As a Civilization Declines
Has it already been 7 months since I wrote about Japan’s demographic time bomb? How time flies when you’re “having fun.”
The previous posts focused on the future impact of a civilization that’d killed off a significant percentage of its children, and the children it did produce weren’t interested in reproducing. The net result was an inverted population economic pyramid, where there were more significantly more elderly people that needed care and provisioning as compared to younger, energetic workers that would generate economic activity, taxes, and so provide a means to care for their elders. That members of the workforce are required to retire at age 60 doesn’t help maintain economic activity either.
In the time since then I’ve come across some articles which describe aspects of modern-day Japan as its population contracts, people abandon the rural areas, and how society’s oldest people are not only left to fend for themselves, they have little if any contact with their neighbors.
The seriousness of this lack of social interaction is that people with good relations with their neighbors were more likely to be “rescued” if they suffered an accident or something else happened as compared elderly that either had no family members or their family lived more than a mere 15 minutes walking distance away.
The elderly who die alone are termed “Kodokushi”, which literally means “lonely death.” Such people die alone and unnoticed, and their passing can go unnoticed for weeks, or even years. What is even more eyebrow-raising is that every year an estimated 30,000 Japanese citizens leave this world in this manner. For many of these people that survived WW II and then helped rebuild Japan to meet such a horribly undignified end of life is saddening to say the least.
Why is this happening? Because the traditional Japanese three-generational structure of the home is breaking down, and the resulting caregiving burden is more than many families can bear. With no families to take care of them, over 420K elderly people are waiting for nursing home spots in the hopes they’ll find care there.
On a less solemn note, there’s a humorous side effect of Japan’s population drop – which has left upwards of 10,000 towns and villages without anyone to populate them. One such town struggling with a declining and aging population is Nagoro, home of Tsukimi Ayano who returned from Osaka to take care of her aging father. At 65, she’s one of the younger residents of the village – if you don’t count the multitude of scarecrows she’s created and placed in various locations around the village.
Even though it closed to human use two years ago, school’s still “in” for these creations:
Originally created to scare crows away from her radishes, Ayano started making and positioning her creations in various parts of the village to remind her or people that used to live there and the things they did when they were alive and well.
Carly Fiorina
Carly makes a sensible case for feminism that’s defined as “Women making their own choices”, responds to a question that asserts Christians can’t be strong leaders, and finishes with abortion.
Following is a interview at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, where she delivers an epic one-liner:
Politics is a fact free zone.
U.N. Goes off the Rails in the Name of “Equality”
Now feminism is no longer enough – equality is the new goal, and that means the gov’t now has to dictate how people run their own households.
From the video:
Women are all strong, intelligent and independent people who don’t need no man. Now sit back hear all about how men need to give women preferential treatment, a leg up or lower standards so they can be equal. I guess I was doing equality wrong all this time by treating people as equals. Thanks feminism!
Quote of the Day
I found this little gem on “Hot Alpha Female”
God gave women intuition and femininity.
Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I’ve ever met.
~Farrah Fawcett
Women have an innate power that comes with their gender, and any woman that owns that power and knows how to use it has more power than any “equal” woman trying to act like a man.
Follow the University Money to the Liberal Diversity Nirvana
In prior installments of this blog I documented how Liberal Bias was killing university programs, and in The Insanity of Student Loans I posited that the epic windfall of money being funneled to the University system via forgiven student loans had hints of something subversive, or even a conspiracy.
Today, I’m here to document more information to support what looks like an ongoing indoctrination of students of higher education in the name of a favorite liberal touchstone of “diversity”. The attached video documents an explosion of “diversity” personnel at the various University of California campuses, each with massive incomes, with even larger bodies of junior bureaucrats, who’re lowering admission standards in order to get students with the desired “diversity” qualities to justify the existence of these large programs.
Conspiracy?
Indoctrination?
An ongoing attack on the underpinnings of what makes this country great?
I’ll leave it to you to decide….in the meantime, enjoy the video.
The Psychology of “He Said, She Said”
Dr.Carol Taviris lectures on just about every issue related to sexual assault, the nature of consent, and how people in “he said, she said” situations can mis-communicate intent (or refusal) and mis-remember what happened “after the fact.”
A very informative and interesting video, well wroth the time.
What is a Feminist Woman?
Ever wonder what a feminist woman was like and couldn’t quite put your finger on it? Well, wonder no more!
Schooling Internet Trolls
Baseball legend Curt Schilling recently tweeted congratulated to his daughter Gabby Schilling on getting admitted to University and joining the school baseball team.
Some young men with less sense than brains tweeted vulgar obscenities about what they’d do to his daughter when she got there.
Except this time, they picked on the wrong Dad’s daughter. As Curt wrote in his blog:
No less than 7 of the clowns who sent vile or worse tweets are athletes playing college sports.
I knew every name and school, sport and position, of every one of them in less than an hour. The ones that didn’t play sports were just as easy to locate.
I’ve kept every tweet like the ones above.
Tweeting can be done for fun and amusement, to make a political statement, or communicate any other message you have to the outside world. However, always remember that “the internet” never forgets anything. And often what you do on-line can have serious real-life consequences.
In Curt Schilling’s case, within a short time one of Gabby’s detractors had been fired from his job, another was suspended by his fraternity and under police investigation, and Curt had turned “the internet” on the rest of the tweeters to “out” them.
Here’s another example Curt gave of a street rapper confronts internet gangster for talking garbage about his music. (Warning for language).
As a demonstration that being an internet “tough-guy” has no correlation with street smarts, MMA fighter Josh “The Dentist” Neer invited an internet troll to a fight – and the idiot agreed! You can see what happened next here. From other sources, this kind of uninformed bravado is all too common.
On a more positive note, some “troll confrontations” can turn out positive – like this case where writer Lindy West wrote about a troll that posed as her deceased father, and got a heart-felt apology as a result.
And last but not least, Sweden even has a reality show about confronting internet trolls.
My advice is – treat people on-line the way you’d treat them in person, only be extra courteous because “the internet” is watching you.
Walter Williams: Suffer No Fools
From the Vimeo page:
On the major social and political issues of our time, Walter Williams is one of America’s most important and provocative thinkers. He is Black, yet he opposes affirmative action. He believes that the Civil Rights Act was a major error; the minimum wage actually creates unemployment, and occupational and business licensure and industry regulation work against minorities and others in American business.
Tracing Walter Williams’ rise from a child of the Philadelphia housing projects to become one of America’s most important authors and commentators, Walter Williams: Suffer No Fools explores Williams’ belief that “Black people cannot make great progress until they understand the economic system.”
The video’s about an hour long, and worth the watching.
A Northern Observer 
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