It's decline stems from favoring bullshit work over efficiency, change and adaptation.
The economy != society.
Does Japan really stand out in this regard?
Should probably mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord
Sounds like a utopia to me.
You can easily attribute some of these issues to several different things.
But if you don't like X and think it is the source of all evil, it is very easy to bend your reality to actually believe it is.
Is this a K-shaped economy thing? Am I simply surrounding myself and observing the people who "made it"? Is there truly a whole section of the population not leaving their homes and not having sex? I find it hard to believe it's the majority.
"People love hearing negative things" is something in our nature, that's correct. However, putting them aside and chalking this as "business as usual" is not the correct thing to do.
Just because we see people look healthy and smile around we assume everything is OK. No, not everyone is that happy. Most of them wear masks, or their bonds keep them alive. Every home is a different world, every person is a different universe.
I know people who'd commit suicide the moment they lose every connection they have. A cat, a single friend, an alive mother. Some of us are connected to life via thin strings.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/05/japan-records-...
Instead of getting your socialists credits up by calling anything that bad 'capitalism' we should be smart enough to understand that other technological and social factors are at play.
Then blaming everything, all the issues on some economic crisis rather then any long term forces is another typical lazy approach, ignoring trends that existed before the economic problems and persist long after the crash.
When we are talking about the nuclear family, lets be clear, it is the social state and government pensions that have a lot to do with that. And the availability of porn and other alternatives to getting married has a lot to do with the general liberalization of society and feminism. Giving everybody the freedom to pick their own partner when both partners are free of family requirements, free of economic pressure (woman can support their own lives) and with sex more available 'thanks' to dating app and general sexual liberation.
Of course on the far right they call all these things evil and wanting to go back to 'traditional values'. But even if we don't agree with the 'solution' it is true to some extent.
For example, in terms of how many kids woman have, if you only look at 'natives' and exclude immigrant backgrounds, the trend has been ongoing in a lot of places including in Europe (Italy or Spain). But in most Pop-Stars don't shave their heads, in the US its the opposite, a Pop-Star having a 'high-value' boyfriends (or many sexual partners) makes her more desirable. So example like this are always cherry-picked. I don't think Japan is showing the future here.
The overall drop in fertility in men is also universal, again something often cried about by right wing people. There are many other such trends that are global to some extend. And of course not sure how socialism would fix most of them.
> In late-stage capitalism these same milestones become financially punishing and logistically impossible.
Except of course that people used to be 10x poorer and did just fine in reproducing. The claim that 'late-stage capitalism' is so completely repressive that it is impossible and so much worse then the 1920 is just baseless nonsense. Coal minors in 1920 managed to have enough kids, do you want to switch with them?
PS:
> celebrity is necessarily a fictitious character in everyday life
Because celebrates in the past showed their true selves to people right? What even is this argument.
FrankWilhoit•1h ago
joe_mamba•1h ago
simfree•1h ago
I feel like you see this less in other parts of the world where people don't have tens of thousands of dollars from their retirement savings that they have to take out each year, and they would rather give it tax free to their favorite nonprofit than take a haircut with taxes and then do nothing with the money
marginalia_nu•1h ago
A_D_E_P_T•1h ago
Well, what do you mean by "past"?
European settlement in America has a very long history, which of course extends back to the 17th century. It has a rich intellectual tradition, in which respects it surpasses many European countries -- and many of the dominant strains of thought today have their roots in America. It has an exceptionally rich literary and artistic tradition, with numerous styles which are characteristically American. In scientific achievement, few countries can compete. It even has its own aesthetic, just as Japan does.
You could say that Japan is regressing from modernity into older ways of being, but this is far from true. Japan before Meiji was strictly aristocratic and feudal. The average Japanese family were tenant farmers with zero political power, economic power, and near-zero potential for advancement in society.
If anything, Japan is apparently regressing into an American-style older way of being. A pre-New-Deal manner, with big winners, bigger and more numerous losers, and increased social strife. Also, the atomization the article picks up on isn't a Ye Olde Japanese thing; it's very American.
silvestrov•1h ago
I think you proved the point (about no history) without wanting to.
How large percentage of history lessions in Europe do you think is spent on the years after the 17th century?
A_D_E_P_T•45m ago
Of course, students also learn ancient and ancient-adjacent history -- the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Charlemagne, etc. -- but this is general and isn't unique to any national tradition, but common to the entire continent.
PostOnce•1h ago
What's more, the British didn't leave Britain so they could go be British overseas necessarily, but so they could go do un-British things, it could be argued.
On top of that, 250 years is both a very short time, but also a very long time. It's more than enough not to be hand-waved away, at least. In 250 years it went from a coastal breakaway to the sole hyperpower, slavery came and went, communism arrived and died out, the information age dawned, religion became more of a niche than a facet of everyday life... That's a lot of cultural upheaval.