Death Among the Young: The New Cool

Or dumbing-down, take your pick.

That suicide rates among Canada's Inuit people in Nunavut is horrendously high is a national tragedy. These are young people for whom the future looks dim and hopeless. Bereft of a good education, isolated, unable to secure employment and any real satisfaction in life, they seek instead to end their lives. The same can be said for the alarmingly large numbers of young aboriginals living in traditional retreats we call reservations. Boredom and lack of hope, kill. This is not cool. But this is their reality.

But then, what about those for whom opportunity abounds, as inheritors of a society rich in culture and tradition like Canada's First Nations peoples, but living in relative affluence, well educated and with the potential to reach their aspirations? Well, when they aspire to club together in a death cult, then there's a real problem. One that has been identified in a town in Wales, where in one year alone seven promising young lives have been ended by suicide.

These young people meet in cafes, see one another at their schools, and meet also in other theatres, where no one intrudes and they can divest themselves openly of all their grievances against the world they inhabit. And collectively sigh over the deliverance that death promises. They smile happily in the presence of their families and friends, and their secret longings remain locked in the atmosphere of their Internet gatherings of mutual support.

Their social networking sites represent their real lives, the important part of their lives. All else is dross. How else to explain the allure of their collective whims celebrating the deliverance of death by their own steady hands? One after another. Hanging appears to be the method of choice. Why is their virtual world so much more promising and rewarding than the reality of life?

Bizarrely, they anticipate the fame their deaths will attain for them, looking forward to their photographs posted on one another's memorial walls, and virtual books of condolence. They certainly do as much, and more, for their dear departed bosom pals in death. In their cliques, death becomes an achievement. Sadly, they are no longer there to witness these respectful commemorations of their brief lives.

Why would young people living in Nantucket, the posh summer idyll of beaches, manors and quaint seaside landscapes, a community of one hundred thousand privileged residents outside of Boston, succumb to such severe depression that they seek suicide rather than face the reality of their lives and the promises inherent in them?

For that matter, what on earth could possibly explain the rash of late-night, or early-morning crashes, claiming the lives of young people around Ottawa, the capital of Canada? University students enjoying their freedoms, performing well academically, revelling in a full and satisfying social life, choose alcohol as their relaxant of first choice. Then crowd into an SUV and depart the bars and lounges they've just been invited to leave.

Statistics reveal that in a society that casually uses alcohol as a social adhesion, 28.1% of grade 7 students, 58.9% in grade 9, and 83% in grade 12 high school report regular drinking, and occasional intoxication. Male students report 27.1% engage in binge drinking. And 26% self-report as having been in a vehicle with a driver known to have been drinking.

And they self-destruct, go out in a blaze of gory death, leaving behind puzzled and grieving parents, and a shocked society wondering what they've done wrong.