https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
It looks like over the last 20 years Japan has made a lot of progress on suicide, and the USA, sadly, has been going the wrong direction -- and they've recently crossed over.
So both USA and Japan are higher than the European average, and much higher than an (apparently) happy European country, like Italy.
I do think my broader point stands, which is maybe the things we think makes a country nice aren't necessarily the things that will make people feel happy and satisifed.
It’s like it’s paradise but lots of people don’t want to live in it or bring new life into it.
This reminds me of the equally paradoxical longing some have for disasters. You can see this in disaster movies which succeed by playing on this paradoxical longing for “something to happen.”
I also think this is a driver behind nihilistic fascist politics. It’s sort of like “Let’s create hell on Earth so we can finally be men!”
I think we are wired for a much more hostile environment and our brains don’t know what to do with peaceful abundance. We get bored and either depressed or “otaku.”
Maybe there is a right amount of adversity. Too much adversity leaves people broken and traumatized and with learned helplessness. Too little leads to the kind of malaise you see in the most developed nations.
But it has to be real adversity, not fake or cooked up by warmongers and fascist loons. This is one reason I am such a supporter of things like space exploration. We need stuff to do that is both hard and real.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us...