More Productive

My friend PJ sent me over an article from today's NY Times. It goes like this:

9 Die in Japan Suicides Tied to Web
By James Brooke
Published: October 13, 2004

TOKYO, Oct. 12 - Nine people were found dead on Tuesday in two rented cars with the windows sealed and charcoal burners at their feet in pacts that the police said were facilitated by Internet suicide sites.

The police said that in the first car, a minivan that had been rented for the day, they found seven bodies, including teenagers and a 33-year-old woman who had left a note for her children. Parked on a mountain road in a Tokyo suburb, the gray van had been wrapped in blue plastic sheets with the windows taped closed. Inside, the woman's body was in the driver's seat, and there were three bodies on each of the van bench seats. All were believed to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

"Mother is going to die, but I was happy that I could give birth to you," said a note found next to the driver, according to Kyodo News. An empty package of sleeping pills was found near the van.

The group may have come together through a suicide message board on the Internet, Japanese news media quoted the police as saying. Japan has a suicide rate about twice the rate of the United States, and there are Web sites where people discuss suicide and suicide techniques. Some Web sites even sell kits offering "painless" suicide.

Using a cellphone, one of the seven in the van e-mailed a friend in northern Japan on Monday evening, giving the approximate location of the van, a police spokesman for Saitama, a Tokyo suburb, told Agence France-Presse. All the van's occupants were dead by the time the police arrived, just after dawn.

At almost the same time Tuesday morning, outside a temple in Yokusuka, about 75 miles to the south, the police found a rented car containing the bodies of two women, ages 21 and 27. They apparently had also asphyxiated themselves by burning charcoal in two stoves in the car. The police told Kyodo News that the two lived about 25 miles apart and had also apparently met through the Internet.

"This is not murder,'' read a message found in the women's car, according to Agence France-Presse. "We planned this." The police have asked Internet service providers to report information about chat group participants who post suicide plans on the Web, but the directive is believed to be largely ignored.

Last year, Japan reported a record 34,427 cases of suicide, a slight increase over previous years. From January 2003 to June 2004, 45 people committed suicide in groups after meeting through the Internet, according to the National Police Agency. In one case last month, four young people were found dead after burning charcoal in a car parked three miles from where the van was found Tuesday.

PJ sent this over to show me what's going on around the world with the aid of new technology. Chat rooms were designed for likeminded people to have a venue in which to share ideas, thoughts, opinions. No help, just commiserating; the latest techniques of sucking air out of a car, extinguishes life without too much pain. They'd suffered enough in life. Make the last remaining breath on earth the most painless.

I'd asked Ack months ago about the feelings I feel and how much I feel them. When I'm down I don't say I'm depressed. It's a very dark place, but not one where I'd consider leaving. Sometimes I forget I'll emerge out the other side. Those are particularly dark days. He said most people find it too much to bear, so they're immersed in therapy, given prescriptions to fill that don't allow them to feel too much. Instead of peaks and valleys they are given a more level feeling field. Numb.

"Fitter, happier, more productive, comfortable
Not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym, 3 days a week
Getting on better with your associate, employee,
Contemporaries, at ease
Eating well, no more microwave dinners and saturated fats
A patient better driver, a safer car, baby smiling in back seat
Sleeping well, no bad dreams, no paranoia
Careful to all animals, never washing spiders down the plughole
Keep in contact with old friends, enjoy a drink now and then
Will frequently check credit at moral bank, hole in wall
Favors for favors, fond but not in love
Charity, standing orders on Sundays
Ring, road, supermarket
No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants
Car wash, also on Sundays
No longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows
Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate
Nothing so childish
At a better pace, slower and more calculated
No chance of escape
Now self-employed, concerned, but powerless
An empowered and informed member of society
Pragmatism not idealism
Will not cry in public, less chance of illness
Tires that grip in the wet
Shot of baby strapped in back seat, a good memory
Still cries at a good film
Still kisses with saliva, no longer empty and frantic
Like a cat tied to a stick that's driven into frozen winter shit
The ability to laugh at weakness
Calm fitter, healthier and more productive
A pig in a cage on antibiotics"

[ radiohead ]

This nation with all its technology, and its Hello Kitty's, Anime, Totoro... They provide the cutest exports. Media depicts them as smiling, laughing, bowing, soft tender voices, sheepish giggles behind opened hands, business cards, meek, yielding, healthy diets, slim builds, the lowest cancer rates, such high suicide rates.

Why?

Merely competition? Where does this seed come from? No one is looked at as an individual. They are numbers and numbers grow exponentially or get divided. It's not good enough to be happy. There is no happy, just the practiced look of happy. Goodbye Kitty... Mother is going to die.