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Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

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Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not marriage as an institution is biased against males or females (honestly, it seems to be biased against both) I am always astounded by people who see no value whatsoever in marriage. America is practically founded on capitalism. How can you understand specialization & its benefits, and not see how marriage (well, used to) makes use of it? Yes, if marriage was just about pretending "True Love is real, an…

You can "handle things as a team" without bringing into bring into the equation the full force of a modern judiciary system and a stone-age property rights system.

Would you co-found a company without the full force of a modern judiciary system?

Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

#192
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is patent nonsense. Every society has its day in the sun, military or not, and then collapses. The US is doing this as we speak - despite having the most powerful military the world has ever known, and almost spending more on its military than the rest of the world combined. It's been far from peaceful in the timeframe that Europe and Japan have been (several official wars, quite a number of unofficial ones). Fa…

> I'm wondering if you're just trolling - "studied a lot of history" and then saying "exceedingly good relations with China" combined with "japan remilitarises". I don't think you've read enough history there... I tried writing up all the credentials I have that make me have a clear understanding here, but I don't know how to do it without looking snarky. But anyways, today I'm in Beijing, yesterday I was in Hong Kon…

Yes, they are good business partners (and from your link, it appears that China's favourite nation ever is San Marino - a nation of 30k landlocked by Italy).

If Japan remilitarised they would be a credible threat to China and it would be difficult to maintain 'exceedingly good relations'. If Japan remilitarises, the question of any military is "who are our credible threats?", and the answer is "China, predominantly, then Korea". So Japanese remilitarisation would necessarily focus on countering China. The fact it could also fight in Korea would add tension to China's pawn in North Korea.

and more presidents to be former servicemen too?

I don't have numbers for congress, but do for presidents. In the last two presidential elections, 50% of the candidates have been former active servicemen. In one case, the serviceman was defeated by a former National Guardsman, the incumbent who had initiated two wars while in office. This same former active servicemen suffered a significant PR loss due to a character assassination campaign where his wounds in action were deemed "not heavy enough to earn a medal, the guy's a fake".

I'm not sure how your highly selective example of 'decreasing militarism' is satisfied here.

Remember that before WWII, the US had a small military. Since WWII it's been kept large and expanded - the cold war, for example, was brought to an end by the US out-producing it's opponent - and the world is constantly reminded that the US has an army and actively uses it, anywhere, any time.

The US is a much more military-oriented society than it's colleagues. What you're doing is taking the wide outlier (the US) and then saying "it's not highly militarised - see it's not increasing", despite the point that it's already way out there.

Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

#193
post #182

I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions t…

Great theory. Having lived on 3 continents and observed how countries and people behave and reading lots of history -> There might be a lot of truth to what you say. The standard quote about all the peace in Switzerland leading to nothing other than the Cuckoo Clock and all the strife in Italy leading to the Renaissance comes to mind. * As human beings we want to give 'meaning' to our lives and underplay the role gen…

Orson Wells came up with that line in the motion picture _The Third Man_. The screenwriters didn't come up with it. The author of the original novel didn't come up with it either (though he liked it). There was a space of time in the film that needed to be filled, so Orson Wells filled it.

The full quote is:

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love — they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

#194
post #186
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is patent nonsense. Every society has its day in the sun, military or not, and then collapses. The US is doing this as we speak - despite having the most powerful military the world has ever known, and almost spending more on its military than the rest of the world combined. It's been far from peaceful in the timeframe that Europe and Japan have been (several official wars, quite a number of unofficial ones). Fa…

While I don't have an opinion on the theory under discussion, I think the way to read into the OP's definition of 'war' is 'total war', which the US has not been involved in since WW2. The 'total war' part is required for the massive culling that the OP seems to think is needed for a prospering society.

You raise a good point, and I have commented in other forums on the strangeness of the US currently fighting large distant wars with a peacetime economy, which is very expensive.

But if that's the case, isn't the argument then an oxymoron? Total war is a total realignment of society - the society is necessarily broken down and forged afresh. Engaging in total war 'to save a society' necessarily changes that society, often quite profoundly. The total war of WWII made massive social changes when comparing pre- and post-war societies (two big ones were end of colonialism and rising equality of women in developed nations). The society you get at the end of total war is different from the one you may have been trying to preserve.

Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

#195
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we all dream up these world-formulas in the bathtub. Without going deeper into your "analysis" I assure you that there is no single, unifying causality to the effects you describe. I also assure you that my country (germany) has a really bad track-record of listening to guys with "easy answers" whose arguments started out strikingly similar to yours.

> I also assure you that my country (germany) has a really bad track-record of listening to guys with "easy answers" whose arguments started out strikingly similar to yours. Right. That's the whole point - there will be beligerent nations, and pacifist nations will get rolled by them unless they've got a strong ally to bail them out. It was the militant nations (USA, Britain, Russia) that bailed out the appeasement/p…

You claim to have 'studied lots of history' and then claim that the UK 'bailed out the appeasement nations'!? That Russia 'bailed out' the pacifist nations (whatever they were in Europe at the time)

The UK is known as the appeasement nation. 'I hold in my hand a piece of paper' are the immortal words. When someone says 'appeasement', Chamberlain is the guy who comes to mind.

Russia didn't get a choice to bail anyone out - they were invaded, and through dint of favourable geography and stubborn nationalism, they prevailed.

Russia and the UK were both hastily militarising at the end of the '30s in response to rising German militarisation. And in counter to your earlier idea that in order to be more 'military' a society, you have to have more upper-class people in the military: you claim that Russia was a militant nation at that time, despite the Great Purge removing a solid chunk of the officer corps, including most of the top brass.

Keep in mind that even Russia's allies at the start of WWII considered them a backwater military, unsuited for playing with the 'big boys'.

Honestly, your comments read more as if you're just finding ways to support your predetermined conclusions than incorporating things you should have learned from studying lots of history.

Out of curiousity, who do you frame as an 'appeasement/pacifist' nation in the WWII timeframe? Is it just a jab at the early French surrender, you know, the French who weren't pacifist, but were heavily investing in military defense, just the wrong way? Or is it a jab at (I'll give you these for free) Denmark and Norway, neither of which could stand up to the German military machine, even if they were highly militarised? Surely you're not thinking of Poland, which had a strong-but-outdated military? Certainly not Czechoslovakia - that country had been left to the wolves by the countries you claim 'bailed them out'? Sweden and Switzerland were both pacificst... but didn't need bailing out. Perhaps you mean Benelux... but again, you're talking about small countries being steamrollered by a powerful military using never-before-seen tactics (paratroopers and armored spearheads) which was subsequently able to bring a world power to its knees in only a couple of months?

And despite all this, the US was not highly militarised in the period before WWII, when isolationist politics had led to a reduction in the size of the military. All three nations you report had small or underdeveloped armies (two did have very large navies, but it wasn't the navy that defeated Nazi Germany) in the lead-up to WWII.

When you say you've 'studied lots of history', are you actually delving into the actual events and reading about them, or are you just pulling from 'an interest in the populist zeitgeist mythology'?

Yes, there are no easy answers, but that doesn't mean you should skip the reading requirements...

Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

#196
post #110
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assumption is correct, I am European. I don’t feel comfortable to discuss private things in public, but I will state some facts. In my social circle there were 8 marriages between Japanese (all women) and foreigners. 4 ended in the past 3 years and were mainly attributed to different expectations of intimacy. The article http://goo.gl/QlAfx gives a very good description. I am unable to find a reputable source, b…

Japanese don't need/want sex? Surely the Japanese are as horny as the rest of us. You'd have to come up with some pretty convincing data (surveys aren't worth anything when asking questions about sex) to convince me that there is some great difference in libido between Western and Eastern cultures.

The difference could be less in libido and more in the general state one finishes the day. After a series of 12~14h work day for example, you're usually not longing for a night of sex. Now there must be thousands of other possible factors, but it is commonly accepted as a stereotype that 10 or 20 years couple would be sexless.

Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

#197

I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions t…

I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before.

ok, let's hear it.

travel through 60+ countries...study of lots of history.

the anticipation builds....

I think peaceful societies self-destruct.

dude.

a) You obviously haven't read enough history, or you would know this is not a new idea.

b) So if peaceful societies do self-destruct, do warlike societies not self-destruct? Or only the ones that don't lose?

Perhaps you ought to turn your attention from demagoguery to speculative fiction. I'm sure there's a great novel in you about militant nations fighting ritualized wars to keep their edge, while deftly avoiding any real conflict. Add some authentic texture from those 60+ countries, and you'd have a bestseller for sure.

Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

malthusian arguments have been debunked. humans are wealth producing, not destroying.

"Humanity grows exponentially, food production grows linearly" has not been debunked. People have starved in the last few decades, and we barely managed to avoid a widespread catastrophe through a big one-time upgrade to the best farming techniques known. How many other improvements are left before we reach biology's productivity limits? How long until we run low on natural gas to make fertilizer, having long since m…

Almost every case famine during last few decades had to do with some kind of local conflict (e.g. local gangs interfering with delivery of food aid) as opposed to resource shortage. Developed countries produce much more food than they need and then consume it in a very inefficient way. Growing grain and using it to feed livestock as opposed to consuming grain directly is one such example. Earth could comfortably support much large population than we have now.

Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

#199

I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions t…

One of the Roman emperors did this. He ensured there was perpetual war in order to unify Rome.

Also a theme that shows up in 1984.

Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

#200

I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions t…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji6xXqTuJow
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