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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?
It's the best fictional account of the issue I've seen.
Duh.
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.
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.
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.
"It's similar to why adult domestic house cats are pretty much adult kittens who would die in the wild."
Nonsense. I've seen far too many of them go feral and survive long enough to have offspring afterwards (in the case they weren't neutered before going feral). And it's not just because someone is feeding them.
Some of them have trouble as they weren't taught effective hunting by their mothers, but lots of them can and do fend for themselves just fine. Yes, they get picked off by coyotes (or coy-dogs) and such, but so do a lot of wild small predators.
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) ???
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.
I got mugged by a New York housecat once.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
So what you're saying is that once they go Caucasian, they never go Asian?
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.
"It's similar to why adult domestic house cats are pretty much adult kittens who would die in the wild."
Nonsense. I've seen far too many of them go feral and survive long enough to have offspring afterwards (in the case they weren't neutered before going feral). And it's not just because someone is feeding them.
Some of them have trouble as they weren't taught effective hunting by their mothers, but lots of them can and do fend for themselves just fine. Yes, they get picked off by coyotes (or coy-dogs) and such, but so do a lot of wild small predators.
Basement-dwellers? Survive outside mommy's care? I call bullshit.
FWIW, you had me until you said "survive long enough to have offspring afterwards".
...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.
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.
You've heard. The reality is quite different however. There are about 50,000 Americans living in Japan. There are about 40,000 US military personnel in Japan at any given time. Being a military wife might be attractive to some, but for most families in Japan it would be an embarrassment. Because of the high number of US military compared to general Americans living in Japan, if you see a white guy wandering around who isn't wearing a suit, it isn't a bad guess to think he is in the military, and therefore undesirable. The stereotype bleeds over a bit into any american, even if they have nothing to do with the military.
American men are different than Japanese men, but it would be a huge mistake to think or imply that one is more desirable in Japan than the other. And reporting that American men can find a lady in Japan with little or no effort is completely wrong.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
But maybe that's just how society portrays the men, and therefore women have a natural bias against the men. When I was in university, I literally had a woman walk away after I told her I was in Engineering, even though up until that time we were having a great time, and she showed no signs of not liking me. Many women will go after strong, good looking, macho guys, who have no other good qualities, even after repeatedly having bad experiences with these types of people.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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.
There is a lot to that, Japan's more rigid social structure just showed the cracks sooner.
Like the U.S. at one time, the expectation was do well in school then get a good job and most likely work there until you retire.
Somewhere around the '80s the kids completing their education found no such jobs waiting for them. However, in japan, hopping from one marginal dead-end job to the next is in itself a source of shame.
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.
This is developmentally very common in teenage boys. Although the privileges of adulthood beckon, so do the risks and expectations and responsibilities. With their hormones at war, and facing complex social pressures even within their peer group, boys can feel overwhelmed. It's easier just to hide away until the storm passes.
I wonder whether the "walkabout" rituals in aboriginal cultures aren't specifically intended to address this phenomenon. According to Joseph Campbell, the ritual often involves a scene in which the men of the community theatrically come to capture the boy and drag him away. He instinctively hides or runs to his mother for protection, but theatrically she is unable to protect him. So off he goes to make the terrifying and irreversible transition to adulthood.
What happens in modern urban cultures where we don't have any such ritual, indeed where the transition to adulthood is deferred until graduation from university or is completely indefinite? The status quo psychological attachment to childhood is sustained for much longer. Perhaps with long familiarity it becomes more difficult to break. But I think that the complex social norms and risk/reward pressures of modern life - acutely evident in Japan - are the biggest factor. No child in his right mind would want to sign on to them.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
As a person who travels a fair bit and have lived in many different countries including Japan (but now resides in Europe) ... I can assure you that it's the behaviour in the US that would get the rest of the planet thrown in the wacky shack. Please stay where you are ...
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.
Parents coddle adult kids. The kids have never been encouraged to fend for themselves, and this is the natural result.
Actually it's much closer to the collapse of the Japanese family, more than anything. It's not the coddling, it's the disdain for people, society, and not wanting to go into the massive "grind your face into the dirt" mentality that exists in Japan.
But we're seeing the entire thing play out here with the current generation of kids too. It's just not getting pulled up in the media.
Om, nomnomnom...
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?
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.
If you're a genuinely nice North American dude with a real job, it is remarkably easy to meet wonderful women anywhere.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
Parents coddle adult kids. The kids have never been encouraged to fend for themselves, and this is the natural result.
No, the problem is parents do not ALLOW their children to fend for themselves. "For oneself" implies a definition of self that has not been set up for inevitable failure.
Student show an iota of initiative and wants to program computers? Father lectures the child that is a way to be a failure. Now the child feels like a loser no matter what he does -- program computers and he is shamed before his family, do what his father wants instead and he is shamed before himself.
Withdrawal is a rational short-term reaction, when one is set up failure by one's family and society. Unfortunately, withdrawal for more than a modest period of time becomes its own self-reinforcing barrier to success.
It may look like coddling from a superficial point of view. From within the closed walls of the family, it is incessant brutal emotional abuse. The hints are there in TFA. The children are physically abusive? That kind of behavior is taught by the parents. There is a partial confession at the end of the article:
"I think my son is losing the power or desire to do what he wants to do," she says. "Maybe he used to have something he wanted to do but I think I ruined it."
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!
Of course, they like the Cauc!
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...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
Pfft... they're just jilted because no girls wanted to lick their eye-balls.
Bye!
The karoshi stereotype exists in Japan for a reason. The whole culture seems to be built around working yourself to death. A friend of mine visited there and described life as non-stop work. Guys basically work all day, then face social pressure to go out with the boss at night. Basically, they are "on" all the time. So of course there is a large segment of the population that sees that life and goes "screw that!" and decide not to play the game.
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?
Can you give us any examples? I live in the US and have visited many places including Japan. I disagree with the other post about putting the "wacky shack". I found that most of the Japanese behavior was clique based. Smaller groups of teens/young adults would define and create a look or sub-culture of their own. While individually it might seem extreme, it was the norm for these small groups.
I found it wonderfully entertaining.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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?
Parents coddle adult kids. The kids have never been encouraged to fend for themselves, and this is the natural result.
That's some fine knee-jerk thinking there. Preconceived-notion: parents should be hash with their kids. Random fact: some kids somewhere are having a poor outcome. Conclusion: the only possible explanation is that their parents haven't been harsh enough with them. Never mind that Japanese society is a harsh environment with strict social rules about everything that the kids would have been exposed to from a young age. Never mind that the psychologists don't actually know what the problem is. Truthiness forever!
Sorry, but you're wrong. I've taught for twenty years, kids are just as vapid today as they were twenty years ago. Kids don't really change, just the styles and slang do. Today's OMG (which by the way is so yesterday) is simply an 2010s version of "gnarly dude". I recently ran across my HS yearbook from 1986 while cleaning out the garage. The girls looked incredibly young and the crap my friends wrote in them was dreadfully banal. Finally to put this in perspective while working on my MA in history I read about twenty yearbooks from 1933-1935 not only did I read the little introductions in the yearbooks but I also read the inscriptions. Guess what, they could have been written by a teen today. They were that close to the same level of stupidity. It was truly eye opening. The only thing that changed was the drug references (marijuana is bigger now), and the slang, otherwise they had the same adolescent stupidity.
Fascinating analogy to research I was not previously familiar with. Would read comments by this AC in the future.
I suspect you're wrong. The average intelligence hasn't really changed much at all.
What has changed is what you're prepared to accept.
When you were 16, the fact that she was pretty and appeared to like you was more than sufficient to keep your interest in her (at least for a while)
Now you're finding that looks aren't nearly enough to keep your interest beyond the first time she opens her mouth.
Give it another ten years and you'll come to realize that looks really don't matter that much at all. You can admire the hot sexy ones from a distance while listening to the intelligent interesting ones. In time you might discover that she's pretty hot and sexy as well as interesting and intelligent - especially if she starts showing more than a social interest in you - and even if you don't you'll have found a new friend.
On the whole I find women more interesting, easier to talk to, and more intelligent than men.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
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.
I'll just leave this here:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/books/man_of_kneel_PHEDS6aPAczquQE4AgwTiP
"Sick of being treated like the enemy, guys are dropping out of society"
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
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.
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?
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
As an American shut-in, when I first discovered the term "hikikomori", I was extremely disturbed but also felt an intense sense of vindication. It isn't just me: many other people feel it too. That sense of realizing how unfair and how grindingly hopeless and purposeless participation in the current socio-economic scam really is.
I don't want to spend my whole life working some shitty job to barely pay rent all while knowing perfectly well that there is absolutely no reason I must do so but that the powerful members of society (a class of individual which is powerful through no other reason than that there has always been such a class) have arranged for this situation. There is more than enough "wealth", there is more than enough resources (food, water, energy) and space (stand on Zanzibar indeed) and labor (technology is a wonderful thing, and 3D printing and robots are perfectly capable of serving my minimal needs and wants if only they would / could be designed so instead of for fabricating ever more useless crap to be sold by the rich and powerful...) to provide everything I've ever wanted and yet I still have to spend almost all of my time either working a dead-end meaningless job for cash for rent and food (did you know that Americans throw away enough food to end world hunger?) or asleep to recover and do it again tomorrow.
The only way to win such a "game" is to not play it.
Escape into fantasy, into an inner universe that isn't so wretchedly repulsive, soul-crushingly grinding, spitefully vicious -- is the only way to stay alive. What if we treated all illnesses the way we treat mental distress? What if we punished the wicked wealthy for hoarding and perpetuating the horror in which we now find ourselves? What if we did magically solve the waste of energy which is leading us into crisis?
The problem isn't resources, it's the evil of those who have the resources. This isn't an immutable property of human nature -- and yet nothing is being done to solve this problem.
So I refuse to participate in a situation that is not only apathetic toward my well-being, but actively, maliciously, greedily abusive of me.
The state of the world is so because of mere history, nothing is being done about it by those who have the power to do so because it is not in their short-term interest.
Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, godlike technology.
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
Sex once a year? We have a name for that in the US too, it's called "marriage".
I think the figure of 50% of these children are physically abusive to their parents speaks volumes. Outside of untreated schizophrenia, that is a pretty rare behavior...unless you have been coached for years on how to inflict pain to those you love.
I may be less than fully correct, but careful readers will see that the picture is more complex than simple coddling, as multiple posters are so quick to assume.
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
I am somewhat in the same boat and I feel a lot like you do. I work, but only doing online gigs and only just enough to pay rent on my tiny, one room studio apartment and to buy food. Basically I do as little as possible to maximize my own free time. I feel absolutely no desire to become rich or famous, I just want to be left alone to enjoy life in my own way. Usually that entails a lot of reading, a lot of movies and a lot of video games. I do go out for an hour long walk every day, but only very early in the morning at a time when the fewest possible people are out and about.
The odd thing is, I wasn't always this way. I used to have a good paying, "gold collar" job, a fairly large house, a decent car, friends and I dated a lot, but that was over ten years ago. At some point, without even realising it, I just gave up. It wasn't worth all of the hassle and I found myself slowly adapting to a new way of life. I am not at all shy, as defined by "hikikomori" and I am still quite forward (some would say blunt) when I speak to people; perhaps a holdover from my "former life".
Some try to criticize my way of life, as if I'm not "normal" or as if I should have something to be ashamed about, but I really don't care about those people. Admittedly, I used to carry a certain amount of shame, but that disappeared long ago. Now, I focus on my own peace of mind and that suits me just fine.
I'd also call it looking busy more than non-stop work. It is work to impress your boss/coworkers, not to get stuff done. I had a coworker go over there and it took them all day to do a task that could be done in 20 minutes tops.
When I'd visit I'd leave at 5PM and when I showed up at 8AM I'd be handed printouts with colorful slides summarizing the previous day's activities. It really wasn't necessary, but it demonstrated that they were working for quite a while after I left.
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!
Typical feminazi avoidance reply of calling misogynistic anything that is evident and argumented enough so that is hard to disprove otherwise.
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.
"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."