The Tipping Point

This is my mind map of the book 'The Tipping Point' by Malcolm Gladwell

This is my mind map of the Case Study chapter 'Suicide, Smoking & The Search for the Unsticky Cigarette'.

When first reading this chapter in the book the main theme that stuck was Suicide. A strong language on this side of the world. Smoking is still a serious contagion, as we learn but for me it didn’t have the Stickiness Factor. When going into detail about this branch of the book, I re-read through the chapter and did my mind map, gradually as I went along, writing down as many of the the interesting facts and researchers as I possibly could – I wanted to learn and know more. What struck me most was Micronesia, a place that had been oblivious to suicide until the 1980’s when suddenly there were more suicides per capita than anywhere else in the world. It all started with one boy called Sima, hanging himself due to an argument with his father. Since this tragedy, others caught the idea (mainly males) and it soon became an incredibly expressive form of communication, loaded with meaning. Not only did this take me by surprise, another thing was that one boy, at the age of 11, decided he wanted to “try” hanging but didn’t actually want to die. How can you “try” hanging? Where did this idea come from? This thought of experimentation with such a serious subject matter is quite disturbing. The thought of young boys becoming so familiar with suicide and wanting to experiment with it is very terrifying. Suicide soon became a ritual of adolescence in Micronesia and a way of self-expression and communication for teenagers; boys killed themselves over the most minor of things e.g. fall outs with siblings, arguments with lovers, one even hung himself due to his parents not buying him a graduation gown, this seemed to be acceptable here due to suicide becoming imbedded into the local culture.

It’s just unbelievable that something so unthinkable, somehow became rendered thinkable and the danger of it all seems to be trivialized. How can this be? How can something so crude become so acceptable?

I ask, How can suicide become acceptable anywhere??