26 ms·

The article specifically mentions the positive outcome of the arrangement - the young woman's confidence has improved, destructive behaviour stopped, bullying s

by sho 9y ago

The article specifically mentions the positive outcome of the arrangement - the young woman's confidence has improved, destructive behaviour stopped, bullying stopped, and she has the father figure she obviously needs at this critical part of her development. And from all appearances he is genuinely doing his best to be that. It's very hard for me to condemn this when the outcome seems so inarguably positive. Truthfulness is important, yes, but so is outcome. And if this woman after ten or twenty years, when she is well-adjusted with a career and family of her own, finds out the truth, would she be angry with her mother - or thank her? Ethics is not black and white. It can often be a struggle between multiple competing imperatives. This is a Trolley Problem for the human soul. O righteous crusaders for truth, if this girl was put in front of you, would you tell her?

Pharylon 9y ago
It seems positive from what he says, but we only have one side of the story. How does the daughter feel about having a father she sees so infrequently? Is it hard on her? Does she wonder why he won't come help her when she calls him out of the blue over some emergency? Now that she's older, would it be easier for her to know the truth? We don't know. What I do know is eventually she'll find out, somehow. What happens then?
- belorn 9y ago
  This question should be possible to be semi-answered by psychology studies. Do stability during the teen years outweigh a large negative event during adolescence? Seems like a question that researchers has been poking at for the last 100 years. Bullying also has its own share of research (https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/bullying/conditioninfo/Pages/health.aspx https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/bullying/conditionin...). It will not be easy to get a fair evaluation of harm vs harm mitigation.
- dragontamer 9y ago
  Her real father left. So the real question is: is the 4-hours a week of fake fatherhood better than being a bullied, emotionally traumatized kid throughout some of the hardest moments of growing up? Its a fake, rent-a-father for 4 hours a week. But that fake fatherhood is probably way better than no fatherhood at all. Its a difficult moral question for sure.
musage 9y ago
> the young woman's confidence has improved, destructive behaviour stopped, bullying stopped What makes you think that wouldn't have happened over time by itself? What's the message here, bullying someone for having lost her father is okay, not having a father is not okay? That's normalizing people being bullied for being humans. It's normalizing not allowing a widow to find another lover who at least may have an actual "bigger brother" style connection to her children than some actor who has none. We don't need "figures" and "role models" for what they seem like, like pixels on a screen. That need comes from being someone, at least the natural initial desire to become someone, and it aims at people who are someone, too. > Ethics is not black and white. Except of course for the father figure she "obviously" needs, and how the confidence has "improved" (implied: from not good enough to good enough), during that "critical" part of the development as if there were any non-critical ones in life. > O righteous crusaders for truth, if this girl was put in front of you, would you tell her? That's not the question. The question is, would you fake being her father, or would you hire a fake father, and the answer to both of that for me is no, I can bet you my life on that, in writing. Oh righteous crusader for deep considerations, can you at least not turn faking being a father into the burden of "telling the truth" in a situation we would not have incurred in the first place? When something makes you sad, there is usually good reason for it. Why not simply give her drugs to make her happy, and money to make it not matter if she has a career? If truthfulness, who you actually are, is just this thing on the side trumped by "outcome", why arbitrarily stop there? Why not permanently install on VR helmets and drug pumps onto everybody right after birth, done? What would people who don't mind something like this have to withstand something even more twisted? How about this is already 20 iterations past sane, how about no? How about having a decent society instead of a rising tide of shut-ins and suicide and elderly people with plastic robot dogs? If you can't see those elephants on the couch, how can you be all life coach about this maybe not being the sad, nutty thing it is on the surface because it's possible that in 20 years it might have turned out well? Start everything like you want it to end. If you can't handle even someone else's mortality, how about your own? When I worked in a hospital, I was constantly amazed at the idle chit chat relatives made with people who had very short time left. I felt like those of the stuff who made human connections were the only ones remotely realizing what was going on. The visitors just dipped in, coated in a shell of activity, and left before anything could sink in. And I believe many genuinely loved those they visited, for some they were the apple of their eye; they were just so inept at life that they wasted those last moments together, too. In short, just to repeat, no. No to all of it. No to that entire branch. edit: while I don't like to add even more to such a long rant (please don't take it personal in the accusative sense because I mirrored your "oh.." phrasing, take it as personal as meaning a lot to me), another thought occurred to me that actually does make me a bit angry: he's not "giving" her a fake father, he's taking her real and unfortunately dead father away from her. In the sense of role models and emotional support a LOT of things and people can do -- in the sense of the person you are and who your parents are, there are no substitutes. This is unforgivable to me; not that it's my call in this case, but if I was that girl, and I found out one day, that guy would have to fear for his life. How is it even possible that it's legal for him to not own up when she turns 18? Just because the lie started when she wasn't an adult? There is not one single aspect of this that isn't utterly fucked up to me. No, it's not understandable. It's understandable as in you needed to clean the dishes and now there is a 100 m tall sea monster destroying the whole block.
bjourne 9y ago
> It's very hard for me to condemn this when the outcome seems so inarguably positive. Truthfulness is important, yes, but so is outcome. And if this woman after ten or twenty years, when she is well-adjusted with a career and family of her own, finds out the truth, would she be angry with her mother - or thank her? Given the amount of adopted kids that have been lied to, and later found out, she'll be absolutely furious. Her mother is a lazy, dishonest bitch who bought a fake father rather than finding a real one for her daughter. Japan is full of single men so it's not like that option wasn't available to her.
- ugfgibcvg 9y ago
  I don’t understand why this is being downvoted.
  - Veratyr 9y ago
    Personally, it's the "Her mother is a lazy, dishonest bitch who bought a fake father rather than finding a real one for her daughter." part of the comment. It's very strong language that I don't think is deserved and it makes it sound like finding a new father would be easy. There's a well documented reason why there are a lot of single men in Japan.
    - echion 9y ago
      > There's a well documented reason why there are a lot of single men in Japan. What is that reason? (Serious question)
      - Veratyr 9y ago
        Young people in Japan aren't interested in relationships: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-j... The reasons behind _that_ aren't so well understood but generally seem to be disillusionment with the idea of falling in love, getting married and having a family, unwillingness to fit in with traditional expectations (housewife taking care of the kids + hard working salaryman husband) or simply seeing relationships as too hard.
hutzlibu 9y ago
"O righteous crusaders for truth, if this girl was put in front of you, would you tell her?" Maybe yes. Along with the fact that her fake father dreams about telling her the truth, but is afraid to do so. So then they can maybe have a real relationship and see each other whenever they want to and not only when her mother pays him to be professional. Because clearly both have a real connection. Btw. is he not scared of openl publishing all this? Or does no one in japan reads english magazines?
- mdda 9y ago
  He may have sent an actor along to represent him for the interview / photoshoot.

by sho 9y ago

Pharylon 9y ago

It seems positive from what he says, but we only have one side of the story. How does the daughter feel about having a father she sees so infrequently? Is it hard on her? Does she wonder why he won't come help her when she calls him out of the blue over some emergency? Now that she's older, would it be easier for her to know the truth? We don't know. What I do know is eventually she'll find out, somehow. What happens then?

belorn 9y ago
This question should be possible to be semi-answered by psychology studies. Do stability during the teen years outweigh a large negative event during adolescence? Seems like a question that researchers has been poking at for the last 100 years. Bullying also has its own share of research (https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/bullying/conditioninfo/Pages/health.aspx https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/bullying/conditionin...). It will not be easy to get a fair evaluation of harm vs harm mitigation.
dragontamer 9y ago
Her real father left. So the real question is: is the 4-hours a week of fake fatherhood better than being a bullied, emotionally traumatized kid throughout some of the hardest moments of growing up? Its a fake, rent-a-father for 4 hours a week. But that fake fatherhood is probably way better than no fatherhood at all. Its a difficult moral question for sure.

musage 9y ago

> the young woman's confidence has improved, destructive behaviour stopped, bullying stopped What makes you think that wouldn't have happened over time by itself? What's the message here, bullying someone for having lost her father is okay, not having a father is not okay? That's normalizing people being bullied for being humans. It's normalizing not allowing a widow to find another lover who at least may have an actual "bigger brother" style connection to her children than some actor who has none. We don't need "figures" and "role models" for what they seem like, like pixels on a screen. That need comes from being someone, at least the natural initial desire to become someone, and it aims at people who are someone, too. > Ethics is not black and white. Except of course for the father figure she "obviously" needs, and how the confidence has "improved" (implied: from not good enough to good enough), during that "critical" part of the development as if there were any non-critical ones in life. > O righteous crusaders for truth, if this girl was put in front of you, would you tell her? That's not the question. The question is, would you fake being her father, or would you hire a fake father, and the answer to both of that for me is no, I can bet you my life on that, in writing. Oh righteous crusader for deep considerations, can you at least not turn faking being a father into the burden of "telling the truth" in a situation we would not have incurred in the first place? When something makes you sad, there is usually good reason for it. Why not simply give her drugs to make her happy, and money to make it not matter if she has a career? If truthfulness, who you actually are, is just this thing on the side trumped by "outcome", why arbitrarily stop there? Why not permanently install on VR helmets and drug pumps onto everybody right after birth, done? What would people who don't mind something like this have to withstand something even more twisted? How about this is already 20 iterations past sane, how about no? How about having a decent society instead of a rising tide of shut-ins and suicide and elderly people with plastic robot dogs? If you can't see those elephants on the couch, how can you be all life coach about this maybe not being the sad, nutty thing it is on the surface because it's possible that in 20 years it might have turned out well? Start everything like you want it to end. If you can't handle even someone else's mortality, how about your own? When I worked in a hospital, I was constantly amazed at the idle chit chat relatives made with people who had very short time left. I felt like those of the stuff who made human connections were the only ones remotely realizing what was going on. The visitors just dipped in, coated in a shell of activity, and left before anything could sink in. And I believe many genuinely loved those they visited, for some they were the apple of their eye; they were just so inept at life that they wasted those last moments together, too. In short, just to repeat, no. No to all of it. No to that entire branch. edit: while I don't like to add even more to such a long rant (please don't take it personal in the accusative sense because I mirrored your "oh.." phrasing, take it as personal as meaning a lot to me), another thought occurred to me that actually does make me a bit angry: he's not "giving" her a fake father, he's taking her real and unfortunately dead father away from her. In the sense of role models and emotional support a LOT of things and people can do -- in the sense of the person you are and who your parents are, there are no substitutes. This is unforgivable to me; not that it's my call in this case, but if I was that girl, and I found out one day, that guy would have to fear for his life. How is it even possible that it's legal for him to not own up when she turns 18? Just because the lie started when she wasn't an adult? There is not one single aspect of this that isn't utterly fucked up to me. No, it's not understandable. It's understandable as in you needed to clean the dishes and now there is a 100 m tall sea monster destroying the whole block.

bjourne 9y ago

> It's very hard for me to condemn this when the outcome seems so inarguably positive. Truthfulness is important, yes, but so is outcome. And if this woman after ten or twenty years, when she is well-adjusted with a career and family of her own, finds out the truth, would she be angry with her mother - or thank her? Given the amount of adopted kids that have been lied to, and later found out, she'll be absolutely furious. Her mother is a lazy, dishonest bitch who bought a fake father rather than finding a real one for her daughter. Japan is full of single men so it's not like that option wasn't available to her.

ugfgibcvg 9y ago
I don’t understand why this is being downvoted.
- Veratyr 9y ago
  Personally, it's the "Her mother is a lazy, dishonest bitch who bought a fake father rather than finding a real one for her daughter." part of the comment. It's very strong language that I don't think is deserved and it makes it sound like finding a new father would be easy. There's a well documented reason why there are a lot of single men in Japan.
  - echion 9y ago
    > There's a well documented reason why there are a lot of single men in Japan. What is that reason? (Serious question)
    - Veratyr 9y ago
      Young people in Japan aren't interested in relationships: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-j... The reasons behind _that_ aren't so well understood but generally seem to be disillusionment with the idea of falling in love, getting married and having a family, unwillingness to fit in with traditional expectations (housewife taking care of the kids + hard working salaryman husband) or simply seeing relationships as too hard.

hutzlibu 9y ago

"O righteous crusaders for truth, if this girl was put in front of you, would you tell her?" Maybe yes. Along with the fact that her fake father dreams about telling her the truth, but is afraid to do so. So then they can maybe have a real relationship and see each other whenever they want to and not only when her mother pays him to be professional. Because clearly both have a real connection. Btw. is he not scared of openl publishing all this? Or does no one in japan reads english magazines?

mdda 9y ago
He may have sent an actor along to represent him for the interview / photoshoot.