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> Japan despite all its wealth and technological innovation, has experienced economic and social stagnation for decades, and I believe there's similar hopelessn

by 1996 6y ago

> Japan despite all its wealth and technological innovation, has experienced economic and social stagnation for decades, and I believe there's similar hopelessness among the youth in Taiwa [0]. Even parts of South Korea is seeing this as deindustrialization begins to set in. [1] The article properly describe how Japan has the same "disease", yet with different symptoms. The cause is not capitalism, but uniform objectives prescribed by society and adopted by its people. If you accept them as an unmovable truth, you can not work on alternatives. The McDonald example was another great piece: the student did the right thing (to keep trying the same thing while it fails and hoping for different results is a definition of insanity in the Simpsons joke), but even that was criticized. There is little hope people can find good solutions, if any attempts to do things differently is attacked. > It's not hard to spot the similarities to the decline of the American Dream. Indeed. The American Dream died in the 1960s, when "counter culture" was not recognized at its true value: an antidote to this involution. The article you linked are interesting, but they give the wrong solution: giving up by touching fish (slacking at work) is not very fulfilling unless there is something else with meaning in your life. It is accepting the same narrative, and just inverting your response to this narrative, instead of creating your own. Hopefully, China will manage its democratic transition better than America managed in counter culture. I have lots of hope, when I see accurate descriptions of the problem like this.

Apocryphon 6y ago
The cause isn't just economic, or just attributed to simply "capitalism", but there's certainly a lot of economic aspects- inequality, regulatory capture, financialization, decline of unions (in a word- neoliberalism), etc. But true, it's possible a society's values also informs its expectations. It's not just the wealthy seeking to maximize their wealth by all means possible. And so the problem isn't just economic, or even just political. It's also be cultural. Certainly there's additional perverse incentives with the current system, and not all of it is just simple profit-seeking. The McD example is definitely mirrored in the U.S. as rising unemployment for college graduates, the swelling numbers of college students, and increasing university tuitions all happen at the same time. And here too, many service employers would consider graduates as overqualified for their jobs. Hiring expectations- including in tech- often do reflect cultural perspectives and not necessarily economic realities. I wouldn't go as far as to say the American Dream died until after the '70s or '80s, but certainly the '60s could be seen as lost potential to correct the course. However, I'm also drawn by Adam Curtis' thesis that the counterculture of the hippies, in contrast to the civil rights movement, focused too much on individualistic self-transformation and thus was unable to turn into a mass movement that could actually affect political, material change. Touching fish isn't really meant to be a way to bring about systemic change, it's just how those who are suffering from 996 seek to cope with what they're put under. It does show there is somewhat of widespread dissatisfaction with what's going on under involution.
- 1996 6y ago
  > It's also be cultural. Certainly there's additional perverse incentives with the current system, and not all of it is just simple profit-seeking. Totally. The problem is cultural first, as seen with the example of Japan education: it is Confuscian, but it fails in the same ways. > Hiring expectations- including in tech- often do reflect cultural perspectives and not necessarily economic realities. Indeed, unnecessary competition to just look like market competition. > Touching fish isn't really meant to be a way to bring about systemic change, it's just how those who are suffering from 996 seek to cope with what they're put under Check my username, I was one of the 996. It takes some wild out of the box thinking to escape a system that has embedded its values into you.

by 1996 6y ago

Apocryphon 6y ago

The cause isn't just economic, or just attributed to simply "capitalism", but there's certainly a lot of economic aspects- inequality, regulatory capture, financialization, decline of unions (in a word- neoliberalism), etc. But true, it's possible a society's values also informs its expectations. It's not just the wealthy seeking to maximize their wealth by all means possible. And so the problem isn't just economic, or even just political. It's also be cultural. Certainly there's additional perverse incentives with the current system, and not all of it is just simple profit-seeking. The McD example is definitely mirrored in the U.S. as rising unemployment for college graduates, the swelling numbers of college students, and increasing university tuitions all happen at the same time. And here too, many service employers would consider graduates as overqualified for their jobs. Hiring expectations- including in tech- often do reflect cultural perspectives and not necessarily economic realities. I wouldn't go as far as to say the American Dream died until after the '70s or '80s, but certainly the '60s could be seen as lost potential to correct the course. However, I'm also drawn by Adam Curtis' thesis that the counterculture of the hippies, in contrast to the civil rights movement, focused too much on individualistic self-transformation and thus was unable to turn into a mass movement that could actually affect political, material change. Touching fish isn't really meant to be a way to bring about systemic change, it's just how those who are suffering from 996 seek to cope with what they're put under. It does show there is somewhat of widespread dissatisfaction with what's going on under involution.

1996 6y ago
> It's also be cultural. Certainly there's additional perverse incentives with the current system, and not all of it is just simple profit-seeking. Totally. The problem is cultural first, as seen with the example of Japan education: it is Confuscian, but it fails in the same ways. > Hiring expectations- including in tech- often do reflect cultural perspectives and not necessarily economic realities. Indeed, unnecessary competition to just look like market competition. > Touching fish isn't really meant to be a way to bring about systemic change, it's just how those who are suffering from 996 seek to cope with what they're put under Check my username, I was one of the 996. It takes some wild out of the box thinking to escape a system that has embedded its values into you.