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Why Are Japanese Men Refusing To Leave Their Rooms?
fantomas writes "The BBC reports on the Japanese phenomenon of Hikikomori: young people, mainly men, who are holed up in rooms in their parents' houses, refusing to go out and engage with society. 'A conservative estimate of the number of people now affected is 200,000, but a 2010 survey for the Japanese Cabinet Office came back with a much higher figure - 700,000. Since sufferers are by definition hidden away, Saito himself places the figure higher still, at around one million. The average age of hikikomori also seems to have risen over the last two decades. Before it was 21 — now it is 32.' Why is this happening? And is it a global phenomenon or something purely due to Japanese culture? (We're all familiar with the standing slashdot joke of the geek in their mom's basement, for example.)"
Maybe they are the human versions of the "beautiful ones" from John Calhoun's mice experiments with overpopulation?
Having people confined to a particular location reduces the load on the servers and radio systems behind the program. The AI is designed to keep people confined as long as possible to conduct analysis of the nerve endings of the human body.
Parents coddle adult kids. The kids have never been encouraged to fend for themselves, and this is the natural result.
It's similar to why adult domestic house cats are pretty much adult kittens who would die in the wild. They've simply never been encouraged in any way to fend for themselves.
We are still just animals after all.
It's the best fictional account of the issue I've seen.
Duh.
anyone there?
The Internet can provide you with almost everything you need to survive. When people become disillusioned with life they get consumed by the Internet and find it more home than reality ever was.
How do I know this? I am one of those people.
Maybe they follow Rodney's advice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF0MilNDV1I
it's a cultural thing involving japanese and their parents.
I couldn't have holed up in my room if I wanted to, I would have been kicked out sooner or later, probably sooner - and after that if I wanted to hole up I would at least need a job to support that.
practically they depend on the parents to arrange them food, but I wonder what % of these are actually able to pull in income? how active they are socially on the net?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
you've got everything you need.
Hikikomori huh? Average age of 32?! Oh God... And I thought it was bad with my 20 year old sitting on his butt surfing the web and playing video games. His greatest professional accomplishments are getting his GED and getting an interview at Starbucks (he didn't get the job). That's it.
There is a very good Anime about Hikikomori : N.H.K.
I lived in Japan once. You would see everyday behavior there that would get you thrown into the wacky shack if you were in the U.S. It's absolutely bizarre.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Internet access provides enough data (e.g., social interaction) to keep a sizeable proportion of human brains content; in fact, it's a lot easier to gather this data by interfacing with the Internet than by interfacing with the "real" world.
Then, as usual, people just perpetuate the conditions that make them content.
I've heard time and time again, that Canadian (and American) men are highly desired by women in Japan. I've also heard time and time again, that the reason is because too many Japanese men are downright useless and misogynistic assholes.
Are you a genuinely nice North American dude with a real job? If so, it really is remarkably easy to meet wonderful women in Japan.
f.t.a. - The clue is in the name
I lived in Japan for several years, talks of hikikomori has been going on since at least 2006 when I first got there. This isn't really news, the figure is probably grossly exaggerated, and I'd wager you can probably point part of the finger at Japanese socialization combined with those people maybe just being the introverted types.
My son, 17, who lives with his mom, is a *prime* example of this phenomenon. Gaming all day, friends online, food upstairs. Why should he leave when my ex lets him do it! ; \
Porn, probably.
And why not? They're living in Schoolgirl Tentacle Porn Central.
Why is everyone expecting that everyone wants to socialise???
Seriously. There are so many assholes out there in the meat space, sometimes even more than on Reddit or YouTube comments. So many stupid, brain dead people. So many judging people judging others for superficial stuff.
I'm asexual, rarely meet people who interest me and share my hobbies and my interests.
Movies are all shit nowadays. So why should I socialise more than the minimum (food shopping, deliveries/postal service) ???
It's not unique to Japan.
Avoidant personality disorder(Signs and symptoms) : Avoids physical contact because it has been associated with an unpleasant or painful stimulus , In some more extreme cases — agoraphobia
(source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoidant_personality_disorder )
It's because of the girls. They are protesting bat-shit crazy. They like girls, but they've just had enough bat-shit crazy to last several lifetimes, and are protesting it. All we need to do to fix this is to get the japanese girls, and all girls in general, to just tone down the bat-shit crazy, even turn it off if possible.
So in 20 years, the average age went up by 11 years. That probably simply means that living in your mom's basement is not immediately dangerous to your health.
"What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output."
- Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter
(With apologies to any Japanese I've offended by quoting a fictional Chinese leader, but in my defense, said leader was a character in a video game in which I happily locked myself away for days at a time :)
Japanese porn.
Why bother going out there and dealing with the real world if you don't have to? There are plenty of men (and even women) the world over who can't be bothered with the constant bombardment of big-business bullshit and having to fight corporate entities tooth-and-nail for the right to a reasonable existence. I'm not necessarily an expert, but if you ask me we seem to be entering a phase of human existence where we are making strident reversals from our achievements in the mid-20th century, coming to rely on self-service techniques (up to and including subsistence farming) because we cannot trust capitalism to provide a fair return for the work we put in.
Yet we as a generation continue to listen to baby boomers who were brainwashed by the Western concept of 'evil' communism. More evil than Wall Street and its cronies today? These days I feel I have reasonable grounds to doubt it.
Is this Ask Slashdot, or are we expecting this question to be answered in the comments through the scientific method of pure speculation?
Porn, probably.
And why not? They're living in Schoolgirl Tentacle Porn Central.
Anime fans probably. Being an anime fan carries a high social stigma in Japan. And of course being into anime means liking lolicon, shotacon and all those sexually perverse child porn manga and anime. Japan being the last civilised country where possession of child porn is legal. Go figure. These people are creepy as hell, so no wonder a subclass of those anime fans are even more creepy.
When you account that Japan has a very conservative and group think type kind of society, being individualistic, strange is 1000 times worse than in western societies. So its no wonder this hikikimori phenomenon is so prevalent down there.
I don't know about Japan, but it used to be usual in Thailand for young men to be ordained as Buddhist monks, and live a life apart from the mainstream for at least a few months, or a year or two. With the rise of consumerism in Thailand this practice is starting to die away.
In other cultures young men go off for a time to live a cloistered or semi-cloistered life. Even a two or three year stint in the military might qualify. It's not completely cut off from society, but you do live a more spartan existence, in a somewhat separate world with its own rules and protocols, and with lots of time to reflect on what you really want to do with your life.
It could be that hikikomori in Japan is evidence of a need in young men to go off and "find themselves", or whatever. As our increasingly secular, consumerist culture removes other cloistered avenues previously found in religion, military, or school, there may be no option left but to hole up in one's room.
I have nothing to support any of the above, it's just a hunch.
Proverbs 21:19
The picture on the BBC site immediately reminded me of a FOAF who is Japanese, raised in SoCal so there is no cultural issue. He's a hoarder. Maybe there's a hoarder gene tied to the recluse gene. Of course this is an anecdote, not data. He also has the "can't drink very much alcohol" gene. Maybe they stay inside to avoid getting sick at parties where Japanese men are required to drink even though they know 50% of the population can't stomach booze.
...and I'm sure the Slashdot crowd will completely and utterly disagree with me (thanks to their insanely low level of insight):
It's negativity and criticism. The world is ripe and rank with it; everywhere you go, everyone thinks they're a fucking comedian because they can say something negative, try to pass it off as a joke, but completely miss what makes a joke a joke.
Anyway, happy sunshine and rainbows and all that stuff.
Oh, and uh, Internet Porn.
...as well. From descriptions of a college roommate well before the upswing in this phenomenon, real estate is extraordinarily expensive in Japan, to the degree that mortgage loans are often multi-generational. Combine this with Japan's long-stagnant economy, and it isn't too surprising the actual living in the homes is becoming increasingly multi-generational as well. Particularly if the internet provides an enticing alternative to moving out.
This video explains it.
http://youtu.be/vING8M4dJDg
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This is what happens when imaginary and/or virtual worlds is more appealing to someone than the real one.
(It also doesn't help that the stereotypical "manga chick" that a lot of Japanese males have been conditioned to lust after bears little resemblance to real Japanese females...)
But being that this is Slashdot I'm sure a mildly accurate, yet ludicrous, diagnoses can be reached without any actual input from the Japanese guys.
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This is really about porn and video games... these two things can by themselves provide the brain with enough entertainment, reward, and pleasure to make the real world unnecessary.
First, there is a trauma: he fails to live up to parents expectations regarding education or career, has a heartbreak, loses his job, or whatever. Then he consoles himself with porn and video games. They feel good and he doesn't have to worry about his problems for a little while. If this goes on for long enough and he doesn't receive the right kind of social support, he may become addicted to both and lose the drive to do anything else.
What really happens is he becomes trapped by the dopamine pathways (reward system) in his brain. He is incapacitated by fear and social anxiety when dealing with others because his brain's reward system has been overpowered by the artificial stimulation of porn and video games. The dopamine normally produced by his brain during social interactions doesn't have nature's intended positive reinforcement effects for him because his dopamine tolerance is so high thanks to his addictions.
He becomes further and further withdrawn and does the only thing he knows how to do to feel "normal:" feed his addiction.
This has become a serious issue for young men in other parts of the world as well. It is ultimately made possible by technology, in particular the Internet.
I've traveled some in various parts of Asia and Europe. I'm American, so keep that in mind. I've learned the following a long time ago.
1) A lot of things get invented first or just happen first in Asia, particularly Japan. So it's a great window into what to expect tomorrow in the West before it actually gets there.
2) South Korea and Japan seem to have bee hotspots for years of bizarre, anti-social behavior. When they're not committing suicide.
3) I have the impression as an observer (so I have no facts and could be wrong about this) that citizens in Asia in general get less mental help to deal with problems. Possibly there's a cultural reason for this.
4) The internet and various game systems have made it possible for young people to interact from a distance without ever having to leave their rooms.
5) This is going to be a problem in the USA too soon enough. It's just not happening in great enough numbers yet.
Millenials.
Welcome to the new world order Japan.
It's sadly in French, but this very interesting documentary shows things like sexless couples in Japan. Where it's considered absolutely normal by some women to have sex only once a year.
They're just the only culture that has a term for it.
The interesting thing here is that the article takes its time analyzing some of the social forces that result in the isolationist behavior. In this case Japan is nearly a perfect incubator for isolationist attitudes, whether historically (they closed their borders from 1641 to 1853), financially (they have few social safety nets and the economy was devastated for decades), socially (the article calls it sekentei, the need to impress others), or culturally (the Japanese ignore problems until it is too late to do anything about them--this is as true for hikikomori as it is Fukushima).
I'm interested to see if this phenomenon will be replicated on a large scale in countries with high youth unemployment rates, like the US, Spain, Greece, or Italy. A survey is definitely needed.
That would do it.
Prove yourself: delicacy
Right, think about all the pink pixie unicorns that might have been abused in producing these images!
Might also be due to the One Percent moving all the jobs and hope to China, India and South Korea. Lots of U.S. "twenties" are also doing this as well. Those who control the monitarty policies and jobs know very well what they are doing. I am lucky to be in the upper four percent but an increase in H1-B visas could take that all away. We will just pretend that all these things aren't linked together. oh, and it's the porn, speaking of which, I need to go now.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Japan being the last civilised country where possession of child porn is legal.
Maybe they're just not foolish enough to have fallen for the group think we have, which is what you accuse them of. Here, an X rated comic strip is considered child porn. A teenager sexting their SO can get them twenty years in prison and permanent listing on the perv roll.
Every society makes choices on what is the acceptable ways to express individuality. Japan, historically, has been fairly excessive that way in comparison to the rest of the world, but that's the way Japanese (historically) roll; to excess. Go was invented in China. Japan raised it to an art including endowing universities to teach it. The Samurai raised warfare to an art. They even raised serving tea to an art.
After all this time since they opened up to the west, many of us can't even begin to understand them. That's pretty amazing in itself.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
As you may have heard, next year the UK is requiring ISP's to block porn by default. Of course it can be turned on, but by default it is off.
This will spread to the US. We live in the roaring-twenties right now, and prohibition is on the horizon.
Help eliminate stupid speeding tickets.
I blame the Girlfriend Pillow. With parents to supply food, an internet connection, and one (or more) of those pillows, what reason is there to go out?
well, it sounds like they need to raise the compulsory education age limit from 15 to 18.
15 apparently is when the shut ins happen and 15 is now when the compulsory school ends. because of japanese culture the parents don't necessarily tell anyone. if the kid had to be enrolled in some school or another, he couldn't become a shut in without the school system checking up whats happening. if they had to leave the house for old enough to start drinking, they might not become shut ins(yeah, seriously).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Vitamin D deficiency related to depression can be a downward spiral if people then spend more and more time indoors, like in Japan. See my many posts on halth issues and autism including about Mark Hyman and mitochondrial dysfunction and John Cannell. Also look into unschooling for interest-lead learning.
Search also on "The Pleasure Trap" and "Supernormal Stimuli" and "The Acceleration of Addiction" for the pitfalls of 21st century living.
And, from a positive psychology point of view, try to help him build on his strengths, whatever those are.
Politically, lobby for a "basic income" for all. The fact is, most of us will soon be "unemployable" relative to AI, robotics, and other automation (see Marshall Brain), breaking the income-through jobs link that previously undergird the right to consume.
Sounds like a tough situation though. Good luck. Your son is lucky to have a caring involved father like you!
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Based on what I saw during my 10+ years living there, I'd say it's the realities of modern life clashing with the traditional culture. Japan is a collectivist society; before the Internet came along, if you were deviant/antisocial/etc. (for lack of better terms) you had to suppress that side of you and fit in. However, the Internet opened up a virtual environment where individualism could flourish more; people found an outlet, and even support, for their antisocial tendencies, and little by little it became a lot more comfortable to "live online" than actually having to put up with the social pressures of real life. (Westerners have a tough time understanding the amount of social pressure; even I am still sometimes surprised by the hoops my Japanese wife's family members jump through in order to "keep up appearances".)
Add to this the traditional tendency for extended families to live together into adulthood and you have the perfect recipe for hikikomori: a virtual social life where you are free from judgment and pressure to fit in, and no need to work to fulfill your basic needs of food and shelter. Not the life that I want, but I understand it, anyway.
Time to get me a Tommy Gun, change my name to Gatsby, and fill a warehouse up with a stack of USB drives with porn.
Soon, Daisy will love me for who I am!
or very personable and good looking (which, since that's mostly genetics & upbringing is a kind of luck). Starbucks and bookstores are (relatively) cozy jobs. They also pay very marginally above minimum wage. Let's say she wound up at Walmart working 25 to 30 hours a week with the constant threat of firing if she didn't both stock the shelves _and_ run a cash register. Or how about an Amazon warehouse (Google it, awful, awful places to work). I don't think she'd be so cozy....
This is the worst economy in 50 years. Outsourcing and H1-Bs have depressed wages heavily. Whether you recognize it or not your daughter has far fewer opportunities than you did. Google "wealth inequity" for a start on that topic and add 'wage surpression' and 'Union Busting' (with a side of Walmart or McDonald's) too.
The hard part here is that you obviously care for your daughter, and so you want to have strong pride in her. You don't want to imagine that she can't overcome the challenges she faces. So you'll tell yourself it's enough to just boot her out and leave it at that, taking a sink or swim approach that ignore the polluted, radioactive water she's swimming in...
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Our species only needs a small number of men to survive to the next generation. As a result the females compete with each other over the few men that show the most desirable qualities. The rest of the males compete to make it into the promised land of the "desirable".
Throughout history the place of the undesirable men has been to die either competing with each other or to use their blood to grease the wheels that make society function.
And just now in modern times the undesirable men are finally figuring it out. They can't win, mostly due to losing the genetic and familial lottery, so they are quitting the game. They refuse to waste their lives "finding a place" in a society that ultimately views them as interchangeable and disposable. They are doing things that make them happy and everyone else can go fuck themselves.
It has nothing to do with porn, terrorism or pedophilia. These are things they are using to pass laws with. They will get the tools in place to control the internet and they will keep going until they've fucked it. Proxies will be the next illegal item and then something else. utter subversive tosh.
Indeed. I was looking through my HS yearbook from ~1998, the girls seem different from today. Girls now talk as if they were mentally retarded- "OMG," "like totally," etc. It wasn't as bad back in the 90s. Seems like the average female IQ is dropping. Just look at the average girls Facebook feed- nothing but brain dead attention whores.
As a child of the 90's you may have to look up this reference, but I've got two words for you: "Valley Girls".
It's because Japanese homes don't have basements .
Italy currently has the record for (not) young (anymore) people staying with their parents, at least for Europe. But the reason isn't video games or girlfriend pillows, it's simply the lack of jobs. No job means no money, and without money you can't settle down somewhere else. Many of those socialize, go out, have significant others that they see regularly.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Pfft... they're just jilted because no girls wanted to lick their eye-balls.
Bye!
Around 700000 people, in a country with a population of 125788578. That's only %0.0056. If we measure the number of basement dwellers in any other country would we really see any better?
This, right here.
I understand and feel the revulsion that a healthy adult has towards child porn, but from an objective/legal point-of-view, the West got stupid about how they enforce such laws. Here's why: The basis of laws surrounding it is that the production of child porn harms a child - something that makes perfect sense, and should have laws in place to prevent/limit as much as logically possible. OTOH, who exactly is harmed in a comic strip? One would think that it would present a means of release for those pervs who do get into such crap, and to let them do so without harming anyone in the process. A teenaged kid sexting his/her SO should get a stern talking-to by the parents, and definitely should be enlightened on why that is a monumentally stupid idea - but no, the kid should not get tossed in the slammer and stigmatized for life.
Possession/distribution of actual photography or video depicting actual kids being sexually abused *is* illegal in Japan - because sexual abuse is just as much a crime there as it is in any other civilized country. Hell, if I remember right, distributing photographic/video porn depicting genitalia of *adults* is a crime in Japan (albeit a misdemeanor w/ a heavy fine...) OTOH, the comic/drawn ones can show whatever detail the artist feels like including.
You (tqk) are definitely correct in that Japan is an enigma unto itself, culturally. Millennia of isolation will morph any culture into something that will likely never be understood from any POV outside of it. That said, Japan got hella creative in what their multi-faceted culture is and represents - to themselves. Anyone else could blow off an entire a lifetime trying to understand it.
As for TFA? I can see why it would make sense for some Japanese men to simply withdraw from society... Japan isn't exactly an easy-going culture to live in, competition for anything (females, jobs, status, whatever) is incredibly intense, and there are few other routes available to the typical Japanese man that doesn't involve a shitload of money (e.g. move self and family to another country whose culture you may get on better in.) These men still have a non-negotiable duty to care for their parents, and real estate/rent is frickin' astronomical anyway. They spent nearly every waking hour of their childhood with little outside of intense study and discipline, so it's not like they learned to be social mavens in the first place - they likely only found peace when they were alone.
Hell - even if they do find a job and a wife, they may not leave home anyway. The answer why is pretty simple; If their parents own and don't rent, they stand a better chance of inheriting their parents' home than they do of ever being able to afford one of their own - which is pretty traditional in its own right. In most cases, it's not like they have as much potential competition from siblings, what with smaller family sizes over the decades.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The part that they wonder about the average age after 2 decades finds me laughing. Seriously, some of them got over their fear, some others didn't.
A teenager sexting their SO can get them twenty years in prison..
Uh huh, sure...
More like ( 700000 / 125788578 ) * 100 = %0.56 if you care to do the math right.
I have never known a word for it but this describes me perfectly. This phenomenon,if you will, happens in the USA as well.
Lots of U.S. "twenties" are also doing this as well.
Perhaps, but lots of "U. S. twenties" also get out of the house to socialize, find work, and many even live there along with their young wives (and perhaps kids?)
The rest is tinfoil, IMHO - something better ascribed to incompetence (or at best apathy) than to some fanciful malicious plan.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Couple o' things:
1) A nitpick: Prohibition of alcohol (the 18th Amendment) was ratified in 1919, before the "roaring-twenties". It was repealed (the 21st Amendment) in 1933, during the Great Depression.
2) If it is in the monetary interest of enough people to provide it, porn continue unabated online... just as (to bring up your example) alcohol was still very readily available during the 1920's.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
1 million of them is even creepier.
But you can think of it as self imposed containment.
Creepy, nonetheless.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I thought it was because there were fewer women to anonymously fondle on the trains, now that there are women-only cars. I mean, the ability to molest women with impunity used to be a major selling point.
Economy. Economy. Economy. Everyone's quick to blame the parents for coddling kids or the kids for not having ambition, but when you have a long term trend like this, you have to wonder if it's something more than the failings of a few individuals. Look at the economy. For Japanese youth, hard work and university education is no longer a guarantee of job security and a living wage. So now, more kids have to stay at home for financial reasons.
This happens in the west too - just look at all the 20 somethings living at home in our post-recession economy. But in the west, living at home isn't stigmatized as much. When you account for Japanese society's emphasis on social standing, and their traditional dependence on parents, it's no wonder you have youth withdrawing themselves.
It's not the internet either. The internet enables a lot of this behavior, but the problem started before the internet was a household thing.
Fascinating analogy to research I was not previously familiar with. Would read comments by this AC in the future.
To many people not enough room. Japanese society places great pressure to conform. This is mainly due to contraints placed on individuals that need to cooperate and share limited resources. It does not seem unlikely that this would manifest itself in "societal avoidance" in certain individuals that are unable to cope with the increasing demands. But it could just as like be video game addiction - they got to be doing something in those tiny rooms:)
Anime fans probably. Being an anime fan carries a high social stigma in Japan. And of course being into anime means liking lolicon, shotacon and all those sexually perverse child porn manga and anime. Japan being the last civilised country where possession of child porn is legal. Go figure. These people are creepy as hell, so no wonder a subclass of those anime fans are even more creepy. When you account that Japan has a very conservative and group think type kind of society, being individualistic, strange is 1000 times worse than in western societies. So its no wonder this hikikimori phenomenon is so prevalent down there.
Just because your a fan of something no one else has to know. I smoke loads of weed at home but no one at works knows a thing about it because I don't go around telling them or talking about weed related things precisely because I know the stigma and hassle it would cause me.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Rajesh Koothrappali: Come on, Sheldon. The world is filled with people doing things outside; let's go outside. Outside is good.
Sheldon Cooper: If outside is so good, why has mankind spent thousands of years trying to perfect inside?
Rajesh Koothrappali: I don't know. It's a marketing scheme.
The basis of laws surrounding it is that the production of child porn harms a child
Citation needed. No doubt that's one reason, but what about the effects of conditioning people (or leaving the legal door open for them to condition themselves, if you prefer) to respond sexually to minors? There are some very good reasons not to encourage or allow child pornography which doesn't directly involve children.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
1. Women are also typically in "fluff majors" that have lower career prospects.
2. Women also lead the way in student loan debt making a lot of middle class girls undesirable marriage prospects. Want to get married and have a home? Fantastic. Nothing says that more than having the better part of a new mortgage in inescapable student loan debt already going into the marriage!
3. Women in STEM fields also benefit heavily from either affirmative action programs or a mindset of "let's fast track her because we need more diversity!"
4. Grade inflation. Nuff said.
sign sign everywhere a sign
barkin up the scenary breakin my mnd do this dont do that cant ya read the sign.....
and if you stay in they arrest you less...
SEE....
OH BUT we get spied on the net...ok use encryption get enough to survive without and then FUCK YOU
your laws , your rules , your stupidity can then all bite me
In most countries you have to work 5-15 years, full time, to save up enough capital to get a house loan from any bank. You can rent, of course, but that's a waste of money, and you most often have to keep moving. Usually when contracts expire, the price goes up.
Just out of school? Good luck getting any job! Student loan? Even better luck having to pay down that loan, and your bank loan, and other costs connected with your apartment.
The system keeps a tight leash on its citizens. People who do make it on their own cling to their paychecks to make it one month at a time. What a fucked up world to live in.
Also, to counter all the stereotype comments mentioning porn, games, everything is paid for, mom does the cooking; you can still live at home and pay rent for your 10m^2 room, do your own laundry, buy or make your own food. Who would have thought?
Could you please cite your assertions on the mechanism of conditioning? (i.e. Provide a demonstrable link between animated pornography and a rise in pedophilia.)
Only on
Social anxiety, or "sociophobia". It's not really THAT rare, even at this degree, and it's a condition you will find all over the world. I'm very surprised at the article wanting to paint a picture of this being something uniquely japanese.
The basis of laws surrounding it is that the production of child porn harms a child
Citation needed. No doubt that's one reason, but what about the effects of conditioning people (or leaving the legal door open for them to condition themselves, if you prefer) to respond sexually to minors? There are some very good reasons not to encourage or allow child pornography which doesn't directly involve children.
Surely you must realize we have already failed at curbing such conditioning. Watch an hour of random TV or leaf through a few magazines to see how incredibly youth-driven sexuality is generally portrayed and how sexually teens are usually presented. Aspects of youth are painstakingly emulated through makeup or surgery, and the norm is the younger, the better.
I seriously doubt this is present only around Japan or a handful of countries. The more we are taught to figure out what we want to do with out own lives, the more the world around us needs to accept that what we choose may not be the satus quo, mass-produced "it's always been like this" people of the past. Take America, where IT folks here are expected to know it all, do it all, break all the rules to generate "great" things for our employers; we live, eat, and breathe our IT channels and information and we spend more time than not in IT mode. Then we are faced with world where men are expected to be total drunks, stupid, and "more balanced" (meaning liking both NASCAR and American football) in order to fit in. The result it, we don't fit the mold or requirement if you will, so we too "hole ourselves up" somewhere that is less judging and destructive to us. No one wants to admit it, but the social pieces aren't made for any of us with real talent because we understand that "the system" is screwed up and that what has been the norms may be wonderful but doesnt fit what real people are expected to be if we are to be employed. We live underground merely because what is "above" is meaningless to us and, beyond that, it tells us what we are is somehow wrong after we did what we were "supposed' to do to land good positions. They either want us or they don't ... societies need to accept some of us are not their sheep.
Chris Chan is entertaining but way too expensive to maintain.
Is this from the article or are you just calling them "x-chan" because they are Japanese?
Citation needed. No doubt that's one reason, but what about the effects of conditioning people (or leaving the legal door open for them to condition themselves, if you prefer) to respond sexually to minors? There are some very good reasons not to encourage or allow child pornography which doesn't directly involve children.
1) Seriously - Google. It's not that hard for such a simple concept (besides, I don't feel like tripping work proxy alerts, even if I do have root access to the thing).
2) Conditioning? Outside of a few overly-impressionable people, your hypothesis doesn't hold up. Consider: Paedophilia was once commonly accepted as late as the 17-18th centuries (see also at least half of the females in Casanova's autobiography, Histoire De Ma Vie, if you want some indication of just how common) , and pr0n wasn't exactly commonplace back then. Nowadays, the phenomenon relatively rare by comparison, or at least has declined greatly when expressed as a percentage of the population, in spite of the explosion of child porn, delivery of same via the Internet, etc.
To semi-invoke Godwin's Law, are you saying (as equivalent) that reading Mein Kampf will make someone conditioned towards becoming a Nazi, merely because of having read the book? Doesn't really make sense.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
That isn't true at all. You just live in areas where that is a stigma. It isn't true for NoVa or SW VA.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
There are many things you can ask this question about. Why do you smoke? Why do you use drugs? Why do you cheat your wife? Why do you drink? Why do you lie? etc ad infinum. Most often the simplest answer can be borrowed from mountaineers: "Because we can!" Same with holing up in your parents house. At some point it becomes parental responsibility to throw the cub off the cliff(out the front door), alas this is not the way of the Japanese. In mostly any other society the hikkikomory would soon stop being one as he gets kicked out of the house.
It's that general braindead thing that's going on in the justice system - people pine for laws, get them, then the police over-apply them to create a whole new criminal class. We've got so many laws on the books now that we're effectively *all* criminals. Heck, people are getting locked up for jaywalking even if there's no traffic on a road. Law has become completely disconnected from actual wrongdoing or even a notion of "wrong" in any sense, so we all just shrug and hope to no get caught daring to walk to the shop.
What we need is "less" law. Someone needs to go through all these definitions and start wrapping them up together and putting a bow on them. When the law states: ...
1) You can't kill someone with a knife.
2) You can't kill someone with a gun.
3) You can't kill someone with a shovel.
4)
Why not just make that:
1) You can't kill someone with an . (For all values of )
Or even:
1) You can't kill someone.
No sense specializing these things since it just makes them ripe for gaming - e.g. imma kill someone with a sharpened grapefruit because there's no precedent.
Classical conditioning and generalization are pretty well understood phenomena by now. If you don't think that generalization for sexual stimulus can occur between animations and living persons, then how do you propose people are being stimulated by animations in the first place?
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
A teenager sexting their SO can get them twenty years in prison..
Uh huh, sure...
Fuck you and the donkey you rode in on.:
In Connecticut, Rep. Rosa Rebimbas introduced a bill that would lessen the penalty for "sexting" between two consenting minors in 2009. The bill would make it a Class A misdemeanor for children under 18 to send or receive text messages with other minors that include nude or sexual images. It is currently a felony for children to send such messages, and violators could end up on the state's sex offender registry.
[...]
In 2008, a Virginia assistant principal was charged with possession of child pornography and related crimes after he had been asked to investigate a rumored sexting incident at the high school where he worked. Upon finding a student in possession of a photo on his phone that depicted the torso of a girl wearing only underpants, her arms mostly covering her breasts, the assistant principal showed the image to the principal who instructed him to preserve the photo on his computer as evidence, which he did. The court later ruled that the photo did not constitute child pornography because under Virginia law, nudity alone is not enough to qualify an image as child pornography; the image must be "sexually explicit". Loudoun County Prosecutor James Plowman stood by his initial assessment of the photo and says he would not have pursued the case if the assistant principal had agreed to resign. Instead, the assistant principal got a second mortgage on his house and spent $150,000 in attorneys' fees to clear his name.
Asshole.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Surely you must realize we have already failed at curbing such conditioning.
I slept in this morning, but chose to get up and go to work anyway. I don't see one failure as justification for letting oneself go completely.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Way to stay anonymous, sparky. :-/
Where in what you wrote says anything about anyone getting 20 years in prison? And a good ole "fuck you" to you, too!
Too much crackWOW, or perhaps it's the Japanese used panties that have done them in!
...is other people.
It's the missing millions , referenced in the book "Ready Player One". Just wait until the O.A.S.I.S. becomes real, the number will keep on rising...
Seriously - Google. It's not that hard for such a simple concept
I'm not sure what you're even asserting here. That I should use Google to research the impetus of child pornography laws in nations that include animation or other non-real representations in the ban? No, I think common sense dictates that there is more than the one reason that you state.
Paedophilia was once commonly accepted as late as the 17-18th centuries
Again, your point is not clear. You're saying that the availability of animated child pornography has no demonstrable link with the social acceptability of the practice of paedophilia? I don't see what that has to do with the idea of conditioning and generalization.
you saying (as equivalent) that reading Mein Kampf will make someone conditioned towards becoming a Nazi
That's a really poor restatement of my point, and pretty much a straw man. I'm saying that training oneself to respond sexually to images that look like children will normally increase one's sexual response to children, and that's a bad thing.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
"Perhaps, but lots of "U. S. twenties" also get out of the house to socialize, find work, and many even live there along with their young wives (and perhaps kids?)"
And also:
- racking up student loan and credit card debt
- divorce and lose half of your assets, potentially sticking with a lifetime child support and alimony payment
- overweight, diabetes and stroke
All of the above are typical American.
New Economic Perspectives
The argument against cartoon depictions of child porn is that there is no such thing as getting things out of your system, only reinforcement. Nobody [credible] is arguing that cartoon CP is making people into pedos. The argument is that legitimizing cartoon CP reinforces pedo behavior by legitimizing it in turn.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/SUM/2010SUM00191-R02HB-05533-SUM.htm
"The felony offense of child pornography is divided into three degrees, depending on the number of visual images that the defendant knowingly possesses. The offenses range from a class B to a class D felony."
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2005/rpt/2005-R-0192.htm
Class B felony - 1 to 20 years up to $15,000
New Economic Perspectives
Porn and Video games. Why leave?
This blog has a very interesting take on why men in Japan are dropping from society:
http://theredpillroom.blogspot.mx/2013/04/men-2020-real-story.html
Speaking as a normally functioning male, I fully approve of this phenomenon, provided the girls don't start staying home too.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Child porn laws are frequently abused to target political and business opponents, as under the U.S. federal law, possession of CP is a strict liability and there are NO affirmative defense allowed on it.
This is a case in Sweden where CP was planted in a politicians machine using a remote desktop software, causing failed re-election, stress, and millions of dollars in legal fees:
http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/offer-for-porrkupp/
New Economic Perspectives
Seriously, I don't get the fuss. The industrial world has been overdue for a change in tactics for at least 3 decades, and the problems in society around the globe reflect humanity pursuit of things that can't work the way they used to anymore.
These are the facts (and we all know them, either intuitively or by plain analysis):
1.) We are reaching peak capitalism.
2.) Our jobs are going away, either to robots or the poorest of the poor on the planet ... and *then* to robots.
3.) We are about to reach a worldwide abundance of material goods. The last pieces of production society are on the way out.
4.) Most of our societies follow rules which, under the circumstances described above, seem bizare, arcane and silly. Each society and country has it's on set of soon to be totally pointless behaviours, but they all have them. The US has their evangelical cristian stuff, Germany spends 4.7 billion man-hours per year in traffic jams (seriously) and I don't even know where to begin in describing the bizar notions and pressures the Japanese society puts on people.
Let's face it: Most of us here on slashdot (I consider the average IQ here on /. measurably higher than average) would do the same if they hadn't developed some sort of psychological survical skill or found a nice warm place in the 9-5 jobworld where they can play with computers all day.
Bottom line: This is a totally normal reaction to environment, especially if you haven't had the luck to be introduced to stoic or zen philosophy or something simular in your teenages which might help you cope with the bizar theater going on around us in everyday life, including people presuring others to 'get a real job' and 'do something usefull'.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
something that makes perfect sense
But censorship does not make sense. Arresting people for looking at images/videos also does not make sense.
In Spain you must work for 30 years straight to pay the mortage for a 70m^2 flat in any average city. That if you are lucky enough to have a wife or girlfriend with a job to help with the payments. Here you need two jobs or a great paying job guaranteed almost for life, otherwise forget to emancipate before 40 and accept the fate that have no other option than stay with your parents or become a hobo.
There are some very good reasons not to encourage or allow child pornography which doesn't directly involve children.
And this 'safety is more important than freedom' mentality is how we lose our freedoms. We have this mentality to thank for the TSA and various other things which violate our freedoms in the US.
It is also nonsensical to suggest that people will go out and rape children if they view images of drawn children having sex or whatever other nonsense you were trying to imply.
These guys just want to be left alone to play video games. Imagine WoW, but with the typical asian grindfest MMOs.
I'm saying that training oneself to respond sexually to images that look like children will normally increase one's sexual response to children
It won't. There done.
and that's a bad thing.
That's subjective.
It is also nonsensical to suggest that people will go out and rape children if they view images of drawn children having sex or whatever other nonsense you were trying to imply.
Ah, they'll merely respond more sexually to minors. Silly me! It's the apocalypse! Run for the hills!
And this 'safety is more important than freedom' mentality is how we lose our freedoms.
Some freedoms are more important than others, and some safety mechanisms are more effective than others. The TSA (and arguably most or all real consequences of the Patriot Act) is a sham, and it's disingenuous to lump together baby formula and baby porn as being even remotely comparable on the danger scale.
It is also nonsensical to suggest that people will go out and rape children if they view images of drawn children having sex
It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that when you have a bell curve or any other spectrum of dangerous behaviour, sanctioning any activity that is known or likely to push that bell curve in the direction of more dangerous activity is socially irresponsible. We don't have to prove that "people will go out and rape children" as a result of child porn. It is sufficient to show that child pornography, in whatever form it may take, is a contributing factor to child sexual abuse.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
I think it's because people got married much younger 200-300 years ago. Back in those days you were lucky to make it to 50, so being having sex with 14-15 year old girls was normal.
My english is better than most other people's german, so please point out mistakes politely.
Like most German speakers I've encountered your English is good enough that I suspect that other language is just something you use around tourists. Ironically, having said that, I'd like to make one minor correction to your sig. It should be "My English is better than most other people's German ..." since proper nouns are capitalized.
Most of the 'citations' are left overs from the anti-porn congressional hearings in the 80s and the cottage industry that built up around them. I rarely hear professionals actually try to assert this argument today.
It is consistant nonsense though. Any time you have a sexuality that breaks from the mainstream people deal with their discomfort by assuming that the people with that sexuality will not be able to help themselves from raping everything they see. Somehow, at a gut level, they feel that only normal men can resist the raping urge and men who are somehow abnormal must indulge their preference nonconcentually.
For some reason the reality... things like most gay men do not have 1000 partners and will rape strait men if they can, or that the vast majority of pedophiles never touch a minor, really screws with their heads.
"If we were supposed to have wild cats the size of a house cat, they would exist"
Housecats are pretty hard to distinguish from the African wildcats (Felis silvestris lybica) that they came from. At best, you're dealing with only the advantages and disadvantages that an invasive species would have in a new environment rather than major form changes. In North America you have a colder climate that may favor a different body size to some extent and existing predators filling the niche they take. The European wildcat at a similar latitude (Felis silvestris silvestris) is larger than the Arabian one as well.
Some of the animal rights groups like to put forward the meme that the housecat is but a pale shadow of the wild form, but it's just not true. It's very close to the original type (including size) and interbreeds freely.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_wildcat
The wild form is common from Africa to Arabia and across a wide part of southern Asia.
All large predators tend to be fairly rare, and the larger, the rarer.
We have a surfeit of feral cats due to them leaving domestic life. In fact, they have an impact on things like foxes in the urban edge environments due to competing for food like mice and such.
Now that they're here, and in very large numbers with a changed environment (farms rather than forest for example), you can't say for sure that the original balance would return. There's been too much disruption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms
"The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:
Freedom of speech
Freedom of worship
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear
In that context, he summarized the values of democracy behind the bipartisan consensus on international involvement that existed at the time. A famous quote from the speech prefaces those values: "As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone." In the second half of the speech, he lists the benefits of democracy, which includes economic opportunity, employment, social security, and the promise of "adequate health care". The first two freedoms of speech and religion are protected by the First Amendment in the United States Constitution. His inclusion of the latter two freedoms went beyond the traditional Constitutional values protected by the U.S. Bill of Rights. Roosevelt endorsed a broader human right to economic security and anticipated what would become known decades later as the "human security" paradigm in social science and economic development. He also included the "freedom from fear" against national aggression before the idea of a United Nations for this protection was envisioned or discussed by world leaders and allied nations."
Anyway, in theory, the point of constitutions and governments is to define and enforce rights in a society. Enforcing rights includes arbitrating between people with conflicting notions of boundaries, as in, "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins". Such rights allow increased trust in a society, which reduces operating costs, as otherwise all your time and energy may need to go into protecting yourself against your neighbor, and that society will sicken and die relative to other societies with greater internal trust. If the USA continues to descend into distrustful paranoia, security costs go up, and the society begins to seize up.
Look up information about "Social Credit" and C. H. Douglas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit
"Douglas disagreed with classical economists who recognised only three factors of production: land, labour and capital. While Douglas did not deny the role of these factors in production, he saw the "cultural inheritance of society" as the primary factor. He defined cultural inheritance as the knowledge, technique and processes that have been handed down to us incrementally from the origins of civilization."
See also: http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
"The fundamental problem posed by the cybernation revolution in the U.S. is that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed to undergird people’s rights as consumers. Up to this time economic resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated government measures—unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to disguise a historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when suffi
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Some freedoms are more important than others, and some safety mechanisms are more effective than others. The TSA (and arguably most or all real consequences of the Patriot Act) is a sham, and it's disingenuous to lump together baby formula and baby porn as being even remotely comparable on the danger scale.
Actually, there are parallels - the TSA will be all over you (or deny you your paid-for flight, then probably add you to a no-fly list) if you even think about making a bomb/terrorist joke in the security line. You can run into massive legal trouble if you draw something erotic that even remotely looks like it's younger than 18 years old. Both have one very important thing in common - they're thoughtcrimes.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I agree in principle. On the other hand, there are similar precedents that fall under 'aiding and abetting', for perhaps 'incitement to commit...' It's like not only arresting a killer, but also arresting the guy who got the killer drunk and egged him on to do the deed.
(Knowing) possession of (actual, not drawn) CP is a gray area, but IMHO actively collecting the actual photographic/video variety of the crap should count as a solid misdemeanor with a fine, but (minus a lack of any credible evidence showing that you're making the stuff) not an automatic prison sentence or having a lifetime stigmata (unless it's serial, then maybe ramp things up with each successive offense). Sort of like how having a joint will get you a ticket/fine in most states, but actively making and selling the stuff in quantities will get you locked up.** Or, if you prefer, it should remain as much of a crime as 'incitement' would be (that is, treat the buyer like he's egging someone on to commit the original crime of abuse, but with a lesser punishment since it's not direct).
There is firm and ethical precedent for doing this, and it can be done without violating or denying any innocent party's freedom.
**mind you, the point isn't to preach for/against marijuana; I merely used it as an example of a usable gradient of punishment.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It starts before a child is even in school, they prepare them for the tests to get in the best preschool, and it continues every day of their lives so that eventually their child will be accepted to the only university that matters, Tokyo University. At any point along the way failure is possible, but because of constant family pressure, it is not an option. There are only so many slots available each year, so it's guaranteed that the majority who apply to the university will be rejected. Those people are failures. They were told every moment of their lives that they MUST make it into Tokyo University or they are a failure. So where else do you go when you have failed yourself and your family?
This is a summary of an article I read over 10 years ago about this problem. It is not something new.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I have aspergers. At the age of 15, I dropped out of school, moved in with my dad in a different city, and just shut down socially and lived in my room for 2 1/2 years. I just couldn't bear the awkwardness of social interaction. I felt like I wasn't "doing it right". I made people uncomfortable, and I guess that most people thought that I didn't like them. I'd keep my door shut, because I didn't want to be judged for my isolation. Fortunately, our house had a hot tub, jaccuzi, well-stocked library, and gymnasium. My dad was good company, but my stepmom was a b&*^%. Thank god this was before the internet. My "life" consisted of playing with my computer, reading the encyclopedia, and watching and rewatching every episode of doctor who I had recorded on betamax. Eventually, my dad forced me to go to college, and I developed the sort of vast network of friends that tends to turn one into a professional student. I turned out ok, lol. Just google Macchendra. ROFL!
Every species in the world knows to kick the kids out of the nest, herd, whatever.. except maybe fish.. maybe they are eating too much fish?
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
The TSA (and arguably most or all real consequences of the Patriot Act) is a sham, and it's disingenuous to lump together baby formula and baby porn as being even remotely comparable on the danger scale.
What you advocate for is censorship. Freedom is speech and express are fundamental rights. And what the other guy said.
It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that when you have a bell curve or any other spectrum of dangerous behaviour, sanctioning any activity that is known or likely to push that bell curve in the direction of more dangerous activity is socially irresponsible.
I don't care for attitudes that lead to the loss of freedom for everyone.
It is sufficient to show that child pornography, in whatever form it may take, is a contributing factor to child sexual abuse.
You've shown no such thing. I don't believe for a yoctosecond that looking at porn (in this case, pictures of drawn children) will somehow make someone more likely to rape.
but also arresting the guy who got the killer drunk and egged him on to do the deed.
No such thing must happen in order to acquire child porn. Given how freely data spreads around on the Internet, I can only imagine that it is perfectly possible to get the pictures/videos without actually dealing with the ones who made them.
And frankly, I'd rather we use more resources to go after the actual rapists and those involved. Attempting to catch people who merely view the material is futile and hardly an accomplishment.
It's true that when writting in English, "English" and "German" are are capitalized, but these are pronoun adjectives of the missing noun "language".
They are all living in the walled city.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Reference the following article about Japan's newest crop of "Grass Eaters":
http://gaijinchronicles.com/2010/08/31/plight-of-the-grass-eater
Choice quote from the article: "When a guy in the developmental stages sees girls his age swooning over the [sensitive, sissy guy] type, this sets a precedent within his brain â" this is what girls like, and if you want to be what girls like, you have to be like this. It may not even be an active choice, but something that just fires subconsciously in his brain. So the seed has been planted. Granted, Japanese guys have taken this sissy seed and watered and nurtured it into a massive pussy forest, but thatâ(TM)s just the special Japanese skill of taking everything to hardcore extremes."
But to be fair, macho Americans have their own massive crops of sissy men with a large female following.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
What you advocate for is censorship. Freedom is speech and express are fundamental rights.
I am advocating censorship. There's is and has been a lot of bad censorship in the world, but to ban it wholesale would be foolish. Freedom of speech is a guaranteed right in the USA, but not everywhere. I assume that's what you mean by fundamental. But even fundamental rights have limits, and these limits usually occur at the boundary of safety and public health.
I don't believe for a yoctosecond that looking at porn (in this case, pictures of drawn children) will somehow make someone more likely to rape.
You're fixated on rape. I'm talking about sexual dysfunction and deviant behaviour, which have always been associated with the decline of civilisations. To open the door to child pornography (even the animated sort) is to consent to the poisoning of one's own society. There are worse things than metered and responsible censorship.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Mind your own fucking business nosy bitch's.
Not sure if anybody else has responded, but even a comic representation of adult genitalia is illegal in Japan. All comics, even hentai comics, are sent to a censorship board before publication. Uncensored hentai is either manually decensored outside of Japan by fans or published outside of Japan underground (which mostly means they don't get paid) by the original authors.
Movies, photographs, comics, all censored. Not sure if uncensored sculpture of genitalia is illegal, but it wouldn't surprise me if it is.
Gee thanks for the
**** SPOILER ****
alert!
I was planning to go see that.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
So this is curious... why does this affect men quite a bit more so then women? In Japanese culture women have even more stringent guidelines and social pressure then men do, so why aren't hikkimori almost entirely comprised of women?
About the only thing I can think of is being married off as a 'house wife' provides a easy way out and a answer to being dependent on someone else (who then takes the blame for most everything, social, financial, burden of choice). It makes me wonder if there are actually more people that would be classified as hikkimori in Japan, but ended up being married off as codependent house wives.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Actually, I believe Mein Kampf WILL condition susceptible readers into becoming a nazi. It was written for the purpose of influencing people, and there's no reason people can't still be influenced, and many are. It's a bad example, so no need to break Godwin's Law. There are two ways to look at it, but I don't know which is more correct: 1) take poop for example.. if you see enough pictures of poop, will you eventually become a copraphiliac? Probably not. I think it requires significant tramautic events in a person's life such that they want to be debased (or debase others) into incorporating poop into their sexual habits. or 2) seeing sexualized images of preteen girls repeatedly for extended periods of time... that is, young girls depicted as capable and willing to fulfill the viewer's sexual fantasies.. this may condition a person into becoming a pedophile. The question between the two is whether traumatic experiences or some other warped mindset are a necessary prerequisite.
I understand and feel the revulsion that a healthy adult has towards child porn, but from an objective/legal point-of-view, the West got stupid about how they enforce such laws. Here's why: The basis of laws surrounding it is that the production of child porn harms a child - something that makes perfect sense, and should have laws in place to prevent/limit as much as logically possible. OTOH, who exactly is harmed in a comic strip? One would think that it would present a means of release for those pervs who do get into such crap, and to let them do so without harming anyone in the process. A teenaged kid sexting his/her SO should get a stern talking-to by the parents, and definitely should be enlightened on why that is a monumentally stupid idea - but no, the kid should not get tossed in the slammer and stigmatized for life.
Nice to see people speaking logically about this. Honestly I don't think youth gets sexualised any more in Japan than it does elsewhere and reading the news in my home country (Australia), I see a lot more incidents of child sexual abuse than reading/listening to the news in Japan.
As for TFA? I can see why it would make sense for some Japanese men to simply withdraw from society... Japan isn't exactly an easy-going culture to live in, competition for anything (females, jobs, status, whatever) is incredibly intense, and there are few other routes available to the typical Japanese man that doesn't involve a shitload of money (e.g. move self and family to another country whose culture you may get on better in.) These men still have a non-negotiable duty to care for their parents, and real estate/rent is frickin' astronomical anyway. They spent nearly every waking hour of their childhood with little outside of intense study and discipline, so it's not like they learned to be social mavens in the first place - they likely only found peace when they were alone.
I don't think this is a fair portrayal of modern life in Japan at all.
Rent for the most part in Japan is heap. I live in central Tokyo and pay $1000 in rent a month for a 3-room + toilet/bathroom modern flat next to a large park area. I would probably pay about $700 a month living in areas surrounding Tokyo (Chiba/Saitama/Kanagawa). Housing as well is generally quite affordable. $200,000-$300,000 will get you a large flat/town-house within reasonable commute distance of central Tokyo.
Competition for jobs is actually a lot less intense than I experienced back home in Australia. Japanese companies are much more willing to train employees, especially when they are young. Unemployment is currently at about 4% which is historically very high. Additionally in my personal experience it is a lot easier to get into fulltime employment in Japan than in Australia.
I'm married so it is hard for me to comment on the competition for available women but most people seem to find girlfriends/wives without too much problem.
Also your characterization of Japanese childhood is incredibly unfair. Japanese children do study more than I saw back-home but it is hardly every moment of their childhood and in exchange they get to slack off for 4 years in university
Hell - even if they do find a job and a wife, they may not leave home anyway. The answer why is pretty simple; If their parents own and don't rent, they stand a better chance of inheriting their parents' home than they do of ever being able to afford one of their own - which is pretty traditional in its own right. In most cases, it's not like they have as much potential competition from siblings, what with smaller family sizes over the decades.
Japan has changed a lot since the end of the bubble twenty years ago. Most young Japanese manage to go out into society and support themselves just fine.
because I'm starting a small software business and not having much trouble with them. I suppose there's stuff like environmental regulations are tough to deal with. But there's a reason those regulations exist. Can you name some regulations you'd be happy to see go, or do you truly believe that we can leave businesses to care of the environment. Just in case you do, China's 'Cancer Villages' and the Love Canal would beg to differ...
As for corps (and the 1%, who are the real owners of them), I realize full well I can't take away the advantages they get from our Government. Realizing that, I propose instead to give those advantages to everyone, aka "Socialism". To paraphrase Gore Vidal: Capitalism for the poor and Socialism for the rich sucks. If I can't give the rich Capitalism I'll give the poor Socialism.
In the end, what I need is a better economic position so the 1% mega-corp owners can't abuse me. Money is freedom. You're not free if someone controls your access to food, shelter & medicine. Dieing of starvation or selling yourself at the company store isn't 'free'.
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That's different than pedophilia. People from an age of adolescence -- roughly 12 to 15 -- become sexualized by their biology more than anything else. During the next few and I mean FEW years they reach their maximum level of sexual interest and drive. They reach their peak of innate sexual interest, drive and fertility by the time they reach the age of majority. In traditional cultures, it would have been normal for kids that age to marry. Our biology is tuned to something other than the protracted adolescence that is normal in modern industrial cultures. Biologically, the most attractive persons are naturally those who have the greatest reproductive future ahead of them, so... young adults. A person aged 30 has already used up more than half of his or her (particularly so in the case of her) reproductive potential and is not as good a mate, biologically, as a 15 year old girl. An older person maximizes his or her chance of finding the best available mate by appearing as near as possible to the ideal reproductive age.
what about the effects of conditioning people (or leaving the legal door open for them to condition themselves, if you prefer) to respond sexually to minors? There are some very good reasons not to encourage or allow child pornography which doesn't directly involve children.
The same reasoning should cause you to call a ban on violent video games, shouldn't it?
and these limits usually occur at the boundary of safety and public health.
No, I will not accept censorship just because you're a coward. Likewise, I wouldn't accept the TSA even if it worked.
We (at least in the US) are not supposed to be the home of the sniveling cowards.
I'm talking about sexual dysfunction and deviant behaviour, which have always been associated with the decline of civilisations.
Oh, that's why you're talking about taking away fundamental rights? Because you're silly enough to believe that people looking at drawn children will become deviants or some other such nonsense... and that will cause the decline of civilizations? Guess what? That's nonsense. Even if it did turn people into 'deviants' (I think such a notion is absolutely absurd), I doubt there'd be much of a decline.
You're like an alarmist puritan, only you're advocating censorship 'for the children.'
To open the door to child pornography (even the animated sort) is to consent to the poisoning of one's own society. There are worse things than metered and responsible censorship.
You want censorship because you're an irrational coward. What you're saying doesn't even remotely make sense.
There is no poison. There is no problem. It's not the apocalypse.
And what does it matter if some people enjoy looking at drawn children having sex? If they're also attracted to real children (which not necessarily all of them are), then it's likely they were that way from the beginning; it seems unlikely that they'd just suddenly start wanting to have sex with real children just because of the drawings.
That said, even if some people have such a desire, society is not going to fall apart. What you're speaking of is not even remotely a problem, and we shouldn't implement your disgusting censorship because of it.
First, what people get paid often has very little connection with productivity. On top of that, it may even dis-incentivize them -- see Dan Pink on that. So, the assumptions implicit in your post are problematical.
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Also, never before have we been automating intelligence to such a degree. The US GDP in the first decade of the 21st century grew by about 33% without adding any net new jobs, even as the population grew. That is the new reality that you and many mainstream economists are ignoring. Paul Krugman is starting to get itt, as discussed here:
"Sympathy for the Luddites"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5882422
Agriculture went from 90% of workers to 2% over 200 years. Manufacturing went from 35% to 15% or so over the past 50 years and continue to drop. Working hours per person have also dropped over that time, especially for children who used to be a big part of the labor force. Why should "services" not go the same way via AI and other automation and better design? Why employ a human if you don't have to?
Based on what you write, wouldn't you automate anything the first chance you get to maximize your profits? If everyone does that, who are your customers? Well, when there is 90% unemployment (possible in 20 years or so as AI really proliferates?), it may be too late to do anything about it, so it will mean little if you say "oops"... See also Martin Ford's book, "The Lights in the Tunnel".
http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/
Anyway, you're assuming that we need most people to work to make the stuff we need. We don't. See Bob Black's "The Abolition of Work" for example.
Yes, family is important. But so is community and related non-profit charities. (Although charity just papers over a deep issue in our society about "human rights" in an age of 21st century technology.) So is good government. So is individual effort.
But in a capitalist consumer-oriented society it all comes to naught if you have no capital for whatever reasons and there are no jobs for you and the charities are exhausted. Your entire extended family can then be out of work and starving. Already the US food banks are overwhelmed. Food stamps you might say. But then why not a basic income instead for all, to be fairer?
Crank up unemployment further and stuff will really start to collapse. Much of the current collapse is in the USA us now so common as to not be newsworthy anymore, where decaying infrastructure or domestic violence or rising abortions or poor child nutrition or deferred medical care and so on. So, those in the USA who don't find a way to survive just die, either right away, or through some downward spiral of self-medication via drugs or via bad nutrition and disease, and that is hardly newsworthy. (Not to say the wealthy in the USA don't eat poorly too often.) And in any case, it does not account for all the needless suffering in a land overflowing with food and material goods... Why worry about trying to get everyone to be materially productive when there is so much? And also when the other sectors of our society like the voluntary gift economy or democratically planned economy or even local subsistence skills are let wither through lack of time to engage in those areas?
A basic income replaces a social safety net for the destitute or disabled with a human right for all to draw a small amount regularly from the productive commons. Then we don't have to have any needs based programs on things like minimum wage or SSI. It could also replace public schooling and so on with a free market for education. Already in the USA, the government (at all levels) spend an average of about US$600 a month per citizen between public schooling, health programs, and social security. Why not increase that a bit
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Really, World of Warcraft.
But there are several things that give you an edge. A strong chin for men, nice curves for women. An extra 6" of height for either. There's tons of studies on the subject. You don't have to be truly beautiful to be enough above average to stand out and land a nicer job.
I'm 6"1' with a cleft chin, and as silly as it sounds it's helped me interviews and negotiations.
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safe. Comfortable. The trouble with "Internet Friends" is you get to pick and choose at such a fine grade level that you don't learn to compromise or interact outside of that sandbox. I've got several friends who grew up with 'Internet Friends' and they have a habit of blurting out wildly inappropriate things because they never learned how not to....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
http://threefelonies.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx
New Economic Perspectives
Child porn is legal yet they censor porn in general? Such a strange dichotomy in my mind.
It is not the role of the law to decide what may arouse people or not.
Being aroused by fictional depictions of acts that would be illegal is perfectly fine. Actually, studies show people being able to enjoy such fictional works are less likely to perform such acts in real life.
Moreover, it's not just tied to paedophilia. Fictional works can have depictions of rape, zoophilia or incest, and performing those acts might be illegal in certain countries. I would believe that making a pornographic comic book depicting rape is perfectly legal even in the US. Hell, there is plenty of live-action porn produced in the US with fictional sexual abuse.
According to Betteridge's law of headlines the reason Japanese men are refusing to leave their rooms is simply no.
Just like BDSM relationships reinforce physically abusive relationships? No. A fantasy, kept a fantasy, is harmless. Any assertion otherwise is ludicrous.
Only on
If you're not getting a job as soon as you leave school (or even before you even finished your studies), then there is a big problem with your higher education.
Hypergamy.
Above average is simply not good enough for the majority of women. Contrary to popular belief, mating is the genetic drive of life. Men are disillusioned with the non-benefits granted to both men and women in a lifetime of servitude. The ancient greeks had it right. "Friend" meant friend with benefits, naturally. Share common interests and have a good time? Have some sex, why not? Hell, invite your S.O. or other friends.
The modern monogamous life-long marriage is a very recent development -- A fucking fad that's counter to human nature, but propped up by religion. Since men accumulated wealth, and their offspring were apprentices (benefiting the guy more), it benefited women to be guaranteed a man can't just ditch his wife for a younger more fertile mate. Now that the earning playing field is leveled, but the monogamy is still in play, the benefits of playing that game are gone.
It would behoove everyone to learn that similar to chimps, we evolved from a tournament species where males competed for social standing to gain access to sex, and women competed with each other based on their good child-rearing looks -- Mm, nice hips, big boobs, make good baby. Mm, strong alpha male, protects me and kids. We're no longer slaves to our genes, but if this doesn't sound fucking familiar, then you're better at self deception than I thought.
Guess what? In a chimp society, only a few top percentile of males end up mating. Put that in your stupid pipe and smoke it, you damned dirty ape.
totally agree... some people would be shocked to know their 'children' could pop in any bookstore and buy de sade complete works..(at least here in europe, maybe in usa that's blacklisted already). Also in most serious (imo) legislation there's a strong distinction between pedophilia and underage sex. (0-12, 12-18) with the latter being illegal only if parents complain (something went wrong/forced etc). What I also find completely idiotic is to being unable to accept the fact that a teenager has a developed sexuality (after all in case of near mass extinction you would be grateful you can reproduce as soon as your partner has her period) but the classic religious-castrated western worldview just go tribal-brain over any sex related matter....
Every culture has a set of rules that they have to learn to get by in society. But some are more regimented than others, and some have more explicit training. Now, recent times are different, but for a few hundred years, American culture has been about individualism, while Japanese culture has been very regimented. Japanese children are very explicitly trained in procedures; American children are trained by their parents in ways that are less similar between families, and there seems to be an assumption that many subtleties will be picked up automatically. Japanese social behavior has always struck me as having a very heavy robotic component. Now, if you have a large segment of your population that is autistic, they're going to have an easier time learning a very mechanical system. So at a time when Japanese culture was more uniform and regimented, mild autism would go more unnoticed. Now that attitudes have changed in Japan, and people are more individualistic, autistic children are not being forced to engage in traditional social behaviors. So, ironically, in an age of individualism, to help these people get out of the house, some more rigorous training in Japanese traditions would do them some good (not that there's anything particularly wrong with Japanese traditions in the first place).
... but the classic religious-castrated western worldview just go tribal-brain over any sex related matter
You don't even need to drag that crap into it. It's just the recent (last century or so) attitude that "childhood" is a sacrosanct state and parents have a right and duty to enable (enforce) their precious snowflakes to remain in that pure and unsullied state as long as is physically possible. Me telling my nephews that there's no such thing as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy is considered damned near child abuse. How dare I inform them of the true state of reality?!? Why make them grow up before they have to!?! Er, so they'll be armed with knowledge in order to defend themselves?
Add all that to the reverence that eastern cultures have for male offspring, and the result (TFA) is inevitable.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
"Paedophilia was once commonly accepted as late as the 17-18th centuries (see also at least half of the females in Casanova's autobiography, Histoire De Ma Vie, if you want some indication of just how common)"
Paedophilia or ephebophilia? The distinction matters.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
This is not a failure brought about from overpopulation, it is a failure of society itself, of how it is structured and how it functions socially.
These 'hikimori' are afraid of other people, and now that they are adults not being forced through the gauntlet of social pressure in school or college, they are not forced to overcome this fear (these environments, school/college, are often what caused the problem in the first place), and their social abilities may be so deteriorated in adulthood, that have no way to redevelop them which doesn't end in failure (it can be incredibly hard to recover from this as an adult).
It's a catch-22 situation, to find yourself stuck like this as an adult (I know because this is how things are for me now), and it is a huge societal problem, that there is no real help for (psychologists can help only up to a point - it can be very difficult when many different things about society itself, makes facing these fears incredibly difficult).
These are the people that, decades ago, would fall off the edge of society and be silently forgotten about, out of sight and out of mind from the rest of society, until they die alone or commit suicide.
Today we have the Internet, and these people who are stuck (and, in my view, just need the right help psychologically and socially to overcome these issues - help which does not exist in an adequate/right mix today, as there is only so much a psych can do about a wider societal problem), these people are visible now and are more known because of the Internet, but there have always been people like this, just not as visible.
Most people might get on fine in life and in society, but society and all the different/subtle societal pressures/expectations placed on others, are more fúcked up and harmful than anyone really appreciates, and cause a lot of people to invisibly fall through cracks in society.
Personally I believe all of this can be changed, and society reformed to resolve these problems, but it's such an unexplored problem, that is so subtle and has so much depth, that I'm not sure where to really start with it all.
If that were the case: why are they (pedophiles) still out there? Their are many laws tot protect the children from harm and the evil male population from the supposidly malicious influence of the afformentioned deplorable drawings. Laws that have to do with child pornography meet no resistance, even if they are only used tot jail teens who sext eachother. Security isn't gained by banning stuff.
Masturbating to their computer screens. Resulting in the highest occurance of screen bleaching due to the constant spraying.
6 million http://www.imadr.org/sayama/buraku.html lack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility in Japan
Casteism
Another comment to languish in the nether of -1 and beyond.
Women, largely, aren't worth the effort. And that includes Japanese, Chinese, American, etc...
"Oh" you say, indignation rising, "you must be one of those fucking guys who never get laid! Of course you hate them!"
Actually, no.
You only learn from something by experiencing it. And largely, most women I've come across are rather shallow pools of water when it comes to intellectual versus emotional, and I'm not even considering overall looks. I suppose this is where I'm obligated to put in the "Well, there are a few good ones"... but you know what, fuck it. All the little vapid chicks out there following celebrities with breathless gasps, all the trivial and petty things they think are so super important - it turns my stomach.
And after a while, when a guy has bedded a few of these - and god forbid, actually reproduced - and has been raked over the coals by these obsessed harpies, who can rationalize any horrible thing they do by pointing at a celebrity or woman who has done so "I had an affair because I was unloved like and that is what she did - makes sense to me!" it just starts to make sense that you'd swear the whole thing off.
"But what about sex?" you say, eyebrows raised, "Truly you can't exist without getting off with someone at the same time!"
Yeah, that is why there are escorts, call girls, strippers, and other assortments of women who are at least honest about the transaction of money for the pleasure of pure fucking. Those women I can deal with - because they aren't offering anything beyond what was agreed upon. They don't throw emotional hissy fits or ask if their ass looks too big in a dress they just bought. And before you accuse me for being as superficial as the women I've just thrown overboard in my little rant, recall I didn't say I was doing this because they LOOKED better -- I'm doing it because I like to FUCK, and I would rather do it with someone who won't throw some little mistake I made a year ago in my face because they're angry with me over something.
If the prior paragraphs make zero sense to you, then you've either never fucked a woman before in a relationship, or you're too young to realize that most women are using their pussies as bait to get whatever they want --- and they fucking know it. Equal rights my fucking ass - it never has been equal, and not skewed the way they say it is.
Rant concluded.
in the U.S. there are not many places to go if you are not religious and don't drink. There are few (if any) good movies at the theaters. Going out to eat is expensive. Your best chance to actually meet and talk to other peopel is to go to a public park. People keep to themserlves much more than they used to. You can live somewhere for years and rarely see your neighbors, much less have a chance to talk to them.
I am 53, and I can remember that when I was a young teenager my parents knew and visited with most of the neighbors within a block or so of our house. Of course back then we didn't have Internet, home computers, cell phones etc... We had an AM/FM stereo with a record player. Most homes had 1 color TV set, and maybe a 12 inch black and white set for the kids. There was no cable or satellite TV, just 3 or 4 chanels broadcsat over the air.
I was encouraged to read, and I did (still do), but I was also encouraged to get outside and play with the neighbor kids.I was also a boy scout and liked to go camping. I was painfully shy as a child and teenager, but still managed to meet people and make friends (in person was the only way then).
Cable tv, internet and cell phones make it possible to seldom have to leave one's house these days. Pretty much anything (including groceries) can be ordered via phone or internet and delivered. You can meet people online instead of in person. Kids play console games, and have cell phones to talk to friends on. They seldom have to leave home. Some folks take this to extremes.
I don't get out much, but I do when I can. Not having a personal vehical and no decent public transportsation don't help though.
watching a lot of pixelated porn
wanking - not a city in China
In the most electronically saturated country in the world, with 4 man to each women.. I say.. Duh.. Can you say Playstation.. or XBOX or...?
This story caught my eye, as I'm exactly one of those men, except African American.
I try to go out once, and a while usually to the movies.
Who the fuck is Saito? Editors, PLEASE..!
Could this be but a special case of the wider phenomenon of children being forced to move back in with their parents because the economy doesn't give them enough resources to make it on their own? Couple that with stigma and you get recluses, albeit with Internet access. It is possible to be physically cloistered and yet have a wide electronic social network that includes job opportunities. These are not working out, perhaps.
A figure that I heard for the U.S. is that there are several million people in their 20's who have been forced to move back in with their parents. This is perhaps the best metric for how the economy is NOT working.
Seriously, I look at a fair amount of stupid drawn porn online. I browse the 4chan/Hentai section from time to time. You know what I do when I come across something that appears to be drawings of children? Comics which are obviously about people who are still kids, or very early in puberty?
I close them and go look for something else. The existence of these things isn't turning me into a pedophile. I am not being forced to read them, and because they do nothing for me I close them and look elsewhere.
Your claim that people will suddenly become pedophiles because of being trained by this stuff ignores the fact that the only people who look at this stuff are the ones who are already interested in it. When it is freely available, no money spent, most people will either close it immediately and do something else, or browse curiously for 15 seconds, then close it and find something else to do.
Non pedophiles aren't buying this stuff, then going "Oh shit, well, I guess I better force myself to like kids since I already paid for it! Duhuuurrrrr." That doesn't happen, and you are an idiot for suggesting that it does.
The crazy thing is, the link with video games is basically disproven, 100%, but it holds a lot more ground as an argument. At least people go looking for violent video games. They see people playing it, having fun, and go look for one to try out.
Nobody goes to someone's house, see's drawn kiddy porn, and goes "Oh, that looks fun! I better go find some!" buys it, says "Hrrm, I don't really like this. I better keep trying until I find it sexy!" and then suddenly sexualizes children. That doesn't happen.
It's called fantasy. Sexual stimulation doesn't require a flesh-and-blood human. If you seriously think that it takes some sort of conditioning or generalization to be turned on by a sexualized image, then you're the one who needs a reality check.
It is an essay by Paul Graham, not a book: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
Sorry, the full title is "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" not "addiction".
From there: "What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they're all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors. Most if not all the things we describe as addictive are. And the scary thing is, the process that created them is accelerating. ... ...
Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.
But if I'm right about the acceleration of addictiveness, then this kind of lonely squirming to avoid it will increasingly be the fate of anyone who wants to get things done. We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to."
There is an argument I've seen elewhere that it is good to get hooked on "healthy" addictions while you are younger -- for example, the joy of helping others, or the splendor of walking in nature, or some challenging "hard fun" productive enterprise like metal working or playing the piano, and so on.
One of the values of conventional religion is it may steer us away from some self-destructive behaviors including addiction -- especially by peer pressure. One example of a such a long lived population: ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventist_Church
"The church is also known for its emphasis on diet and health,
On "The Pleasure Trap":
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.healthpromoting.com/the-pleasure-trap
http://www.amazon.com/The-Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines/dp/1570671974
On "Supernormal Stimuli":
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/B0057DC3VY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
Thanks for asking and looking into this.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Proxies will be the next illegal item and then something else. utter subversive tosh.
How I wish I could disregard this as the ravings of a loon. Unfortunately you are absolutely correct; the evidence we've all seen is that efforts to pressure VPN providers have already begun.
Chilling times indeed.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
The Chinese raised warfare to an art, via Sun Tzu. The Japanese raised individual (Samurai) combat to a high art via Miyazaki Musashi.
Two great books that go together Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War', and Miyazaki Musashi's 'A Book of Five Rings' both are fascinating works that can profoundly change ones outlook on life when studied.
We refuse to leave our rooms unless the Emperor himself orders us to surrender!!!!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
I stand corrected. I'd forgotten about Sun Tzu. Thanks for the pointer to Miyazaki Musashi. I'll look for it.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Fending for oneself... is something my generation (babyboomers) had to do simply because our parents did not have the financial means to provide us with free board and lodging. Our parents' concern was what we, their children, would do to earn a life (work, cook, wash clothes etc. rather than earn a degree.) For entertainment, babyboomers had to be creative (making our own toys), and spending most of our time outdoors (TV, especially daytime TV, was boring.) We didn't have the luxury of classifying our food to likes and dislikes... we had them, but we still had to eat what was put in front of us on the dining table or go to bed hungry. Those of us babyboomers who succeeded in life (I think it's safe to assume most of us did succeed in life) then shielded our own children from the social pressures that we had to go through to earn a life (work, cook, wash clothes). So instead of teaching our children about the absolute need to earn a life, we shifted the attention to earn a degree. We gave them almost anything they want... food and drinks they like, cool electronic gadgets, and the like. We literally spoiled our children with the minimum of hands-on training in life. How many of us are guilty of not teaching our children to do home chores -- cleaning the toilet, washing dishes and clothes, washing windows... you name it? In the meantime, the means of entertainment changed drastically. 24-hour, full color TV programs for all kinds of interest, game consols, Internet (virtual realities, virtual friends, and even virtual jobs) were "free" for the asking. The youth could stay at home and enjoy anything for free, including free board and lodging. The problem is that all of them are enjoyed indoors. We have taught our own children to consider work at Starbucks, bookstores, Walmart, McDonald's lowly jobs not worth doing by giving up the freebees at home. The babyboomer generation considered any kind of work as respectful, and certainly better than remaining a leech at home; but this is no longer the case with the young we have raised. Small wonder that after graduation (high school or even university), the young think they have secured their target in life (or what we, their parents, have taught them to aim for), and never leave home where all the good things in life are free. The young can be very agressive at communcation only if it is virtual (email, texting, on-line chat), but are uterly shy and ineffective at human face-to-face communcation. Many can't look at a person eye-to-eye. They have become weak at unspoken language; they can't read body language and often take spoken language quite literally... as one normally would do with written, brief notes on social network services. They are unable to take both the good and bad of real world social life. They want only the good... something that is possible only by living virtual lives and staying at home. Certainly, not all of the young are like what I describe them to be above. But the Hikikomori's are. We can point the fault at ourselves for creating the Hikikomori's.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Jiddu Krishnamurti
Well first of all, it's not just men, but people in general. People who put in long hours all week tend to have one of Two reactions. one, they want to go out and have crazy fun on the weekend's. Two, they just want to sleep and be left alone to watch tv, web browser, watch tv and whatever. They have to deal with people all week, so they want some down time. most of people get that every day, but Japan has a lot of people working 12 hours a day with 2-4 hours of train time. Add in time to get ready in the morning and time to eat and take a shower, it doesn't leave a lot of time for hobbies. when someone asks you of you want to go drinking Friday night or whatever, past of you thinks "hell yeah!", while part of you thinks "meh, maybe I'll just go home and catch up on some sleep." Add to that the fact that salary is still largely related to age at a lot of places, and you end up with cheap asses who want to stay at their parent's house and avoid going out to save money.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051
Casteism
I interact with society as little as possible. It is a good policy to ensure health and sanity.
I have an MS in CS, so why would I need to be some corporate slave? I work when I want, on what I want and live comfortably with zero debt.
A person is a nasty, stupid creature.
Put 10 or 50 or 5000 of them together and you have shit that is best avoided.
Don't call me an assburger because
1. I am not autistic
2. Assburger's is going away as a diagnosis
3. It is a rational and intelligent choice I made.
If conditioning is the issue, why does depiction violent deaths rate PG-13 in a movie rating while making a baby is NC-17? Admittedly movie ratings and laws are different fameworks.
He's referring to this mess of a human being: https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Chris-chan
I'd rather not read something off ED. Most of it's lies and the other half are people with grudge-wanks. If he's on there I assume he's just some poor soul that happened to be near a keyboard while being stupid.
You seem to know NOTHING about what is happening in U.S. society. Women in the U.S. are extremely hostile toward men.
And of course being into anime means liking lolicon, shotacon and all those sexually perverse child porn manga and anime. Japan being the last civilised country where possession of child porn is legal. Go figure. These people are creepy as hell, so no wonder a subclass of those anime fans are even more creepy.
When you account that Japan has a very conservative and group think type kind of society, being individualistic, strange is 1000 times worse than in western societies. So its no wonder this hikikimori phenomenon is so prevalent down there.
Bigotry
Proximity axiom: Pussy makes you crazy.
Think how crazy the little bit of pussy you get makes/made you. Women are attached. Pussy makes you crazy. It's an interesting kind of crazy. Hidden states are key.
Useful phrases related: I don't know; What do I think of that dress?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/states-lead-the-way-in-reviewing-sexting-punishments/story-e6frfro0-1226122171777#ixzz2YwsctLfK
The basis of laws surrounding it is that the production of child porn harms a child
I think the basis for any suggested law regarding sexuality is not that it's a beneficial law but that people have strong feelings about it. The law may be passed or not passed because of its perceived beneficial effect on society, but in suggesting the law it's often the highly emotional who beat the others to it. It's entirely possible that the reason these laws were suggested were emotional, and the reason for the law passing can be equally emotional, as I will seek to prove below.
What http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/28803/title/Porn--Good-for-us-/ tells us is that the existence of porn reduces abuse towards the objects of desire in said porn. Porn in general decreases rapes and other abuses that are typically directed towards women; child porn decreases child abuse, especially of the sexual kind.
So why do we have laws that criminalize the possession of child porn, when their net effect is detrimental to the society? For example if you provide the authorities with proof of child abuse by submitting a child molestation video or image to them, you're also proving your guilt with possessing said piece of evidence. Even in Finland that would get you convincted, but the U.S. has taken a step further making said "offenders" be included in a public registry, requiring to identify themselves as such and so forth. And even when a piece of child porn isn't submitted to assist in an investigation, studies show that this access to child porn reduces child abuse, so criminalizing it increases child abuse.
Arguably the most beneficial option for a society would be to disallow the production of child porn, but allow the possession of it and to be careful not to put any stigma on the issue. Harming a person is bad, harming a child is especially bad, but we watch movies with people committing wanton murder all the time without killing anyone ourselves. We haven't banned the possession of videos where one person really harms another, except when and only when it is of sexual nature.
It is most likely that the laws regarding child and animal porn exist for emotional reasons. The stated beneficial effects on the society are, according to the studies, a non-truth used to justify the means.
Might also be due to the One Percent moving all the jobs and hope to China
How does something like that get modded up? That's just an expression of deliberate ignorance, a term I don't use lightly.
When a certain function is offshored, it is a temporary setback to the employee that used to do it, but it is for everyone's benefit - including his or hers. First, it saves the company money, which is always a good thing in and of itself. Second, it saves money for everyone buying from the company, because they company is now more competitive and can afford to reflect this in prices to drive more sales. Third, it is for the benefit of the person receiving the job.
Fourth, the people who used to do lower-value jobs that are now outsourced now have the option to switch to doing a higher-value job. It usually takes a moment of retraining and sometimes means finishing the college you once dropped out of, but after the adjustment period you'll end up better off partly because you now have a better education and job, partly because your previous employer is more competetive and adds up to a society that is able to provide a higher standard of living.
If you want to pay your lazy cousin to do a job that someone would do for half the money, you're free to do so, but if you're that lazy cousin, you have no business complaining when you got fired and the other person got hired. People complaining of jobs being offshored are not just that lazy cousin but racist, too: to them a job in, say, U.S. is a better thing than a job in, say, China. In effect: people near me are more valuable human beings than people who happen to live further away and speak a different language.
PS. To smoothen out the Fourth benefit above, companies in Finland are required to be very nice to employees who are laid off. Offering them other jobs within the company and the training to match thos is common in big companies. The second alternative is sponsoring them with the training required to land a job outside the company. Often the society helps (hooray, welfare state!), so when you're one of the thousands fired from Nokia, you're guaranteed to get into all kinds of courses and support programs. You also get the severance package which can be huge in itself, and when you're fired, you're also entitled to unemployment benefits from the first day when you stop getting salary (not sure how severance pay is counted). Many are members of "työttömyyskassa" which you could translate as an unemployment insurance (you pay a tiny fee, and if you get unemployed, they'll pay you 60-80% of your past salary for years). If something like these missing from the U.S., it's not the fault of a company optimizing its operations, its ultimately the fault of voters not requesting their administration to develop the society in good ways.
Where cp is the subject, not originally. I'm not going to bother to update an admittedly imperfect summary for this discussion; I'll just post a link: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=27362943&sid=1178395