From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sat 26 Oct 2002 - 19:18:55 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com>
> Isolation is relative. Are you familiar with docomo, the telephone system
> that all kids in Japan seem to be tuned in to?
Grant,
I see and understand your point here, no doubt about that, but I do think
the picture is not that simple I suppose !
The way in those kids isolate themselves, as I undestand it, they don 't
even search contact with the outside world, is quite of a different order
of the one you refer to !
Staying for two years in your room just playing video games !?
In the program Phil Rees mentioned that hospitals just opened
their doors for those who needed help, thus IMO before that time
there was no help, moreover, they blocked the issue completely out.
As to the point that kids have a network to phone eachother and
talk about these things, ok I can agree on that, but not on the fact
that everyone would talk about it.
The question of being the smartest, be the best, be better than all
the rest, those Crammer schools,... the whole issue of competition
within Japanese society let me think that if a kid or kids won 't
show up at school that neither his/ her classmates, or even the
board would give a damn. Just another drop- out, just another
failure, just another who fails society and our culture...and every-
body shuts up, no phone, no discourse, no information leaks out.
In the program not a single one example was in anyway asked
by the local auhories, by the police, by teachers or by friends
for that matter to come back to school, neither a single autho-
rity forced those kids out of their room.
They all kept quiet and did nothing and that is the fact !
In memetic terms, the memes of the ones who did isolate
themselves in their room were lost, were driven out, have
no survival- value whatsoever, the memes of the ones who
can handle the competition, the stress and the social/ cultural
pressure survive and propagate.
In other words, the memes of the formers ' protected ' their
host before he/ she was total lost to a total mental failure, by
which they the memes, would certainly die with him/ her and
in the way of the latter, memes didn 't give a sh.. about the
others....
Oh, yeh, that wasn 't mentioned in the paper, ' they ' think
about 1. 200. 000 kids / youngsters are ' infected ' with this
condition....
If we take the telephone- issue serious, hikikomori must be
the talk of the town and IMO is wasn 't and it still isn 't !
Regards,
Kenneth
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