I Think We’re Turning Japanese … I Really Think So

Thoughts on social breakdown and how technology lets people isolate themselves.

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Dear Reader (Including you truly blessed souls who’ve dreamed of listening to Kevin McCarthy for eight straight hours. Congrats on your cowbell moment!), 

Okay, strap in, because we’re going for a ride. Well, you, dear reader, are figuratively going for a ride—I’m literally going for a ride. I’m filing this from a rest stop off I-70 in Somerset, Pennsylvania, en route to Washington state.

Yuval Levin wrote a brilliant piece for The Dispatch earlier this week. Two of our AEI colleagues, Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox, issued a fascinating report on fertility and family formation identifying the centrifugal forces dividing America. It’s worth reading.

“But,” Yuval writes, “I was most struck by something else about the portrait they paint. The report embodies a significant change in how we think about the basic character of social breakdown in America, and what we take to be the obstacles to human flourishing in our time.”

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  1. Joel Dykstra

    Isn't Covid basically following the course of the bacteria in the Andromeda Strain? Michael Crichton saw this coming 50 years ago.

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  2. Very Old Grumpy Guy

    It took me a few days to digest Jonah's thoughts. His assertions are not "wrong", but I was still left with a sense that something was missing from the analysis. After noodling around about what he is saying, I think I have isolated what was unsaid, but needs to be addressed. These identity/victimhood questions all boil down to one question - If I work hard and produce an output valued by my fellow apes, will I be compensated at the market rate? As a pesky clarification - the compensation can take an infinite number of forms - money, prestige, acknowledgment, engagement with my ideas, friends, spouses, etc. I would suggest that most of us would agree that less variance in compensation for identical outputs be perceived as more "fair". I would further assert that fairer compensation leads to a richer society as all of us are motivated to produce - knowing we will be treated fairly. The world will never be 100% fair. It is moving in the direction of fair. However, it is undeniable that this variance in reward is STILL far enough away from fair to be measurable. My point is that there still exist real victims. To deny ALL victimhood is to try and freeze us a profoundly sub-optimal state of the world. The only solution, as it is for all things, is to use logic and critical thinking to make hard distinctions between the false victimhood claimed by elites versus the real victimhood claimed by those with REAL obstacles before them.
    Sure, it is easy to poke fun at the Wokies and their fractured syntax, but isn't the greater crime when a no talent guy like Tucker Carlson, product of boarding schools and finishing schools, makes millions by taking on the role of victim, while throwing immense amounts of gasoline on the identity/victimhood fire? Even "his" ideas are recycled from others with much greater ability. He is a ham actor, appealing to the angriest and most gullible among us. I don't get it.

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    Ben Connelly

    I read articles like this one with great interest, as I agree strongly with the argument Jonah is making and think about these issues a great deal. At the same time, I’ve a long way to go in my own life in avoiding the atomized, lonely, isolated existence Yuval describes. I’m not married (yet) and don’t have children (yet, since I’m not married). Better get to work if I don’t want us to end up like Japan.

    Also, haha some of my friends are into anime and Japanese culture so this gives me something to poke fun at them about. (At the same time I’ve got enormous respect for Japan’s distance running culture.)

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    Julian Yap

    This is what I love about the Dispatch. I disagree with Jonah about maybe 93% of things, but here I think he’s hit the mail on the head. Almost definitionally community cannot survive the atomization of society.

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  5. James B

    My liberal side tells me I’m supposed to disagree with all of this. My centralist side says right on. I need to lie down.

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    Stephanie

    A lot of very interesting thoughts, and I predict the Comments section will be fun to read.

    I don't buy the beer/water dichotomy or association, though. That's just silly.

    Water bottles are ubiquitous--you see them everywhere people get together, while beer can be the preferred beverage of alcoholics who isolate themselves to drown their sorrows.

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  7. Payette

    Good insight, Jonah, into the current fad of transgenderism in teens as social contagion!

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  8. Mary Brownell

    "Indeed, some of the best places in America are governed by Democrats. I’m happy to argue that they vote wrong. But I reject the idea that they aren’t my fellow countrymen." Jonah Goldberg.
    There are many things I muse about as I read Jonah's pieces. He has the habit of making offhand comments, and then not expanding on them, in the middle of a larger topic. This is one of them. So, my musings: What does he mean that some of the best places in America are governed by Democrats? If they are so great, why would he argue that they vote wrong? Does he mean that what makes a place one of "the best places in America" is totally separate from the way it is governed, which seems to me to be determined by the way its citizens vote? If that's the case, why does he write so much about the importance of voting in people he agrees with, the argument seemingly that places will be governed better if the people he agrees with are elected? And "they" are definitely not Democrats, since, even though some of the best places are governed by Democrats, voting for them is wrong?
    I know there are many other more important things that I should be thinking about right now--especially the fact that a large portion of the country thinks Democrats heading up the government is so apocalyptic that we must be ready for the signal to go out and kill them, and another large portion fearing that the crazies will finally succeed in doing away with our representative way of government and this wonderful governed-by-the-rule-of law country we are blessed to live in.
    Once in a while, it's fun to take a break from all that and wonder about what Jonah is talking about.

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      Chris Jenkins

      I think it can simultaneously be true that 1) a large part of what makes a place great is things beyond politics, and 2) that politics and voting are still important.

      San Francisco, for example, is a cool city with a lot of good qualities. However, some things could be improved there if city leadership weren't so uniformly progressive.

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    bitteroot77

    Also, I couldn't help but think of the "The Velocity of Gary".

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    bitteroot77

    Hey Jonah, is the concept of the "velocity of people" enough to to write a book about? Or would it devolve into a self help book? Any suggestions for where to read more about this kind of topic?

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