8 ms·
You know, many eastern countries apparently intuitively think in cycles. The west tends to think linearly: "We're trending upwards, argh argh overpopulation, fa
by theturtlemoves 4mo ago
You know, many eastern countries apparently intuitively think in cycles. The west tends to think linearly: "We're trending upwards, argh argh overpopulation, famine, death. We're trending downwards, argh argh population collapse, famine, death".
Same with the perception of time. My country sees time as a line. I once had an interesting training where the instructor pointed this out. She went on to say that seeing time as a circle or a point is also an option. It wasn't until I hit the second half of life that I got a glimpse of what that looks like, personally.
Perhaps subconsciously, Japan envisions that the birth rate will go up again sometime in the future and they will have preserved their identity and culture from which to build again.
- justanotherjoe 4mo agoExcept in growth imperative system we have, to stop growing is not to not grow, it is to spiral into a cascade failure
- theturtlemoves 4mo agoAnd then? Either we think linearly: Crash into the rocks, game over. Or circular: difficult times ahead, we'll get through them again
- znpy 4mo agoCongrats you missed the point completely
- Markoff 4mo agoyou can still grow even with smaller richer more productive population, actually you are encouraged to be more productive with smaller population than vice versa population growth ≠ wealth growth
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- HerbManic 4mo agoI do find it funny that some folks treat this is like the complete end of Japan (or whatever) nation, like you said a straight line down. But eventually it will bottom out and potentially rebound a bit. It find on the way up or at the top, and it will be fine at the bottom once the trends return but the issue really is the pain of the phase shift.
- bestouff 4mo agoYeah sure. It never happened that a great civilization completely collapsed.
- Balgair 4mo agoI mean, Japan has been through a few 'collapses' in it's written history. The most recent arguably being in 1945.
- bestouff 4mo agoSure but I was thinking about more wide-scale collapses like Egyptians or Mayans.
- red-iron-pine 4mo agoand then the US invested heavily -- and still does, via military presence -- to build Japan back up to block the Soviets. who will build them back up in the future? The Chinese would prefer to see them poor.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- ludicrousdispla 4mo ago>> You know, many eastern countries apparently intuitively think in cycles. "a turtle that retracts its head will later extend it"