On The Brink, And Just Barely Being Held Back….And By What?
The first sociological experiment was done by a French Jew named Emile Durkheim. Durkheim wanted to prove that the one thing that everyone was SURE was psychological was in fact social, specifically suicide. Durkheim was SURE that it was in fact caused primarily by social surroundings and situations. In 1897 he published his study "la Suicide," where he concluded that those most integrated in society were the least likely to kill themselves. He went into many different reasons and how they relate to different causes of suicide, but one concept always stuck out to me. Between Protestants, Catholics and Jews, the Protestants had the highest suicide rate, then the Catholics and last the Jews. Why? Durkheim's theory (simplified to a ridiculous degree, so please forgive me) was that those who had aggressive community involvement did not kill themselves, and of those three religions Jews had the most social and community based activities. Jews were the most involved in community therefore less likely to be suicidal. In a social theory class I once took, the professor explained it in even more simple terms. "Jews just have too much going on to have time to kill themselves." ...
