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The two attitudes look identical from the outside if the way you deal with them is the same. "I'm going to join the Navy to get out of this nowhere town and see the world" and "I'm going to join the Navy and hopefully I'll die and end this stupid life" both look like "He joined the Navy and died in a storm or a fever somewhere East of Suez" to everyone but the man himself.
If the bottom 1% of men who just can't fit into normal life (and today become your school shooters, drug addicts, incels etc) existed before the 20th centure, their existence would have been hidden by just dying in ways that were written off as a normal cost of doing business back then. This article claims that during certain periods a fifth of British soldiers stationed to Jamaica died every year, while a third stationed in West Africa kicked the bucket. Merchant numbers weren't a whole lot better.
Sure, but the onus isn't on me to prove that they didn't want to commit suicide, whoever wants to add those numbers to the suicide stat needs to prove they belong there, which i am skeptical of.
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