PowerSwitch

A controversial view from Japanese Deputy PM and finance minister, Taro Aso:

The elderly should be allowed to finish their days without artificially sustaining their lives, says Japan’s finance minister. The social security system is being crippled by support for people over 60, already constituting a third of the nation.

­Well known in Japan for his harsh mode of speech, Deputy PM and the head of the Finance Ministry Taro Aso told at the National Council on Social Security Reforms that the Japanese government pays for the meaningless enforced prolongation of lives of those whose days are numbered.

Reading between the lines, it is probable that the underlying cause for these comments is that the Japanese economy can no longer support its elderly, at present levels, let alone future predictions. Here's the scale of it:

Almost a third of Japan’s 128 million population are older than 60. Within next half century the number of pensioners will reach 40 per cent of the population.
Article in full

I see lots of young people unemployed while older people slog away till they're knackered, with the retirement age rising. Something has to break or be broken with that particular system.

Anyway, hopefully decline in energy quality and quantity will see more people back growing food, which should solve a few problems.

Now, it turns out that I had a recent spell in hospital. Lying opposite me were 3 (three) nonagenarians. One was too depressed to cope with whatever it was that was happening to her, one could only occasionally remember what building she was in and one, though she was perfectly cheerful and armed with a full complement of Marbles, genuinely believed that Time was Up and they shouldn't run around and fuss trying to prolong it.

It is at a pinch arguable that at least one of these good people should have been allowed the chance to slip away gracefully if she chose.

It is also true that the premises of many old folks' homes are owned by banks (I believe that's how Southern Cross collapsed, correct me if I'm wrong). Thus, to afford someone who is getting towards the end of their life medicine to enable them to continue to not be dead, channels the country's money to the Pharma industry (via NHS prescriptons), and the family's money (usually in the form of their house) to the banks.

This is going to become less tolerable as the economy slides downhill. In days of yore the grandchildren would rush out to a bright new career and jolly-well buy their own house. From now on there'll be a lot less of that, and a stay in an old folks home (£1,000 pw plus expenses!) will condemn your descendents to the legions of The Landless.

So our honourable Japanese gentleman, tactless though he may be, might have a point.

RenewableCandy wrote:
This is going to become less tolerable as the economy slides downhill. In days of yore the grandchildren would rush out to a bright new career and jolly-well buy their own house. From now on there'll be a lot less of that, and a stay in an old folks home (£1,000 pw plus expenses!) will condemn your descendents to the legions of The Landless.

So our honourable Japanese gentleman, tactless though he may be, might have a point.

Indeed.

I watched this film for the first time last week:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_%28film%29

It is a rare thing that I have anything positive to say about a film containing this much violence, but I felt it was relevant enough to post it in this thread. I should also add that I am no film buff, and have no idea whether most of the people reading this have seen this film, heard of it or not heard of it.

IOW: The Japanese have their own way of doing things, which I am fascinated by. I respect it and find it deeply disturbing at the same time.

UndercoverElephant wrote:

RenewableCandy wrote:
This is going to become less tolerable as the economy slides downhill. In days of yore the grandchildren would rush out to a bright new career and jolly-well buy their own house. From now on there'll be a lot less of that, and a stay in an old folks home (£1,000 pw plus expenses!) will condemn your descendents to the legions of The Landless.

So our honourable Japanese gentleman, tactless though he may be, might have a point.

Indeed.

I watched this film for the first time last week:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_%28film%29

It is a rare thing that I have anything positive to say about a film containing this much violence, but I felt it was relevant enough to post it in this thread. I should also add that I am no film buff, and have no idea whether most of the people reading this have seen this film, heard of it or not heard of it.

IOW: The Japanese have their own way of doing things, which I am fascinated by. I respect it and find it deeply disturbing at the same time.

They certainly have their own way of doing things alright.

When I was just twenty, I worked for a couple of years as a hospital porter at my local hospital in Whiby in North yorkshire. It was just a small hospital with 3 wards plus a maternity ward. The first was the acute ward, the second for longer stays and the third ward, known as the "War Memorial" ward, was the geriatric ward where old folks basically came to die.

One of my jobs was to deliver the meals in a specially heated trolley. One of the patients on the War Memorial ward was an old man called Mr Broadbent. He was an otherwise lucid man who was dying of leukemia. He could only walk a short distance, but was perfectly capable of holding an intelligent conversation. To be honest, I could tell the place was doing his head in since it was mostly full of demented, senile poor old buggers who didnt't know what day of the week it was. Consequently, I kind of felt sorry for him and used to spend 10 minutes or so each mealtime to chat with him.

After a few weeks of chatting, he began to open up to me about his past. It turned out he had been in the war and had been taken prisoner of war by the Japs and forced to labour on the infamous Burma "death" railway. He told me of the things the Japs used to do to prisoners. These included wworking them basically to near death. When a worker was no longer able to work, they were summarily executed on the spot with a bullet to the head. They were then left to rot by the side of the railway. No one was allowed to stop working, on pain of death themsleves, even if they were working right alongside the corpse.

Another little wheeze the Japs used to pull was when someone was caught trying to escape (though there was little point since there was only Jungle surrounding where they worked). They would crucify the escapee alive to a tree with nails so that every other worker could see them. They were then left hanging there till they died.

Oh yes, the Japanese had their own special way of doing things.

Now, I know that many years have passed and cultures evolve. However, there is something dark and callous in a culture that could do that on the scale that Mr Broadbent told me about. It wasn't a few isolated incidents. It wasn't even something particular to a specific set of circumstances, though the specific circumstances will have certainly contributed. Mr Broadbent told me he thought it was something much deeper than that. He reckoned there was something inherent in the cultural character of the Japanese of the time that legitimised this kind of behaviour such that it was fully normalised amongst all sections of the Japanese personnel. He even saw really brutal behaviour from senior Japanese officers to their own subordinates. They basically seemed to lack any kind of human empathy except insofar as it was related to social standing. The higher someone's social standing, the more their humanity was respected. If someone was seen as having little social standing, however, they were viewed (and treated) as worse than animals.

That kind of dark shit does not leave a culture easily or quickly, I would suggest.

Interesting post Steve.

1. How is 'social standing' determined? The class you were born into? Your current job? How much money you have?
2. Does anyone know if most young Japanese people are still as status conscious as their grandparents?
3. Would you say that it is worse than the streak of sadism that the British upper class has running through it?
4. Do you think it somehow is the dark underbelly of Japanese society, or is it a few psychopaths that were attracted to being officers so they can give full reign to their sadism?

nexus wrote:Interesting post Steve.

1. How is 'social standing' determined? The class you were born into? Your current job? How much money you have?
2. Does anyone know if most young Japanese people are still as status conscious as their grandparents?
3. Would you say that it is worse than the streak of sadism that the British upper class has running through it?
4. Do you think it somehow is the dark underbelly of Japanese society, or is it a few psychopaths that were attracted to being officers so they can give full reign to their sadism?

It is certainly true that humans are socially conformist creatures by our very nature and that this can lead to some horrendous behaviour as evidenced by such as the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments. To that extent, there is quite clearly a universal potential for such behaviour irrespective of specific culture.

However, for a myriad of historical reasons, some cultures have elevated the requirement to socially conform at all costs, occasionally in the form of extreme violence, much higher than other cultures. Thus, if we want to know the reasons why some cultures appear to be much worse than others, we need to look deeply into their history.

Also, it's worth bearing in mind that violence can take many forms. The bombing of Dresden or the indiscriminate death toll from the use of drones are no less heinous in terms of the outcome. However, it is the very hypocritical abstraction of such methods of inflicting death on others that is an indirect indication that the culture that uses such methods has, at its heart, a sense of shame inherent in such actions such that they must act from an impersonal distance. Cold comfort, I know, for the victims. But, nevertheless, I would rather that kind of hypocrisy and shame than the kind of cold-blooded, in your face, almost casual personal violence I have mentioned.

stevecook172001 wrote:It is certainly true that humans are socially conformist creatures by our very nature

For some humans, perhaps a majority, that may be true, but it certainly cannot be said for all. I for one default in the opposite direction, only conforming reluctantly after all other options have been explored and rejected.

biffvernon wrote:

stevecook172001 wrote:It is certainly true that humans are socially conformist creatures by our very nature

For some humans, perhaps a majority, that may be true, but it certainly cannot be said for all. I for one default in the opposite direction, only conforming reluctantly after all other options have been explored and rejected.

Yes, but that is why you (and many on here, including myself) may be correctly regarded by the majority as odd. Being so, we are of little statistical importance.

All the great leaders have been odd and of little statistical significance.

biffvernon wrote:All the great leaders have been odd and of little statistical significance.

I see you adhere to the great leader theory of history. I do not. There will always be Attila the Huns, Hitlers, Stalins, Thatchers, Churchills etc waiting in the wings in any era of history. However, the extent to which they rise to the top and, consequently, make a "difference" comes down to whether the tide of history allows them to do so or not.

stevecook172001 wrote:

biffvernon wrote:All the great leaders have been odd and of little statistical significance.

I see you adhere to the great leader theory of history. I do not. There will always be Attila the Huns, Hitlers, Stalins, Thatchers, Churchills etc waiting in the wings in any era of history. However, the extent to which they rise to the top and, consequently, make a "difference" comes down to whether the tide of history allows them to do so or not.

That's the sort of thing Hari Seldon would say.

stevecook172001 wrote:great leader(s) theory of history..

They were the nasty leaders; there have been nice ones too, though they tend to be less memorable. It's always the bad news that makes the headlines.

In my many years as a Sinophile, I got to hear quite a lot about Japanese atrocities. What marked them out for someone of my age was not so much the gruesome-ness as the fact that they'd happened within living memory: when I was a kid, people's dads were writing to "Warlord" and suchlike magazines with tales of their encounters (and the odd exceprional act of grace). Other atrocities I'd read about had all been, well, history.

However we now get to find out things like what happened to the MauMau (Kenya), which is more recent even than WWII, looks as if it may have been just as "institutionalised" as the Japanese atrocities, and must have most definitely been up-close and personal.

But before I go saying this must be an overcrowded rain-soaked tea-swilling islander thing, there is, as pointed out here on this board, Belgium.

There is also the argument that the dark stuff can go away, in the sense that people only carry out atrocities under certain circumstances, and these can change.

clv101 wrote:

stevecook172001 wrote:

biffvernon wrote:All the great leaders have been odd and of little statistical significance.

I see you adhere to the great leader theory of history. I do not. There will always be Attila the Huns, Hitlers, Stalins, Thatchers, Churchills etc waiting in the wings in any era of history. However, the extent to which they rise to the top and, consequently, make a "difference" comes down to whether the tide of history allows them to do so or not.

That's the sort of thing Hari Seldon would say.

Last place I'd expext to see a foundation reference is on this forum