More Bulls**t

spirit is as palpable to me as wood.
creativity, imagination, dreams.
i couldnt live without them, and i dont udnerstand how anyone esle could either.
 
Danny,

All of a sudden, Hatsumi's comments about being a "UFO" make sense...

John
 
It has been true that during the last century American ideas were made better by the Japanese. So what is creativity?

America is a land where crude English is spoken, and test scores are falling. The pop music scene has been regurgitating successful formulas since they were 'standardized' in the 80's. High achievment is put down by the peer group in schools. Tell me, where is all this original thought?

In our way, we are just as conformist as the Japanese. We pay lip service, our cultural denial, that we are individualists. But real "Individualism' is just as hard, and just as hated here as anywhere.

I think you see too much of the surface in Japan. Remember- humans are far more alike than different. The 'tea' ceremony never could have been created in the US- the small subtleties lost on us. Japanese conformity was probably neccesary in a small island for food distribution. And as our World gets smaller- see how individual rights disapear in a similar fashion. Look at the facist arrogance of the PC movement - of mass conformity.

There is a pride in being American- from all the patents and inventions made here. Those inventions will occur other places too. We had our time. Now we eat at McDonalds.

I think talk of 'dead souls' arrogant and very young. I don't mean offense by that. Look at Ferrous- he see's dead souls in the industry around him in the City. That's an adolescent view point to me. That is a view of my generation- and it has left a mark on those following. If you want to see the truth of what I'm saying now, you only have to look at the ads on TV pandering to a selfish, 'individualist' point of view, that actually does not exist. I think we 'feel' we are more individual than we actually are.

Just as famous words have been written about being alive and free while in prison, so we are alive and free even though Japanese, or a clerk shuffling paper for a financial institution here.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation was written here in the US.

and as my Father once said- "How many people do you think get to be Rock Musicians?" (as if that brand of conformity defined freedom any better.)

There are real problems in Japanese society, and I'm glad I wasn't born into them. But there are real problems everywhere.

I've noticed on this forum a tendency to believe the 'good guys' are here and many of the sins of the outside not present. That's just a small society, the Us against Them. So we have 'dead souls' in Japan and in the American inner city- but not us, man, not us.


munk
 
Munk,
I understand what you are saying. I do.
I didnt imagine this stuff before I moved here.
First they popped my bubble and stripped me of my rose colored glasses and then forced me to see things clearly over here.
I dont blame the people themselves.
I blame the culture and the government which propogates it.

The Japanese have NOT invented much. They certainly didnt invent the tea ceremony or any of "their" martial arts.
Almost all of those institutions were invented in India, expanded in China and Korea and finally ended up in Japan.

The subtlety you allude to is certainly a part of those traditional arts, but it is not a part of Japanese culture and only the masters of those arts seem to really appreciate it.

Subtlety is something they WANT their people to value, so thats what they tell people in other countries that they value, hoping it will become the truth.
They do the same about their kids and their schools, about their science, etc.
they spend far more on telling us how good it is than they actually spend on making it good.

Its a charade, man.
I am not a child and I know the difference between people with that spark of life and hope and people without it.
I go to school and students and teachers all have those fallen faces we normally only see at funerals.

It is true that life in America can dull the spirit, usually it happens after marriage and children have forced one into a pattern of repititous work for some years.
Over here, the kids get that glazed look in elementary school.

My students all want to work for the city government.
I asked them why.
they said "Cause well never get fired and we dont have to think too much."

When those Japanese people were kidnapped in Iraq and released. I told my mother "they wont want to come home."
Sure enough, they didnt.
Any real life is better than none, I suppose.

ps - Lets ask Sleiman, he has lived here for a while.
 
Sleiman wouldn't change my mind Danny, if you could not.

I'm really sorry to hear this. In all fairness, there should be a protaganist of the culture here. There are some respected HI forumites from Japan, perhaps one of them might offer a view. Japan's skill was refinement, I thought, not invention. If the world except Japan ended, I suspect they'd find the inventiveness to survive. That's what genes and people are.

You could just as easily come to America and find us all ignorant slobs.

I've also heard the Culture in Japan is changing- true?

Hey- Yoko Ono came from Japan....er uh.....

You may be observing the death of a society-

munk
 
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