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Mitch, thanks for the reply. Nuclear engineers have outstanding educations and the book shows that few well-educated people are susceptible to what the authors call Deaths of Despair (DD). The suicide belt is indeed an area of tremendous beauty; we lived in Colorado Springs for 11 years and traveled much of CO and nearby states. But you can't eat that scenery, can't take it to the bank (unless you own a hotel there), without a well-paying job it can be very unforgiving, and it can be a day's drive to get specialized medical care in Denver, Salt Lake City, Spokane, etc.
There are plenty of strong people out in rural areas, with or without guns, but some of those out there are susceptible. Along those lines one stereotype that comes to mind are those who seek refuge from big cities and the racial mix of such places; Idaho being a case in point. Idaho is well known as a place with plenty of neo-nazi types / white supremacists and similar mindsets. I tried listening to Rush back in the 1990s and rejected his spin on things; he'd take an iota of truth and spin it up into something far more than it was, and I felt his aim was to incite anger and rage, like the smoke blowing loudmouth on infowars.
When I got married in 1974 we chose her M.D. as our doctor. He smoked heavily and became terminal with lung cancer in the 1980s. Since he knew what was coming he committed suicide by firearm, indeed a DD. I don't blame him one bit for that, nor would I fault anyone else for doing that. I know it's an option for me as I won't let myself rot for months in a nursing home; I've seen that way of dying and won't stand for it. But now we have ten states with Death With Dignity (DWD) laws that allow such terminal patients to legally get the pills from their doctor to take them out gently and gracefully, on their own terms, before the stupefying pain and suffering that terminal diseases so often bring. I've seen some of my older generation pass away under such awful conditions, all of which makes me a fan of DWD; those who want more info on DWD may search this site using the term DWD.
But it's many of the white working class high school graduates (or HS dropouts) who are suffering the DDs. As they fall further down the economic chain and/or have no economic choice but to move further out from big expensive cities, they end up in desolate rural areas which have few resources for them and eventually that poverty of place takes its toll on their mindsets, they are susceptible to alcohol and/or opioids for relief, and eventually we see another DD event.
Rachel, so far the book doesn't say the birth origins of the victims of DDs. A lot of those in rural areas are native to such areas, hate to leave it, are poorly educated in low-tax rural school systems, and have little opportunity to escape. There's a country music song that describes this 'syndrome' if we can call it that: "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive." Harlan is a county in KY that was/is noted for coal mining and has all the ills of low education, obesity, diabetes, opioids and alcohol that much of Appalachia is noted for. The rural kids who manage to get a decent education almost all migrate TO the big cities for the job opportunities and support infrastructures that are found there -- and it's been going this way for 150 years now since farm machinery allowed farm kids to get off the farm and head to factory jobs in big cities.
Well I would say the "trick" to leaving Harlan alive, is, you don't drop out of high school, you don't get married and have kids right out of high school. I would like to think if I had been born into that, I would have figured out that the Nuclear Navy would take me away from that damn place, I could have enlisted and maybe gone on to OCS and finished up as an officer, maybe staying in for 20, maybe ending up in the nuclear industry where I did end up as things turned out. Note that this "escape plan" does not require the escapee to come up with his own money, Uncle Sam will provide that, and certainly the Nuclear Navy is not the only "escape capsule" available, but it's a good one and one I'm familiar with.
As the man said "It's hard to soar like an eagle if you hang out with turkeys!". I realized my erstwhile "peer group" back home near Atlanta were a bunch of turkeys and I got away from them.
You know, getting back to the original post, it's true that "grunt labor" jobs are getting scarcer, some are taken over by machines, some by robots.
One way to look at it is "Why do humans live so much better than chimpanzees?". In a few words, education and skills. If academic education is not working for some people, there are skilled trades. Learn to weld, do machine work, operate heavy equipment. Any of the trades is a vehicle to opening your own business if you want it to be. But even just working in the trades "for some other guy" someone can make decent money. And the trades are by no means closed to ladies. If I ran an auto shop, I would really want to have at least one lady on staff, with her nimble, small hands, she can get in tight places where I and most other guys can't. Factoid for you: While now wiring harnesses for cars are mostly built by robots, before that, they were almost always made by women, not men.
What do we bring to the table? Compared to even just other domestic animals, we can't bite like a dog, we can't follow scents anything like a dog, we can't run all that fast, compared to a horse even the strongest man alive is not very strong. But we do have opposable thumb hands, binocular vision, and most importantly, intelligence.
Consider the higher paying professions - many like being a doctor, surgeon, or pilot depend heavily on vision and manual dexterity, but they really depend on intelligence.
Of course on the other end of the scale, yeah, the 21st century is a bad place to be for people with very limited intelligence.
Mitch, thanks again. In my "Harlan" post I was going to mention a lot of those kids escaping Appalachia, or hollowed-out midwest farm states, or decaying big city industrial areas, do so via the ROTC method or just plain military enlistment. But that post was so long that I left out this part. It is a great way to escape poverty-of-place.
I often say I escaped from Baltimore -- and it was working as a civilian at the Navy tow tank in Carderock, MD that got me out of there. My nephew got out of Baltimore enlisting in the Navy to become a Nuclear Fireman; his brother enlisted in the USAF who sent him to nursing school at a USAF base in TX.
The USAF nephew got two degrees while working as a dialysis tech at Scott AFB, IL and is now very gainfully employed in high tech in that area. The USN nephew works in the tech industry as a battery backup tech and has a stable middle class life in the Denver region.
I became aware of that song "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive" by watching the CMA awards last night, and that performance is already on YouTube. I list it here so people can see just how haunting the song is and maybe understand how the "stay in place" option for those living in such places is so often a vow of poverty and a Death of Despair. For a generation or two there were good paying coal jobs down there, and some manufacturing jobs, but it's mostly all gone now. Our capitalists destroyed much of our working class by shipping jobs overseas, which is mostly an American thing, many other western nations didn't do this and don't have the Deaths of Despair we have. Big pharma (Perdue Pharma, Sackler family), the FDA, and Congress not only did not protect us -- they actively enabled the opioid epidemic that ravages those areas and I'll talk about that in another posting -- short version: we did it to ourselves putting greed over people.
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 11-10-2022 at 07:34 PM..
The military is also going to be decreasingly useful to people who cannot critically think or do skilled jobs as even the traditional role of the Gomer Pyle grunt soldier is going to be replaced with technology and robots. As has been suggested, the 21st century is indeed a terrible time to be of average to poor intelligence.
Thinking more on this, there may be another factor leading to deaths of despair in rural America: anti-intellectualism. Having attended school in the Midwest, I can say first-hand the culture is very much pro-athlete and anti-academic in most communities. Kids are raised in communities that bad-mouth the intellectual and academic classes politically while praising the virtues of the local football team or the "hard working real Americans", setting up the next generation to continue the cycle of limited opportunity and despair as they follow in the footsteps that lead them nowhere.
Updating / adding now that I've a copy of Deaths of Despair obtained from the local library. Let me focus on just the topic of suicide as just one type of Deaths of Despair.
At page 100 it talks about a "suicide belt" in the USA, that runs along the Rocky Mountains from AZ to AK.
The top six suicide states are found here: NM, UT, ID, WY, MT and AK. What's notable about these states is the very low population density. Guns, which makes suicide quick and easy, are also prevalent in rural areas. Madison County, MT has 2.1 people per square mile. Low density areas have few people, fraternal groups, union halls, churches and health providers where people could find the sort of mutual support that leads to a sense of well-being. Being alone, feeling abandoned, lacking hope, lacking gainful employment opportunities in sparsely populated areas and with ready access to alcohol and guns is deadly.
The six states with the lowest suicide rates are: NY, NJ, MA, MD, CA, and CT. What's notable about these states is the very high population density. Mercer County, NJ has 1,632 people per square mile. High density areas have millions of people, plentiful jobs, fraternal groups, union halls, churches, and entertainments where people do find the social interactions that lead to a sense of well-being. Dense areas also have a foundational infrastructure of medical, psychological, social, educational and religious institutions to support actual well-being.
I would add from observation that people in rural areas are subject to daily bombardment from right wing talk radio and far right networks (Fox, Salem, Sinclair, etc) that they are under attack from unchecked, unstoppable massive waves of diseased immigrants pouring over the borders, etc, among other disasters aimed at them by the left. They're told the government is coming for their guns, that their tax dollars are going to undeserving masses of "other" people in hellhole cities run by the other party. This constant drumbeat of lies is enough to give weaker minds a sense of doom, that all is lost, so they self-medicate with alcohol and drugs to the point their despair can lead to suicide. The book notes that these suicides among non-college Whites are 4 times higher than for college-educated Whites, or Black people who've been subjected to these pressures for generations, especially during the AIDS and Crack Cocaine epidemics of the 1980s.
As I go through the book I'll probably find more key data on which to comment.
This phenomenon of high suicide rates in this area of the country has been discussed and even researched. The reason for higher suicide rates is not totally clear. However, one thing that has to be considered is that these states tend to have some of the highest altitudes in the country. There maybe something about living at a high altitude which causes more depression. I suffer from some depression myself and my sister does too.
I can testify to this living in the mountain states: The cost of living here is fairly high, but jobs available to many here are not sufficient to pay living costs. In the Midwest or the South you have a better chance of earning enough to pay basic living expenses. I have not seen suicide rates here correlated by income, but I could see this as a factor. Other factors may include ready to access to firearms because many here hunt and there is an attitude of "self-reliance" where you make do for yourself or you blame yourself for things that go wrong.
The military is also going to be decreasingly useful to people who cannot critically think or do skilled jobs as even the traditional role of the Gomer Pyle grunt soldier is going to be replaced with technology and robots. As has been suggested, the 21st century is indeed a terrible time to be of average to poor intelligence.
Thinking more on this, there may be another factor leading to deaths of despair in rural America: anti-intellectualism. Having attended school in the Midwest, I can say first-hand the culture is very much pro-athlete and anti-academic in most communities. Kids are raised in communities that bad-mouth the intellectual and academic classes politically while praising the virtues of the local football team or the "hard working real Americans", setting up the next generation to continue the cycle of limited opportunity and despair as they follow in the footsteps that lead them nowhere.
Anti-intellectualism seems to be just an American thing, I never saw it in Europe and particularly not in Russia. I have not been to Asia but the "Tiger Mom" stories I hear make me think anti-intellectualism does not fly there either.
Richard Hofstadter wrote "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" back in 1963, a pretty complete discussion of the phenomenon.
The 21st century is indeed a bad time to be an anti-intellectual. Of course if someone is born with a low IQ, they can't do anything about that, but many people "out there" don't use the intelligence they do have. As Dr. Thomas Sowell said, "It does not matter how intelligent you are, if you don't stop and think!"
Anti-intellectualism seems to be just an American thing, I never saw it in Europe and particularly not in Russia. I have not been to Asia but the "Tiger Mom" stories I hear make me think anti-intellectualism does not fly there either.
Richard Hofstadter wrote "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" back in 1963, a pretty complete discussion of the phenomenon.
The 21st century is indeed a bad time to be an anti-intellectual. Of course if someone is born with a low IQ, they can't do anything about that, but many people "out there" don't use the intelligence they do have. As Dr. Thomas Sowell said, "It does not matter how intelligent you are, if you don't stop and think!"
Mitch, thank you, and agree that we need every smart, well-educated person we can get to make the future a place worth living.
This uniquely American trait of gleefulness over one's own ignorance is dangerous to us as a nation. IIRC it is one of Murphy's Laws that says to beware the power of large groups of stupid people.
Here's my favorite quote on the subject, by Isaac Asimov: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
The danger here is that the ignorant get to vote. Which gets us this hundred-year-old quote by H.L.Mencken, from my hometown of Baltimore: "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
As the party of low taxes, anti-government, anti-unions, anti-education, and anti-science continues to grossly underinvest in public education in most of the nation (outside of major population centers) the future is going to hold very meager outcomes for the under-educated who lack critical thinking skills. All this adds up to more Deaths of Despair for those who find themselves on the outside looking in.
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My view of the anti-intellectual group is that they are guilty of a very lazy way of thinking. Living in the south, I see what I call "dumb-ass chic" all the time. Among some folks, appearing to be a dumb hick is considered cool. And that's not new! My mil was guilty as hell of that sort of "poor is proof that you are good" mind set. It's an old-time Christian line of thinking.
Colleges themselves go a long way toward destroying education. It's not just the tuition, although that's part of it. I see great swaths of students who view college as a playground with more focus on the football team than anything else. Students want to go to the college where they will have the best time - and that's the college's fault.
Even top tier colleges like Stanford are seen by some students as a playground. Remember Lori Laughlin went to jail and lost her career after she bribed officials to admit her daughter to Stanford, where the daughter said she just wasn't all that in to college and stuff. So the daughter did not bother finish - she didn't "have to" since she had a bikini bod and lots of fun offers.
But it starts long before college. The entire educational system seemingly celebrates everything except educational excellence. It's been that way for a long time and has steadily gotten worse.
If I had children I would not send them to the public education system.
Anti-intellectualism seems to be just an American thing, I never saw it in Europe and particularly not in Russia. I have not been to Asia but the "Tiger Mom" stories I hear make me think anti-intellectualism does not fly there either.
Richard Hofstadter wrote "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" back in 1963, a pretty complete discussion of the phenomenon.
The 21st century is indeed a bad time to be an anti-intellectual. Of course if someone is born with a low IQ, they can't do anything about that, but many people "out there" don't use the intelligence they do have. As Dr. Thomas Sowell said, "It does not matter how intelligent you are, if you don't stop and think!"
I've seen things my whole life that just leave me shaking my head. Many of us in the older generation knew people who could have easily completed college or learned a job skill and just chose not to do it because it would have interfered with "personal time". I remember talking to literally dozens of people who started college, but never bothered to earn a degree because at the time they could get a job out at the local military base that gave them sufficient income to pay living expenses. I knew an economics professor once who discussed with me what the greatest predictor of whether a young person would attend college or not. The greatest predictor they could find was if that young person's parents had gone to college. If so, the chances they would attend and graduate increased dramatically.
I do see a lot of people out there in the community that are marginally employed and seem to have little desire to improve their lot in life. Some may be incapable of doing much. However, others are simply too lazy to make the effort.
I don't think this group has any idea how strong competition around the world is. There are groups particularly in Asian countries that would do just about anything to live a lifestyle approaching what we Americans have. Lazy groups and those of low intelligence are going to increasingly feel like the world is collapsing all around them and no government program will be able to save them from those market forces.
New York, to my knowledge, is not a DWD state. It ought to be, as well as every other state.
There have been many positive developments over the years which militate in favor of long, and until relatively near the end relatively healthy lives. Back in my first decade of "experiential" life, the 1960's, people dying in their early 70's was commonplace. Now, where I live, we have 94 year old tennis players. The factors that promote this are, among others:
Medicare;
Non-smoking;
Healthier life styles; and
Conquest of many diseases other than some heart disease and some cancers.
The fact is, even if we are happily married (as I am, at age 65, for 31 years), we outlive our usefulness to our children, our employers (or clients if self-employed), and communities. My synagogue, which is where a lot of my non-work and non-family life revolves, has many groups that are aging. I am at the younger end of our Men's Club and Torah Study. While the clergy talks sweet words of our being "vital pillars" the fact is we are being shuffled off.
I am still a vital contributor to the bankruptcy department at my law firm, and to my family and synagogue. My memory is still sharp, even as my jogging pace has slowed. I still enjoy tennis, itself, believe it or not, an aging sport. While the time hasn't come yet, I would rather go out on a high note, than in what is euphemistically called "assisted living" or "independent living."
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