Interesting stuff – 2016-11-21

This week’s interesting stuff, still with a lot of election fallout. But starting to move on with “real life” again.

The reality of social momentum

When I read about the epidemic of suicides in Woodstock Ontario there was a small concept that was mentioned in passing that caught my attention. These suicides appear to be “contagious.” As news of the suicides spread through the community, and especially spread like wildfire through social media, that somehow made suicide feel a little less foreign and horrible to other youth in the same community. After all, really nice people who are struggling did it, so if I’m struggling…

What a strange concept, but it highlights a reality about humanity that we seem to overlook, something I call “social momentum.”