Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Hierarchy IX and again
Suicide More Likely Among Divorced Immigrants
This article brought me again to the question of hierarchy. The article does not mention this word but states that divorced immigrants have higher risk of committing suicide. But why is that so? The answer can be rather lengthy but in its substance it is only one word: hierarchy, hierarchy in human society.
This article states that divorced immigrants commit suicide more often than people born in the USA or who live there longer than 20 years. Usually, a male from another country, another society, who came to the USA and has his wife with him, experiences strange shift in his hierarchy. He falls more down than he used to be in his country of origin but, on the other hand, he has his wife on his side, and for a male this means he is not the last one, as females are basically always in the human hierarchy under the male. Therefore the married immigrant does not perceive his position as extremely bad as he has someone, in this case his own wife, under him. If divorced then, the situation changes dramatically, and he perceives himself as the last on in the hierarchy, he can suffer depressions and out of depression he can commit suicide.
There are many different examples, or even psychological experiments, on animals as well as on human that strongly support this notion.
On Malta, refugees, immigrants coming from Africa are called “boat people”. When they arrive, they are at the absolute bottom of Maltese society, they are even under the “domestic” beggars and prostitutes, and especially these “home” people, born or living long on Malta, really welcome the “boat people” as there is suddenly someone who is under them, suddenly they are not the last ones in this society, the boat people take this last position in hierarchy over.
A psychology experiment was carried out some time ago on USA universities. Subjects tested were students, who were given difficult stuff to learn and then tested in front of a commission. All known signs of stress as hormones in blood, blood pressure, pulse sweating etc were measured and recorded.
Few days later this test was repeated with one exception: every participant could bring his partner with him/her. And again the stress signals were measured, this time with extremely interesting results. Males who brought their female partners with them showed lower stress level in all measured signals and females who brought with them their male partners showed higher levels of stress signals.
One could follow, based on the notion of hierarchy, that males have decreased levels of stress when their female partner is with them, as they feel that there is someone still lower than they are. With females this is completely opposite: when they have their male partner next to them their stress is higher as they know that they are the last ones in the hierarchy, below the testing commission and even below their own partner.
All these events, be it experiments or just real life suggest that hierarchy is heavily influencing our lives, regardless what our consciousness tells us. Our subconsciousness is very often much stronger, and does things that later on our consciousness tries to explain, even if it is difficult.
This article brought me again to the question of hierarchy. The article does not mention this word but states that divorced immigrants have higher risk of committing suicide. But why is that so? The answer can be rather lengthy but in its substance it is only one word: hierarchy, hierarchy in human society.
This article states that divorced immigrants commit suicide more often than people born in the USA or who live there longer than 20 years. Usually, a male from another country, another society, who came to the USA and has his wife with him, experiences strange shift in his hierarchy. He falls more down than he used to be in his country of origin but, on the other hand, he has his wife on his side, and for a male this means he is not the last one, as females are basically always in the human hierarchy under the male. Therefore the married immigrant does not perceive his position as extremely bad as he has someone, in this case his own wife, under him. If divorced then, the situation changes dramatically, and he perceives himself as the last on in the hierarchy, he can suffer depressions and out of depression he can commit suicide.
There are many different examples, or even psychological experiments, on animals as well as on human that strongly support this notion.
On Malta, refugees, immigrants coming from Africa are called “boat people”. When they arrive, they are at the absolute bottom of Maltese society, they are even under the “domestic” beggars and prostitutes, and especially these “home” people, born or living long on Malta, really welcome the “boat people” as there is suddenly someone who is under them, suddenly they are not the last ones in this society, the boat people take this last position in hierarchy over.
A psychology experiment was carried out some time ago on USA universities. Subjects tested were students, who were given difficult stuff to learn and then tested in front of a commission. All known signs of stress as hormones in blood, blood pressure, pulse sweating etc were measured and recorded.
Few days later this test was repeated with one exception: every participant could bring his partner with him/her. And again the stress signals were measured, this time with extremely interesting results. Males who brought their female partners with them showed lower stress level in all measured signals and females who brought with them their male partners showed higher levels of stress signals.
One could follow, based on the notion of hierarchy, that males have decreased levels of stress when their female partner is with them, as they feel that there is someone still lower than they are. With females this is completely opposite: when they have their male partner next to them their stress is higher as they know that they are the last ones in the hierarchy, below the testing commission and even below their own partner.
All these events, be it experiments or just real life suggest that hierarchy is heavily influencing our lives, regardless what our consciousness tells us. Our subconsciousness is very often much stronger, and does things that later on our consciousness tries to explain, even if it is difficult.
# posted by Dalibor @ 7:45 AM 
