Made in Japan, Outsourced Globally

(i wonder what it is with the Aerosmith references recently...)

I'm reading a rather depressing series of books lately about murders, torture, teen suicides, child-abuse, elderly-abuse, clinical depression... all in the family. There's something dark about human nature that draws you to something so terrible. Gruesome. Raw.

Although the book is fiction, it digs deeply into the dark side of the human psyche. The accumulation of abuse (physically or verbally) can push someone so far to the edge that destructs themselves and others. The stabbing incident in Zion, IL - that's real. Every time I turn on the Japanese news or read the papers, there is some story of abuse, abandonment, and family killing each other.

You would think that wealthy First World countries are on its way to building better lifestyles. But we are confronted with a set of new social ills. Sometimes there is a tendency to reprimandl ourselves, "we are not dying of hunger, civil wars, and Third World diseases. I have a roof over my head, a civil society, and means to earn my daily bread. I shouldn't be complaining about the way we live." In my opinion, it is exactly that mentality that misses the point and permisses the suffering to fall through the crack. There is no hierarchy in suffering.

A year ago, I had a discussion with my uncle, who is an elementary school principal in Japan. I asked him why there is an increase in these child abandonment and abuse issues in Japan today. He answered, "the mothers are losing the natural instincts. The instincts that every living creature has in reproducing, caring, and nurturing their offspring has thinned out in todays' society. We are losing that raw and rough instinct to survive." Of course, it's not that simple, but I believe that he speaks from experience. Some of the cases are so horrible that you cannot believe that a human is capable of such crimes (e.g. - mother scalding babies (numerous times) because they cried too much; 15-year old smashing his father's skull with a metal baseball bat; middle-school kid stabbing his teacher with a butterfly knife because he was scolded and humiliated publicly).

It all seems distant, but it's not. Sometimes I sigh in relief, knowing that I survived from that environment and found my haven. But events in the past week have indicated that creating and maintaining a family, civil society, and a good world lies in tremendous effort we put into our daily lives. Simple yet important.