|
Northern
Ireland Violence
Deplorable
scenes of gangs harassing mothers and school children continued
for a second day, in the end erupting into violence in the night.
Steeped
in religious / sectarian divisions, catholics / nationalists
vs. loyalists / protestants, the "walled and divided"
people continue to be enslaved by hearth and history, to everyone's
sorrow ...
Source:
Japan
Examines Its Handling of Stress, Depression, Suicide
Japan's
government has announced it is setting up a program to deal
with the nation's suicides. Japan's health system currently
prohibits the sell of many anti-depressants available in the
west.
One
of the source articles implied that "help" for depression
was "encouraged" in the U.S., free of stigma, quite
in variance with the facts of the matter in which a disappointingly
large segment of American culture still considers "depression"
to be a sign of weakness, especially among males.
Sources:
- ABC
News [link inactive]
- BBC
Statistics
from the World Health Organization as of 1997 (with exceptions
noted), suicides per 100,000 people:
|
Sample
Countries
|
Total
|
Male
|
Female
|
| Lithuania |
44.0
|
77.1
|
14.5
|
| Russia |
37.7
|
66.4
|
12.3
|
| Switzerland |
21.4
|
30.9
|
12.2
|
| France |
19.0
|
28.4
|
10.1
|
| Japan |
18.8
|
26.0
|
11.9
|
| Cuba
(1996) |
18.3
|
24.5
|
12.0
|
| Poland
(1996) |
14.3
|
24.1
|
4.6
|
| Germany
(1998) |
14.2
|
21.5
|
7.3
|
| Australia
(1996) |
13.0
|
21.3
|
4.9
|
| China |
12.5
|
15.9
|
9.1
|
| Canada |
12.3
|
19.6
|
5.1
|
| United
States |
11.4
|
18.7
|
4.4
|
| Ireland
(1996) |
11.3
|
19.2
|
3.5
|
| Netherlands |
10.1
|
13.5
|
6.7
|
| India
(1995) |
9.7
|
11.4
|
8.0
|
| Spain
(1996) |
8.5
|
12.8
|
4.3
|
| Italy
(1996) |
8.2
|
12.4
|
4.2
|
| United
Kingdom |
7.1
|
11.0
|
3.2
|
| Greece |
3.6
|
6.2
|
1.0
|
| Mexico
(1995) |
3.1
|
5.4
|
1.0
|
Source:
- World
Health Organization (includes world map of suicide rates &
links to PDF files for most countries) [link inactive]
|
Disbelief
& Belief Views on "Make Believe", Truth, & Naturalism
The
disbelief community doesn't call "make believe" Truth.
There is no faith in magic beings or "make believe".
Some
of the disbelief community have difficulty in rejecting such
things as being well-advised "for them" (the belief
community), but in any case, disbelievers do find exploration
of a natural world to be in and of itself a fulfilling endeavor
with "the unknown" being worthy of exploration but
by no means worthy of faith or suspension of doubt.
---
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
The
belief community is tempted, by the bible or other holy documents,
to suspend doubt and call some, most, or all of the bible or
other holy documents Truth.
"Make
believe" is only used to describe entities generally acknowledged
to be apart from the faith(s) that are socially / culturally
desired or tolerated in the current day (with the amount of
tolerance varying based on how other faiths are dealt with /
treated by the "desired faith" being promoted).
The
stronger the faith in the supernatural-beings credited for everything,
the less room there is for naturalism. Folks of faith who are
willing to deal with reality from the standpoint of naturalism
must, by virtue of faith, shuffle their deck of perception and
decide ...
- What's
a real supernatural-being / What's not
- When
is an act supernatural-being impacted / When is it natural
- When
is talking to supernatural-beings "make believe"
or ineffectual / When is talking to supernatural-beings really
heard or acted on in some way by them (always, only when apropos,
sometimes, never as it's totally up to humans to deal with
a natural and physical world)
- What
part does one attribute to supernatural-beings, which ones
are given credit or blame for each part and on what level
/ What part does one attribute to factors apart from super-
natural-beings and to what are those parts credited to ...
...
Which can make for quite a perplexing / confusing / non-validatable
view regarding the claimed interactions of supernatural-beings
with our natural world.
You
see, whatever the faith-tending individual decides about naturalism,
he / she will have a challenging task in dealing with all of
the competing faithful who give the same or differing supernatural-beings
more or less credit for that aspect of naturalism.
It's
all a game of "make believe" into which anyone of
any faith can (and often does) construct any interpretation
he / she wants to, most often supporting their personal view
of supernatural-beings and dismissing all evidence countering
that view or using the standard "god works in mysterious
ways" or "it's god's will", as if just by uttering
those words, no thought, doubt, or non-god view should be considered.
In
essence, one of faith is bounded by the "rules of the faith"
one has submitted to and when those rules don't mate to reality,
the
"disclaimers / excuses / thumbs up" for the desired
supernatural-beings follow.
Source:
|
