I came across a brief blogpost about the correlation between literacy, GNP and suicide rates in Europe and it spawned some rambling thoughts Perhaps this is exactly what blogging's meant for -

Does He Have An Answer?

Dr Andrej Maruai, a Slovene psychiatrist involved in organizing the conference, presented a paper called "Suicide in Europe: Genetics, Literacy and Poverty" which convincingly shows the links between the social factors of literacy and poverty, and suicidal behavior. . . .

According to Maruai's theory, the higher any given country's literacy rate and the lower that country's GNP, the more likely the country is to have a high suicide rate. The theory can be convincingly applied to the countries with the highest suicide rates in Europe, namely the three Baltic states, Hungary and Slovenia, where literacy is at almost 100 percent and where the GNP and standard of living have been adversely affected by the transition process.

Maruai's hypothesis certainly fits one of the oft-cited downsides of "the Kerala model"

...among other states of India Kerala has highest suicidal rate. This is in spite of the fact that Kerala is having the highest rate of literacy and Kerala is having an accepted model for Health Care Delivery System. In this context it is also important to note that Kerala is the largest market of psychiatric drugs in South India and our state is having the highest rate of unemployment and the highest per capita alcoholic consumption.

Why is this so?

Suicide is clearly a tricky multi-variate problem involving a whole host of things like family, cultural attitudes, mental illness, community bonds, religion and so on. Answers for what causes men (I mean it in the generic "human beings" sense although with suicide, males have a 2:1, uh, advantage over females) to find and lose meaning and worthwhileness is rather quickly a political minefield. James Madison famously demurred "What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?" and the eternal question of "what do men really want?" is front and center.

Respect Yourself First, Girlfriend!

One interesting place I find a few - but clearly not all - answers is in the ancient concept of Thymos or "spiritedness" which has found a more modern voice in the writings of Harvey Mansfied.
Harvey Mansfield wants to reintroduce the concept of thumos into political science. As employed by Plato and Aristotle, thumos refers to the "part of the soul that makes us want to insist on our own importance."

..As Mansfield sees it, underserved groups like women or blacks may agitate for a greater share of society's benefits, but those demands are secondary to being denied honor and respect, to being "dissed."

Mansfield importantly notes that the self-chest-thumping inherent in Thymos can be both Good ("why should I get to the back of the bus for you?") and Bad ("I'm the baddest mofo in the hood"). His root claim is that thymos exists and must be accommodated rather than debating whether thymos ought to exist.

If you buy this, then one of the triumphs of civilization has been the degree to which we've re-routed thymotic desires away from destructive pursuits like tyranny and conquest and into more productive ones like business and industry. Thymos in political situations is often an inherently a zero-sum game that only a tiny few can ever "win." For one person / party to gain office, a diff one has to lose - in fact demonizing & handing "the other side" a loss is often a big part of what can make partisan victory taste so sweet... $$ spent by a govt agency pursuing a bureaucrat's dream project is inherently taken/taxed from someone else... the Crips feel more pride "owning the power" on a block if it was taken from the Bloods... etc.

Thymos Unaccomodated by Society

By contrast, markets have the important ability to provide a positive-sum game for the masses. A given "space" can accommodate multiple profitable firms and thus career paths for their employees. Marc Andreessen once noted that in another time & place, he and Bill Gates would have had to raise an army to "gain respect". Now, they pursue tech billionaire-hood instead and we all benefit from their products. The ebb and flow of markets of course, makes it dangerous to rely upon your job as your only source of self-respect. However, there's no question that career is a central part of modern self realization as we quoted Nobel winner Edmund Phelps on SM a few years ago -
There is the classical Aristotle, who writes of the "development of talents"; later the Renaissance figure Cellini, who jubilates in achievement; and Cervantes, who evokes vitality and challenge. In the 20th century, Alfred Marshall observed that the job is in the worker's thoughts for most of the day. And Gunnar Myrdal wrote in 1933 that the time will soon come when more satisfaction derives from the job than from consuming. The American application of this Aristotelian perspective is the thesis that most, if not all, of such self-realization in modern societies can come only from a career. Today we cannot go tilting at windmills, but we can take on the challenges of a career. If a challenging career is not the main hope for self-realization, what else could be?

Thus, one problem for economically sclerotic states like Kerala is that there are very very few mass avenues for men to "prove themselves Men". Formerly communist countries like Slovenia probably have large pools of men who don't quite know how to navigate the radically new avenues for thymotic actualization. In both cases, it's not the $$ per se but rather the sense of striving, demonstration of capability, and seizing life by the horns which provides meaning. For ex., both Gates & Andreessen continued spirited work well after they'd become rich.

Unfortunately, in Kerala for too long, the "I wanna make something of myself" impulse translated into "Go West, Young Man" or perhaps the Gulf - but clearly that option's not available to all. Within the incredibly pervasive Kerala state, some find their actualization in politics & union activism but those machinations create a ravenous, zero sum game for the few at the top of the pyramid. Thuglife might be available for the strong & ruthless. Worse yet, both of those domains are often parasitic upon the masses leaving them feeling more like subjects & automatons rather than citizens & coworkers. Maraui's model takes this a step further -

Entrepreneurship Saved Him from Thuggin'

Maruai maintains that better-educated people, especially in countries in transition, are more conscious of their current lower social and economic positions and are therefore more likely to resort to suicide. Furthermore, such people are more familiar with more effective means of taking their own lives, thereby increasing the suicide rate.

Similarly, while it's bad enough that too many Keralites can't find their meaning, the other side of the television screen, the newspaper, and the telephone readily reveal a world where others do and they feel hopelessly left out. Without that base, the normal trials & tribulations of life can toss around a rickety ship pretty mightily. And when that lowpoint hits, being literate makes it that much easier to determine how many of what pill to buy at the state-supported pharmacy...