The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed

#171

Post by irishcoffee » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:21 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #79

irishcoffee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more interesting question is: how has one traversed their entire life up to gainful employment and has no friends? This seems to be the more telling question.

There are several ways this can happen. A person can be at school and have a small number of friends. They then leave to go to college and lose those friends. They may make a few more friends at college. They then leave college and go to work - and again they lose their friends. Once you're at work it is hard for some people to male friends. This isn't a new or unusual point of view. We freqently hear about how lonel…

> Some people just struggle to make and keep friends.

That was my point. Why?

Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed

#172

Post by unabst » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 7:33 AM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #153

unabst wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how limited is society based on collectivism, obedience and hard work. So you are implying a society based on independence, rebellion, and slacking would do better at treating its elderly? Whether a culture cares for its elders only has to do whether they care for their elders, and in Japan they do. Making any other association is racism. The fact is only because they care have they associated a dreadful term "lone…

In every culture or country, the elderly will have a higher chance to live alone than the population in general, simply because they spouses have died. I thought that was pretty logical, and unavoidable. Again, the article in question did not tell much about the very old people. 60 year old man with a heart condition? In a country where life expectancy at birth for males is 81.13 years? He wasn't old at all, he could…

> It is simply about how people are systematically depressed and feel lost, having worked for industrial super-machine their whole life - a machine which is now gone

This has nothing to do with the youth caring for the lone elderly. That is what this story is about. There is no story in the US not because the elderly aren't dying alone, but because the youth don't care. And more are dying in the US. And plenty are dying everywhere.

Just because a culture made a reputation for itself as hard working and obedient it does not follow that there is systematic depression. If you don't care to highlight the real cause of this completely separate problem, then you are just racist.

Also, many who are dying in their 80s and 90s retired long ago. There are even stories of working elders happier and healthier for having the motivation and exercise they otherwise would not have. Japanese work ethic has nothing to do with this story or with your drawn bigoted conclusions.

Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed

#173

Post by polarix » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:39 AM UTC

cousin_it wrote: post #134

polarix wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds insanely dystopian to me, for the fact that any member of that society is viscerally dependent on others -- anyone who claims to value freedom needs to think again. Being needed is crucially instrumental toward controlling one's own experience in the current environment. But why would it ever be a terminal value?

If it's only an instrumental value, how do you work around it? Put people in holodecks and give them illusions of loving friends? Or modify people's minds to make them content with not having any loving friends, because they already have guaranteed food/shelter/entertainment? I think many people wouldn't agree to either of those alternatives. They want to "actually" have someone who cares about them, whatever that me…

They might be given that kind of control without their will.

Sorry to get all Jed-McKenna-Theory-Of-Everything here, but no being has proof that they are not in such a situation. In fact it is arguably the only consistent possibility.

Expect that pure power would eventually (partially) allow itself to experience a situation without the ability to recall its own construction of that situation. (Imagining temporal bounds for that situation can be a helpful way of thinking about it from the human perspective, but of course temporality is a construction within the limited frame rather than something inherent.)

Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed

#174

Post by polarix » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:40 AM UTC

reagency wrote: post #150

polarix wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds insanely dystopian to me, for the fact that any member of that society is viscerally dependent on others -- anyone who claims to value freedom needs to think again. Being needed is crucially instrumental toward controlling one's own experience in the current environment. But why would it ever be a terminal value?

Why should freedom be a terminal value? Freedom is an instrument to attain your goals, not a goal in itself. A rock has freedom.

That is the right question.