Is Humanity Suicidal?
...es from the social agreement to improve. Because we are unable to determine who will be lawyers and doctors at birth, we as a society encourage everyone to strive for success. By arousing this discontent in us by telling us we shouldn’t be satisfied where we are now, people who are able try to “better” themselves, while others are left feeling like outsiders; failures at life. Those who have no way to reach the goal of improvement assume one of the four devious, or abnormal, lifestyles. First, the innovator, a person who accepts the goals of society but uses illegitimate means to try to reach them. Drug dealers, for instance, accept the goal of achieving wealth, but reject the legitimate ways to do so. The second deviant path, ritualism, is taken by those who feel discouraged and give up on achieving cultural goals, but still live by conventional rules of conduct, like Jack in Fight Club. The third path, retreatism, is taken by people who both reject cultural goals and the means of achieving them, like those who retreat to live as hermits. Finally, people like alcoholics and drug addicts live as rebellions. These are people who reject society’s goals and means and replace existing goals with new ones. What would make these people who have rejected what is accepted by society as a good life turn to suicide? The fact is, no matter how they try to escape society’s grasp over their lifestyle, they are still labeled by society and looked down upon. Labels become a part of our self-concept and we judge ourselves based on who we think we are. No chosen life, whether it’s deviant or not, can ever be free from humanity. Those who choose deviance never escape humanity; they’re just outcasted by society. Humanity also influences suicide by altering the human nature of survival to include a conscience of well-being as a standard of life. Those who are well-off and who fit in well in society ...