from Diary 2024-11-07 Japanese know Americans.
JICRochelle Many Japanese have asked me, ‘Every American I know is against Trump. Who the hell are these people who support him?’ I say. This information provides an answer to that question. They are people who live outside of urban areas and do not have higher education - people that Japanese people do not often meet. YasLovesTech Here are the top 6 cities with the most Japanese living in the US! Most of them are urban areas in blue states. And NYC and LA account for almost 80% or more of the Japanese living in the U.S.!
The “America” that Japanese people in the US often refer to is almost always NYC or LA. So it’s no surprise that Americans around here are against Trump, lol.
Because that’s the only kind of place I live in.
kenn I’ve been saying this persistently since 2016, but I believe that the current division of society is caused by the elites.
The upper class gathers at schools with high deviation, they don’t go to church, they don’t take the train, they don’t go to parks or even playgrounds that look unsafe. They gather only with people of the same social class.
Confinement to safe zones, represented by gated communities.
They have disappeared from public space, avoiding the fastidious and dirty, covering up the stink, running away from the cacophony. We no longer interact across hierarchies in public space.
No offense by any means, but with the loss of contact across hierarchies, a place of mutual understanding was lost.
I still think that the simple contact effect = mere exposure effect is the biggest factor in “compassion”. What kind of people did you interact with when you were a child? That kind of original experience.
And it is only when we have cross-class relationships as children that we can get the right sense of distance from each other, > leading to the mobility of the social class.
With that in mind, I dared to live in low-income areas in both San Francisco and New York. I even left the Bay Area, which is all tech people and rather undiverse, and moved to Nevada, a swing state.
I’ve stood in line with homeless people to pick up recyclables; I’ve woken up to the sound of gunfire; I’ve stopped a guy trying to steal a huge whole roasted chicken from the supermarket by saying, “You know, you’re going to find out about that anyhow,” and I’ve befriended drug dealers that my roommate had brought in and had sex with and got shot at and I was shown the wounds from a near-death experience.
Well, you don’t have to go that far, but don’t you think this kind of thing is more scary than it needs to be?
This kind of social division is slowly growing as a result of people who can make a good living not coming out of their comfort zone.
If you’re in an environment where the only people in your social circle are college graduates, you should be aware that you’re already quite disconnected from the real world.
I was born and raised in an environment where almost no one around me, including my family and relatives, had a college degree, so of course they were happy when I entered Kyoto University. Therefore, I went to college to say out loud that education does not equal smartness.
How many people are internalizing this kind of feeling right now?
At the very least, I want my children to have the opportunity to encounter all kinds of things. Including ugly and yucky ones. As long as the parents love them. Don’t underestimate the potential of children, and don’t overprotect them.
For a society where people can understand each other beyond class.
kenn This video by Sandel, “abusive principle of meritocracy”. It has everything I want to say here. I urge you to watch it.
kenn ↑This video can be subtitled in Japanese.
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