Yes, I wouldn’t say suicide is the be-all and end-all indicator, though it is quite suggestive. I’d also lay weight on simple common sense and intuition here. Most people today like life. If you read about ordinary people from 200 years ago or before, it doesn’t seem like unremitting misery. (Piers Plowman, the “rude mechanicals” in Shakespeare, the peasants in the Georgics or in medieval Books of Hours, the ordinary people in the Old and New Testaments. Maybe these were just elites idealizing peasants? Hmm… up to a point.) Reporters and anthropologists who live with peasants and the poor today similarly paint a picture with light as well as shade.
Yes, I wouldn’t say suicide is the be-all and end-all indicator, though it is quite suggestive. I’d also lay weight on simple common sense and intuition here. Most people today like life. If you read about ordinary people from 200 years ago or before, it doesn’t seem like unremitting misery. (Piers Plowman, the “rude mechanicals” in Shakespeare, the peasants in the Georgics or in medieval Books of Hours, the ordinary people in the Old and New Testaments. Maybe these were just elites idealizing peasants? Hmm… up to a point.) Reporters and anthropologists who live with peasants and the poor today similarly paint a picture with light as well as shade.