She Jumped to Her Death and No One Knew

A girl jumped from the high building in front of my window last week. I did not see it and when investigating, I saw no blood stains on the pavement and there was no mention of it in the local papers. The ambulance service just registers the death and cleans up fast and no siren sounds. It is kept as a secret because suicide is contagious. Why people kill themselves? It is something that evolution should have eliminated long time ago. Logically, it should not exist.

Suicide ranks among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15–44 years. Attempted suicides are up to 20 times more frequent than completed ones. 800,000 suicides per year the world over. Sunny Middle East is the region with lowest suicide rates, Israel too being down on the list. The highest rates are the dark countries of Korea, Japan and Russia. 200 thousand people kill themselves each year in China alone. To me it is a paradox, as Orientals possess a stable brain that never goes mad.

A credible theory says that humans have developed religion as a defense against suicide. Chinese, Japanese, Koreans have no religion, they have no prophets and God never talked to them, they believe in no afterlife and know of no tabu foods, and everybody knows that way madness lies.

Apparently, a strong religion is a mental protection against suicide. One tricks himself to stay alive.  Thursday is Yom Kippur, a fast day, and I am on my way to the synagogue.