do think suicide should not be stigmatised. As a society, we need to be far more sensitive to these cases, especially among young people. We still have a long way to go to truly understand.

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  23. A very interesting read making me think beyond my limited knowledge. It's so horrible to think that people feel there is no other way.

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    1. It's traumatic for those who're left behind with a lifetime of guilt and regrets, apart from the terrible anguish the actual victim goes through before ending his/her life. Too much suffering!

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  24. Excellent piece. Well researched and well written, as always.

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