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Comment by Beefin | Hacker News Reader

The thesis from Sebastian Junger’s book Tribes esplains it best: when a community has a common stressor, that strengthens the social cohesion. An incredible point made was that Israel has the lowest sucide rate of all the third world countries, and guess what he attributes it to? Mandatory draft. The common stressor that every single countryman can empathasize with each other about is war. While it sounds depressing it serves as an example, do we as a nation, state, city or even neighborhood have a common stressor with each other? Antecdotally I find it challenging to think of something like that for my community.

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It's interesting that Junger points to a mandatory draft as an example. Two counterpoints to that would be South Korea and Lithuania, which also have mandatory drafts and high rates of suicide per capita.

It seems to me that both you and the OP are correct.

SK has a high level of social cohesion because of the threats it is under (militarily: NK, economically: China, Japan). Military service also creates a temporarily high degree of social cohesion among conscripts.

Yet, it also has a high rate of suicide due to it being a competitive, high-pressure society.

I'm guessing high social cohesion does not in itself lead to lower suicide rates.

Suicide by the elderly is one of the big reasons why South Korea has a high suicide rate.

Sadly, I heard it might be because the old do not want to be a further stress on families in poverty. So maybe it is due to their high cohesion, very collective culture.

>An incredible point made was that Israel has the lowest suicide rate of all the third world countries, and guess what he attributes it to? Mandatory draft. The common stressor that every single countryman can empathasize with each other about is war.

The second part would explain bigger empathy/cohesion (the have a common stressor), not less suicide.

I'd say it's rather that the draft can make you see often BS personal problems people tend blow out of all proportion for what they are (in other words, it "hardens" you). If you have to be accountable to a sergeant, wake up every morning at 6', do drills, have to learn to work and live with others whether they fit your echo bubble or not, etc, for a year or two, you get a taste of more stuff that awaits in the real/working word than you'd get starting from being overprotected and spoiled by your parents all your life.

How would that help? If the draft makes you hard enough for reala world without killing you, why doesn't the real world make you hard enough for real world without killing you? These "overprotecting parents" are still around in the real world (or not), so what's the difference?

>why doesn't the real world make you hard enough for real world without killing you

Obviously because the army does that in a controlled environment, where the expectations are already set for what you'll get (you're going there knowing it will be so and so -- and even at that there's army suicides, through much more rare considering the kind of stressor it is).

Whereas overprotected people can go into the adult world thinking they will crush it and be rich, famous, free of drudgery, have the perfect love life, marriage, or whatever just for showing up (or just for "working hard").

You also do that along with others around your age, and you all go through the exact same shit, and are at it together 24/7.

In short, the army emphasizes that you're not a precious snowflake from day one, you're just one of many in the camp, so you have time to soak this message in. Whereas in your "real life", failure will hit you hard, and it will feel like it's a personal failure.

And, last but not least, you also know it's gonna end in 1 year or so, and everything's compartmentalized. It's not your life. Whereas a failure to get that dream job and having to scrap by can feel like your life (in toto) being a failure.

>These "overprotecting parents" are still around in the real world (or not), so what's the difference?

The role of the "overprotecting parents" ends both when you enter the camp or the adult world. They can't fix things for you in either case (e.g. fix your broken job dreams or love life).

I could easily make the opposite argument: after being forced to spend so much time with $OUTGROUP and (pretend) to tolerate them, you want nothing whatsoever to do with them again.

Basically good friends makes good neighbors.

Given that both your argument and mine seams reasonable, is there some test we can do to figure out which belief is going to pay rent?

> ...do we as a nation, state, city or even neighborhood have a common stressor with each other?

I think "common stressor" might be too broad a term. We certainly do have a common stressor: make more money (leaving aside Banks' adage "Money is a sign of poverty"). Except we've evolved narratives around money that tend towards zero sum outlooks, and that doesn't bind us together, so that isn't the kind of common stressor you are describing.

The factor that appears to set apart the kind of common stressor you describe is an empathic quality experiencing the stressor together imbues upon the group. This is why external stressors are so quickly seized upon by politicians of all stripes (not just formal politicians, but also managers). Why the group cannot bond over overcoming common human frailties and insecurities ("will I be liked" type insecurities), is an open challenge.

I think you're conflating "common stressor" with the aspiration of being financially stable, which you're right is a zero-sum game. Your argument breaks down because its relative and finite. Money is finite and having more money than my peer is relative. If every single one of us in the country goes through the exact same experience (ex mandatory draft) then there is no relativism.

I agree in the open challenge but i'm bullish on that challenge being pinned to an objective metric and not relative. If there is something truly that every single American experiences at some point in their life that is adverse in its' nature, then that is the common stressor and that is exactly what would bond us all, lowering lonliness, and depression.

VERY small communities do have this, which is also in Tribes. For example very poverty-stricken neighborhoods in say Baltimore all go through similar hardships. They are among the least alone people, mentally because of this shared hardship (but also because they rely on eachother but that's another point).

Did he account for a religious population which thinks that suicide is a major sin?

Israel is one of the least religious countries on earth. A much smaller percentage of Israelis are religious than are Americans or the populace of Muslim nations, and Christianity and Islam also generally consider suicide a sin.

> Israel is one of the least religious countries on earth

Not according to this Gallup poll: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_coun...

According to that Israel is less religious than the US, and is among the least religious countries (top 30%) - looks like OP stretched a bit but not by much.

Huh… well, according to this Gallup poll Israel is indeed "Among the Least Religious Countries in the World":

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-china-among-least-religious-n...

Why do they enable their ridiculous orthodox subset?

Most israelies aren't really religious, in the sense that religion guide their actions in a meaningful way .

I'd consider 51% to be a significant chunk of the population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_coun...

Relative to the others it is low. Furthermore that's a 10 year old poll this one is more recent and shows it closer to 42%

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irrelig...

I'd like to read that book someday, but doesn't "stressor" seems too negative. Why not the more neutral "cause"?

Because "cause" means common goal. While stressor means "something everybody has to worry about / pass through".

Hardship brings people together.

Right. People can adapt to and some even thrive on stress. What people cant handle is feeling useless or without purpose.

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