Nearly Half of All Japanese Are Entering Their 30s As Virgins

Some people seem to think that America is Unbreakable and that no amount of cultural and political undermining can destroy it. This is the secret assumption behind so many conservatives' blase attitude about the choice we faced in November 2016, and the challenges we still face.

They may talk in apocalyptic terms when it's time to shill for a dashed-off book, but they don't actually believe it.

Some of us, on the other hand, see cultures and civilizations as very mortal thing. Feed them enough poison, stab them enough times, and they will die.

I'm not Japanese and not a follower of the Japanese Art Scene like Kurt Eichenwald. So I have no idea -- not even an out-of-my-ass speculation -- about what cultural apocalypse befell Japan to turn it from a nation of Samurai into a nation of boys who are literally afraid of girls.

But these things can happen.

And it would behoove conservatives who speak in dire terms about "crises" in civilizations to actually act as if they halfway believe that rapid degeneration of a civilization is not only possible, but fairly commonplace, in the days in between having to hustle publicity for a product they're selling to the rubes.

Nearly half of Japanese people are entering their 30s without any sexual experience, according to new research.

The country is facing a steep population decline as a growing number of youngsters abstain from sex and avoid romantic relationships.

Some men claimed they "find women scary" as a poll found that 43 per cent of people aged 18 to 34 from the island nation say they are virgins.

One woman, when asked why they think 64 per cent of people in the same age group are not in relationships, said she thought men "cannot be bothered" to ask the opposite sex on dates because it was easier to watch internet porn.

The number of births dropped below one million in Japan for the first time last year, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

The fertility crisis has left politicians scratching their heads as to why youngsters are not having more sex.

Comedian Ano Matsui, 26, told the BBC: "I don't have self-confidence. I was never popular among the girls.

"Once I asked a girl out but she said no. That traumatised me.

"We are afraid of being rejected. So we spend time doing hobbies like animation.

"I hate myself, but there is nothing I can do about it."

Japan seems to me to be very unlike the US, so I doubt that whatever cultural dysfunction is causing this is also causing the dysfunction in America.

But it could be related syndrome with different particulars as to the cause -- loss of confidence and vitality equals decline in risk-taking, including the most basic biological risk-taking of courtship, marriage, and childbirth.

Can't happen here?

It already has, and it's happened to such a degree that even the National Laughingstock has noticed.

The United States is in the midst of what some worry is a baby crisis. The number of women giving birth has been declining for years and just hit a historic low. If the trend continues — and experts disagree on whether it will — the country could face economic and cultural turmoil.

According to provisional 2016 population data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday, the number of births fell 1 percent from a year earlier, bringing the general fertility rate to 62.0 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. The trend is being driven by a decline in birthrates for teens and 20-somethings. The birthrate for women in their 30s and 40s increased — but not enough to make up for the lower numbers in their younger peers.

A country's birthrate is among the most important measures of demographic health. The number needs to be within a certain range, called the “replacement level,” to keep a population stable so that it neither grows nor shrinks. If too low, there's a danger that we wouldn't be able to replace the aging workforce and have enough tax revenue to keep the economy stable.

All civilizations seem to become victims of their own success, as cushy settings tend to rob the civilization of the very things -- grit, energy, daring -- that made them cushy spots in the first place.

Part of that seems inevitable, but part of that also seems to be exacerbated by the sort of decadence of culture that prosperity produces. Bad times make great art, they say, and good times makes for... nummy art. Comfy art. #FakeEdgyArt. Art that pretends to be challenging while being about as challenging to its intended audience as a scratch-made artisinal Twinkie.

And apart from art, when the commanding heights are captured by a fundamentally frivolous, soft, and decadent class of civilization-wasters, civilization-arsonists, the values they transmit and hypnotize the hinterlands with are the exact opposite of the values their civilization-building forebears transmitted.

Moral exhaustion -- and to be honest I mean the less-moral morals like energy, grit, industry, and dynamism -- soon becomes demographic exhaustion, and finally, civilizational collapse.

But O! The fun TwitterGamez we'll play as it all comes down, huh?

Like I say: a lot of the #ProfessionalConservatives describe the nation fairly accurately as one beset by very serious perils caused largely by an anti-life, anti-human, anti-joy, anti-soul, anti-spirit, anti-mind quasi religious cult spread by elite institutions when they have Product to Push, but in between peddling books, they tell us that Lord Humungous is a reasonable man who can be bartered with.

How fast can it all change?

Well, consider this: How many people in Weimar Germany -- enjoying sexual freedom, avant-garde art, as well as high levels of education and appreciation of classical arts as well -- would have guessed that within 15 years their country would be ruled by a crazed psychopath subscribing to a neopagan mysticism and murdering millions of civilians to achieve his weird dream of becoming an Aryan Race God?

Sure, Germany was suffering a post-war psychological wound a mile wide and sure they had resentments against the French and the bankers for their reparations. And sure, Germany, like many other countries, had a long history of anti-semitism.

But who could have, or would have, predicted in 1925 that within 13 years one of the most skilled labor forces, one of the most scientifically-gifted nations, one of the most educated and cultured nations, would declare war on most of the world and all of human decency and become a genocidal abattoir?

Few would have. Hitler wrote about it, but few believed him.

Things can change fast. I cannot tell you what will change or when it will change, but I can guarantee you, with 95% certainty, that things will in fact change, and probably a lot faster than you expected, and probably in ways that will alarm you.

The saps, the rubes, the marks at the table are the conservatives-without-imagination (even the imagination of simply picking up a history book -- a document of things which have already happened -- and asking the basic question: Could this happen again?) who can only conceive of futures that look astonishingly just like today, but with more Quality Premium Cable Programming Options.

Civilizational bankruptcy is like individual bankruptcy: It happens slowly, and then all at once. You can go through a period of denial, but that stops when the bank's agents start carrying off your furniture.

posted by Ace at 06:45 PM

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