Peter Bjerregaard from Denmark’s National Institute of Public Health has noted that while Greenland’s suicide problem began in 1970, almost all the deaths involved people born after 1950—the same year that Greenland began its transformation from remote colony to welfare state, as the Danes resettled residents to give them modern services and tuberculosis inoculations.
– Slate
I have no idea to what extent it applies in this specific case, but I do think it’s ironic and darkly amusing that it seems the reward for eons spent clawing our way up the food chain, breaking free from the mindless cycle of fighting, feasting and fucking that occupies the time and energy of all other species on earth in order to attain a state of repose in which to catch our breath and reflect, is an inescapable realization of the pointlessness of it all, almost as if achieving a relatively dependable peace with the outside world leads to turbulence and violence within. Life needs to be in motion, monotonously struggling towards some goal or another, or else we get bored to death. Quite literally. With no real physical hardships left to overcome, our restless primate mind turns on itself, just to have something to do.