This ties in with yesterday's article about young people staying home and playing video games.
The article mentions "Welcome to the NHK"[1], which is an unusually bitter anime.
The article mentions "Welcome to the NHK"[1], which is an unusually bitter anime.
Although in my opinion the plot went completely off the rails by episode 6 and failed to recapture its original charm at every bizarre twist and turn. Either way, I still watched it through to the end.
Say what you will, but I found it to be excellent.
If so, and given your assessment of Requiem for a Dream, I probably have very similar tastes as you and might have to actually watch Welcome to the NHK in the near future.
I mean, sort of. The word "analemma" predates the book ;) but that's where I got it.
This alone seems to suggest that the Italian version may be completely different; hikikomori isolate themselves from their families as well, which is one of the very weird traits about it for Japanese people.
The evidence I see to support the observation above is the recent rise of "Wae To Ri" in South Korea since the economy started to stagnate post Asian Financial crisis. It's identical to hikkikomori. I see this in other economically stagnant European countries as well, for example in Spain or Portugal where 1/2 young people are unemployed.
Or maybe the kid simply has been pampered all his life and has never been properly incentivized at working towards independence. Occam's razor and all.
We're talking about millions of people. When you get to scale that large, you are talking about society and culture, not individual choices. To have millions of people change their behavior is to change the society and culture.
In Italy, I see many friends entrapped in this kind of behaviour, the major causes are:
- The corruption of the bankers that are stealing an increasing quantity of money from the people (regardless if you're poor or rich or if you work or not).
This factor is not only creating a major problem for the younger, but is a concurring cause of concern for the other generations as well: they're committing suicide more and more and more often than ever before.
- The rejection of both the cultural roots of christianity and consumerism, combined with a strict thinking about what is considered an accepted social behaviour and a strict regulation of the market to prevent if from a total collapse.
- An unrestricted and unregulated immigration crisis that provides an ever cheaper quantity of individuals willing to work for a miserable wage.
- Least but not least the total incompetence of the government and the EU, both blocked by a strict thought of political correctness that keeps them from applying needed actions that would properly respond to changes in the local and global, economical and geopolitical landscape.
It is indeed a problem of the culture of the society, and the hikikomori phenomena is only one of the consequences of a society that is forced to change, but is not able to do it properly.
A society and culture that pampers their children instead of making them learn their place in the world? I wasn't speaking about him in particular, but rather the parenting culture that created this reclusive and apathetic behavior.
The "Why don't you take responsibility for your failure?" question is self-serving and abusive. The reality is that competitive neoliberal capitalism has created a culture in which success is - quite literally - not an option for the majority of the population.
This happens to be a very self-destructive way to run a culture. It's brittle, it has multiple failure modes, it's maladaptive and unable to deal realistically with challenges, and over the medium term onwards it's inherently unstable.
So people will opt out from it. They'll either opt out inwards, as these hermits do, or they'll opt out outwards, which is a guaranteed way to create some suicidally destructive political messes.