http://partialobjects.com/2011/03/is-looting-our-default-reaction-to-trouble/ http://partialobjects.com/2011/03/is-looting-our-default-rea... when you feel lik

http://partialobjects.com/2011/03/is-looting-our-default-reaction-to-trouble/ http://partialobjects.com/2011/03/is-looting-our-default-rea... when you feel like you’re on your own, when you feel abandoned and the only one who you can depend on is you, then yes, you’re going to do what you have to do to survive. This has been seen around the world in many countries and cultures. The big difference in postwar modern Japan is that people are confident that help is on the way. ... Here’s where you see a glaring cultural difference: virtually nobody in contemporary Japan has this kind of contempt for their fellow countrymen. Yet prewar Japan was deeply divided along class lines, and when disaster happened and the poor starved and burned, neither the government nor the upper classes could be bothered to give a shit. Currently in Japan there are calls for the government to scrap proposed tax cuts and use the money for relief efforts. Can you imagine the same happening in the US?