Yes. America has sunk into a kind of authoritarian nightmare, even as most of the populace happily sets off fireworks on the 4th of July as if we still bore any substantial resemblance to the nation founded in 1776. One revealing example: the drug war. The founders would have laughed at the notion that government should "protect" people from consuming whatever they pleased (always, of course, understanding that bad choices can lead to bad results). Today, it takes serious effort to find either a commentator or a regular person who would entertain the possibility that the drug war is impossible to win and causes terrible problems, not to mention being a sink-hole for tax dollars expropriated from a citizenry bled dry by taxes way higher than the colonists fought a war to be free of.
Isn't this because the U.S. is a mishmash of cultures, and lately our overlords equate "assimilation" of newcomers with intolerance and tyranny? And other things too, including cultural decay, but the former is uniquely American. It is one of those things conservatives always harped on (shaking their fists at the clouds), and we Gen-Xers were taught to scoff at, but it turns out they were right.
"...an increasing fear people have of each other, and a need to control each other, based on this fear. It is a cultural disconnection that is palpable to me, there is something that is badly missing here, and I fear very few of us have ever experienced it personally. So very few of us even recognize that it isn’t here."
Interesting observations about Japanese cultural behaviors.
If there are no laws requiring hand-washing in Japan, but people do it any way, why do you think that might be?
Here's a thought: It's because Japan is a homogenous culture, with cultural training and requirements pounded into each member from birth. In families, in school, in organizations, at work, constantly, Japanese are taught, demonstrated, reinforced, reminded of their place in the society, their obligations and requirements to perform this or that duty or function, or action, and then they face the consequences if they do not perform as required.
There may not be a law requiring hand washing, but the requirement has been pounded into each Japanese since they were born, and their society is ruthless in enforcing such requirements.
Is that better than a law? I don't know, probably.
No offense, but you sound very much like you've been raised in the authoritarian America I am talking about here. Why do you assume "pounded into"? Have you actually spent time in Japan? Have you been around Japanese families? My experience of them is that all of this stuff doesn't get "pounded" into kids, so much as it is just how things are done, and is the water everyone swims in.
"Homongenous" doesn't quite explain it. There are other homongenous cultures that do not have this kind of sensitivity to others, or to the society around them. Japan may not be unique in this regard, but it is very special.
We lived in Japan for 3 years (Okinawa specifically, but also vacationed on the mainland in Tokyo, and on Hokkaido in Sapporo). Their culture is indeed quite different from America's, with their customs/behaviors seemingly borne out of more of an unwritten social contract than any type of rules or laws. They harbor a deep sense of community, and care for one another not out of obligation, but a shared humanity. It's quite beautiful, really.
Yep, plenty of experience in Japan, and have studied the culture.
Have you? You seem to be wearing rose-colored spectacles.
Not "assuming" anything. Japanese culture "pounds" conformity into kids, from their first social interactions. And the "pounding" continues throughout their life--school, sports, work, family. Rigid conformity is expected in all aspects of Japanese life.
The lack of "wash your hands" signs is a reflection of the (many Japanese call it oppressive) social pressure to conform. Is it a positive? Sure, in some ways. but take off your rose-colored specs, and it's also easy to see negatives.
Nonconformity by Japanese society is punished harshly by social ostracization, and other negative consequences.
"Wa (和) is the Japanese concept of social harmony. It refers to the collective peace and balance of a group — a family, a classroom, a sports team, a workplace. In Japanese society, maintaining wa is a shared responsibility, and children begin learning this principle from the earliest stages of life.
One of the key social skills children develop alongside wa is the ability to kuuki wo yomu (空気を読む) — literally "read the air." This means picking up on unspoken social cues, understanding the mood of a room, and adjusting one's behavior so as not to disrupt group dynamics. For Japanese children, this is not a soft skill; it is an essential life competency taught explicitly through school culture and family habits."
Japanese schools are one of the most powerful socialization environments in the world. From the very first day of preschool, children are immersed in group-oriented routines that reinforce collective responsibility, mutual respect, and shared identity."
"Japanese children are exposed to the cultural value that equates relational harmony with group conformity in schools and at home (Imada, 2012, Kobayashi, 2001, Trommsdorf, 1985). ...studies on school children and adolescents have found that a nonconformist peer is the odd one out among friends (Fukushima, Sharp, & Kobayashi, 2009; Honda et al., 2017, Mino, 2006, Takemura and Takagi, 1988). Japanese children may ostracize a peer who deviates from the group norm about conformity (Mino, 2006). Middle school children who have been bullied tend to make different behavioral choices than their peers when they are asked to go along with their other friends or not (Takemura & Takagi, 1988). Thus, in Japanese social situations, someone who has disturbed relational harmony, such as by opposing what everyone in the group agrees on, pays the price for the deviance."
"Conformity in Japanese people’s minds takes different forms, from small residential groups to corporations at work, and to nationwide associations, but always dictates that people follow everyone else in the organization.
...Examining phenomena such as low worker engagement, karoshi (death by overwork), high middle-age male suicide rates, bullying in school and at work, sex discrimination, hereditary membership in the Diet, and failure to provide adequate protection for whistle-blowers, this book reveals a common structure in Japanese minds: lack of respect for individuality, and the traditional and narrow sense of the world, i.e., Seken."
Everything you say here is true. But none of it is "pounding" in the same sense that, for example, more authoritarian American families, or certainly Chinese families, "pound" things into their children.
A powerful sense of social harmony (and yes, there are positives and negatives to that - believe me I've seen that in Japan) is a very different thing from literally beating kids into submission. That's what happens in many other cultures, and that is the kind of thing I was referring to with my response to your use of the word "pounding."
..actually, I'll qualify what I just said. I don't think this is true:
"The lack of "wash your hands" signs is a reflection of the (many Japanese call it oppressive) social pressure to conform."
That wasn't my experience at all. Yes, there is absolutely social pressure in Japan to conform. But there is also a powerful inner sense of... for lack of a better word, standards. If someone were to violate those standards, it's not the urge to conformity that comes to the surface, but a real sense of revulsion and/or violation.
The pressure to conform is a real thing - but it doesn't explain everything about Japanese culture.
Yes. America has sunk into a kind of authoritarian nightmare, even as most of the populace happily sets off fireworks on the 4th of July as if we still bore any substantial resemblance to the nation founded in 1776. One revealing example: the drug war. The founders would have laughed at the notion that government should "protect" people from consuming whatever they pleased (always, of course, understanding that bad choices can lead to bad results). Today, it takes serious effort to find either a commentator or a regular person who would entertain the possibility that the drug war is impossible to win and causes terrible problems, not to mention being a sink-hole for tax dollars expropriated from a citizenry bled dry by taxes way higher than the colonists fought a war to be free of.
Great point! I'd never thought about it that way.
Awareness buys time, time buys options - until it doesn’t. And in a crisis, time dissipates exponentially.
Isn't this because the U.S. is a mishmash of cultures, and lately our overlords equate "assimilation" of newcomers with intolerance and tyranny? And other things too, including cultural decay, but the former is uniquely American. It is one of those things conservatives always harped on (shaking their fists at the clouds), and we Gen-Xers were taught to scoff at, but it turns out they were right.
"...an increasing fear people have of each other, and a need to control each other, based on this fear. It is a cultural disconnection that is palpable to me, there is something that is badly missing here, and I fear very few of us have ever experienced it personally. So very few of us even recognize that it isn’t here."
Interesting observations about Japanese cultural behaviors.
If there are no laws requiring hand-washing in Japan, but people do it any way, why do you think that might be?
Here's a thought: It's because Japan is a homogenous culture, with cultural training and requirements pounded into each member from birth. In families, in school, in organizations, at work, constantly, Japanese are taught, demonstrated, reinforced, reminded of their place in the society, their obligations and requirements to perform this or that duty or function, or action, and then they face the consequences if they do not perform as required.
There may not be a law requiring hand washing, but the requirement has been pounded into each Japanese since they were born, and their society is ruthless in enforcing such requirements.
Is that better than a law? I don't know, probably.
No offense, but you sound very much like you've been raised in the authoritarian America I am talking about here. Why do you assume "pounded into"? Have you actually spent time in Japan? Have you been around Japanese families? My experience of them is that all of this stuff doesn't get "pounded" into kids, so much as it is just how things are done, and is the water everyone swims in.
"Homongenous" doesn't quite explain it. There are other homongenous cultures that do not have this kind of sensitivity to others, or to the society around them. Japan may not be unique in this regard, but it is very special.
We lived in Japan for 3 years (Okinawa specifically, but also vacationed on the mainland in Tokyo, and on Hokkaido in Sapporo). Their culture is indeed quite different from America's, with their customs/behaviors seemingly borne out of more of an unwritten social contract than any type of rules or laws. They harbor a deep sense of community, and care for one another not out of obligation, but a shared humanity. It's quite beautiful, really.
100%.
Yep, plenty of experience in Japan, and have studied the culture.
Have you? You seem to be wearing rose-colored spectacles.
Not "assuming" anything. Japanese culture "pounds" conformity into kids, from their first social interactions. And the "pounding" continues throughout their life--school, sports, work, family. Rigid conformity is expected in all aspects of Japanese life.
The lack of "wash your hands" signs is a reflection of the (many Japanese call it oppressive) social pressure to conform. Is it a positive? Sure, in some ways. but take off your rose-colored specs, and it's also easy to see negatives.
Nonconformity by Japanese society is punished harshly by social ostracization, and other negative consequences.
"Wa (和) is the Japanese concept of social harmony. It refers to the collective peace and balance of a group — a family, a classroom, a sports team, a workplace. In Japanese society, maintaining wa is a shared responsibility, and children begin learning this principle from the earliest stages of life.
One of the key social skills children develop alongside wa is the ability to kuuki wo yomu (空気を読む) — literally "read the air." This means picking up on unspoken social cues, understanding the mood of a room, and adjusting one's behavior so as not to disrupt group dynamics. For Japanese children, this is not a soft skill; it is an essential life competency taught explicitly through school culture and family habits."
Japanese schools are one of the most powerful socialization environments in the world. From the very first day of preschool, children are immersed in group-oriented routines that reinforce collective responsibility, mutual respect, and shared identity."
"Japanese children are exposed to the cultural value that equates relational harmony with group conformity in schools and at home (Imada, 2012, Kobayashi, 2001, Trommsdorf, 1985). ...studies on school children and adolescents have found that a nonconformist peer is the odd one out among friends (Fukushima, Sharp, & Kobayashi, 2009; Honda et al., 2017, Mino, 2006, Takemura and Takagi, 1988). Japanese children may ostracize a peer who deviates from the group norm about conformity (Mino, 2006). Middle school children who have been bullied tend to make different behavioral choices than their peers when they are asked to go along with their other friends or not (Takemura & Takagi, 1988). Thus, in Japanese social situations, someone who has disturbed relational harmony, such as by opposing what everyone in the group agrees on, pays the price for the deviance."
"Conformity in Japanese people’s minds takes different forms, from small residential groups to corporations at work, and to nationwide associations, but always dictates that people follow everyone else in the organization.
...Examining phenomena such as low worker engagement, karoshi (death by overwork), high middle-age male suicide rates, bullying in school and at work, sex discrimination, hereditary membership in the Diet, and failure to provide adequate protection for whistle-blowers, this book reveals a common structure in Japanese minds: lack of respect for individuality, and the traditional and narrow sense of the world, i.e., Seken."
Everything you say here is true. But none of it is "pounding" in the same sense that, for example, more authoritarian American families, or certainly Chinese families, "pound" things into their children.
A powerful sense of social harmony (and yes, there are positives and negatives to that - believe me I've seen that in Japan) is a very different thing from literally beating kids into submission. That's what happens in many other cultures, and that is the kind of thing I was referring to with my response to your use of the word "pounding."
..actually, I'll qualify what I just said. I don't think this is true:
"The lack of "wash your hands" signs is a reflection of the (many Japanese call it oppressive) social pressure to conform."
That wasn't my experience at all. Yes, there is absolutely social pressure in Japan to conform. But there is also a powerful inner sense of... for lack of a better word, standards. If someone were to violate those standards, it's not the urge to conformity that comes to the surface, but a real sense of revulsion and/or violation.
The pressure to conform is a real thing - but it doesn't explain everything about Japanese culture.