Additional References
EWFF, May 2005
End of Life Issues” to the Fore
A little less than five years after an even higher degree social mood peak than that of 1966, Hunter Thompson took his own life. Amidst a rash of suicides and murder/suicides, his self-destruction contributed to this headline in USA Today:
The Suicide Solution Suddenly Seems Trendy
It appeared on March 9, two days after the bear market rally high in the S&P. The probability of a “long-term increase in suicides and a societal preoccupation with them” was discussed in the October issue of The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast (see chart page 9). USA Today says the trend “is entirely predictable.” As far as we know, however, socionomics is the only theory of social behavior to do so.
A closely-related media explosion was the death watch and societal debate that hovered over Terry Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman. The social and political battle over the removal Schiavo’s life support systems and the agonizing public vigil surrounding her death were a “touchstone of American culture. Rarely have the forces of politics, religion and medicine collided so spectacularly, and with such potential for lasting effect.” This is exactly what we were referring to at the end of our October suicide forecast when we said, “Complex social issues are the staple of a bear market in social mood.”
In every major stock market decline of the last 30 years, this particular debate has pushed its way to the fore. In the bear market of the 1970s, euthanasia was a prevalent social issue that came to a head with a similarly heated social deliberation over the fate of Karen Ann Quinlan, “the first modern icon of the right-to-die debate.” In the wake of the October 1987 stock market crash, the Journal of the American Medical Association printed “It’s Over, Debbie,” a seminal euthanasia article in which a doctor described his delivery of a lethal injection to a dying cancer patient. In 1990, the year of another major correction, Jack Kevorkian burst onto the scene. The physician known as Dr. Death assisted in the suicide of a middle-aged woman with Alzheimer’s. He continued his calling through the early 1990s, but as the bull market wore on, public interest in his exploits faded. In 1999, as the bull market was approaching its peak, he was convicted of murder. At this point, he is largely forgotten, but as the bear market intensifies, the right-to-die forces will make headway. Look for Dr. Death or some other champion of the fatally ill to emerge from oblivion.
EWFF, October 2004
A Boom in Self-Destruction?
suicide, literally “self-killing,” is the ultimate act of social rebellion, the point at which tension between individuals and larger social units is no longer tolerated. The most straight-forward socionomic relationship would be an inverse correlation in which suicides fell with a rising social mood and rose with a falling one. But the data doesn’t always support such a linkage. In the 1920s, for instance, suicides rose steadily despite a roaring bull market, but they peaked in 1932, right at the stock market’s bottom. They fell from 1937 to 1942 along with stocks and a second phase of the Great Depression. As the Dow more than doubled from 1980 to 1986, suicides increased slightly. So, suicide rates are not like their opposite, the act of procreation, which tends to move in a step-for-step fashion with the market.
However, the history shown in this chart of suicides rates back through 1900 and an emerging social fascination with the exercise indicate that a big surge in suicide activity may be underway. The dominant trait exhibited by this chart is an overall decline in the frequency of suicide since the early 1900s. The total of 10.4 suicides per every 100,000 in 2000 was the lowest since 1961. The lowest level on record is 9.8 in 1957 when the bull market of the 1900s was in a powerful third wave, marking the momentum peak of Cycle Wave III. So, on the whole, suicidal impulses appear to be guided by social mood.
The main parallel for the current bear market is shown by the dotted line connecting a peak in suicides to the end of the last Supercycle decline in 1932. The other two suicide peaks came in 1915 and 1977, shortly after multi-year lows in the major stock averages. The lows in 1932 and 1977 accompanied fourth waves of Supercycle and Cycle degree. A section on “Nuances” in Chapter 15 of The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior explains that negative social themes due to appear in any approaching bear market first express themselves in a milder form in the preceding fourth wave of one lesser degree. According to this guideline then, a slight rise from a 40-year low of 10.4 suicides per 100,000 in 2000 to 10.8 in 2001 (the latest year for which data is available) should be a the start of a rise to a new all-time high. The Japanese experience also suggests a dramatic rise. EWFF has noted many times that Japan’s 14-year bear market is a window into the U.S.’s social future. With prices down more than 80% to a new bear market low in 2003, Japanese suicides reached 34,427, or an average of 94 a day, the highest level in the 26-year history of the data. At the bottom, a movie called suicide Club was playing in Tokyo theaters.
Anecdotal evidence from the end of the last bear market of the similar degree, the Grand Supercycle decline of the 1700s, also confirms that this is probably just the start of a long-term increase in suicides and a societal preoccupation with them. In 1774, after more than 50 years of a GSC bear market, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which ends in the suicide of its protagonist, was a smash hit. According to several sources, it spawned “an epidemic of suicides.” In the wake of 2000’s 40-year low in suicides and all-time high in stocks, suicide has clearly become an increasingly common hazard of modern-day life. Atlanta recently experienced a spate of attempted suicides in which despondent jumpers positioned themselves on top of highway overpasses that brought traffic to a standstill. Since the re-birth of Mideast hostilities in late 2000, suicide bombings have become an everyday event. Historically, efforts to gain military or political objectives through self-destruction are almost unheard of. The main precedent is Japanese kamikaze pilots who turned airplanes into guided missiles in the final days of World War II. This is another example of fourth wave foreshadowing, as kamikazes appeared near the end of Supercycle (IV) in inflation adjusted terms.
Meanwhile, suicide is a rising theme in popular culture. Several well-known performers have killed themselves off in music videos. Britney Spears is one, but the death scene in her Everytime video was edited out when it came out in March (perhaps due to the influence of a countertrend high in the S&P). A popular country song called Whiskey Lullaby tells the story of dual suicide by drinking. “He/She put the bottle to her/his head and pulled the trigger.” For misery, the song beats out all the old crying-in-your-beer country hits by a long shot (no pun intended). To see the rising fascination with the song, do a Google search on “’Whiskey Lullaby’ lyrics.” Google lists links to 11,000 sites. “Jonestown, The Musical,” a play about the forced suicide of 913 people in “Jonestown,” Guyana in 1978, made it to the stage in Manhattan in August. The show was dismissed for being in poor taste, but the critics had better get used to this type of fare. Bad taste, mixed morality and complex social issues are the staples of a bear market in social mood. |
