Rowdy things and wrong things

Been a while, lots of reading been keeping me busy. So we had World festival recently. And the universities various clubs and organizations have been hosting weeks. As in China week, Indonesia week, Okinawa week ect. 

These involved mainly dancing and food. Can’t say I really got into it. For example I went to an Indonesian week event to support a friendly who was performing. It got so Rowdy and noisy I had to excuse myself. This is a pattern I see a lot here, that an event with an artistic aspect (dance or music)  is deliberately made into something rowdy. I don’t know if this is simply because of the large proportion of students here who are young or if this is particular to this university. I guess we must have parties in my uni back home, I wouldn’t be surprised if this element is more a function of University Dorm life more generally.

More generally the level of academia her is truly horrifying. I don’t understand how so many humans are able to so incapable academically and intellectually at such a grown up age, I mean this in the sense that I struggle to digest what I see and hear. A Professor who teaches here speaks of 3^rd year university students who have never written an essay and other similar levels of inadequacy. And you see it in the students: mass negligence that is not comparable to the small amount of absenteeism existent in my university back home.
Discussing the education system with people here is quite interesting. It makes me wonder to what extent education experts are aware of the need to regulate education culture as well as incentive structures. But back to the stories:

Turns out it is quite standard for a person to do a degree in IR or what-have-you and then go work in something completely disconnected, such as a pharmaceutical company. This is not so much because the person is unable to find a job in IR but rather because in order to get A Job it is a requirement to have gone to university. It is viewed as a sort of endurance test. The company provides training on the job. I may or may not have spoken about the very little thought that is given to one’s marks here, much more attention is given on resumes, at least according to the universal consensus of several people I have spoken to, to extracurricular activities. So there are many clubs on campus and many ways to work within university organized bodies which do things like manage floor meeting and host events. This is the way people think to make themselves stand out, rather than by marks. Not completely foreign to us but the extent is the point of dissimilarity.

Another recent story exposes another difference. A Pilipino teacher was in a Japanese culture class and started telling the class about how when he was young he was rather ill and his grandmother preformed a healing ritual and consequently it was discovered what was harming him. He then asked if anyone in the class if feeling unwell. A girl said she did, he calls her up. So he pulls out the candles, puts on music and attaches a bandana to his head and does a healing ritual. Turns out she felt ill because on the way to class she walked by a plant and disturbed its spirit and consequently the plant spirit made her ill. *Sigh… I will keep the long rant against barbarian superstitions and in support of Western Civilization to another day. I spoke to a professor here and it turns out this is no aberration. In the classroom a professor may teach whatever he wishes. “the classroom is his kingdom”. This explains some of the strange stuff some lecturers felt comfortable referencing in classes and the occasional thick roots back to their own research areas. So lack of regulation lead to more divergence in outcome – but there is a cultural factor too. No lack of regulation would have made students in Australia put up with THAT.

after hearing this story I shared it with a nearby Japanese girl, for emotional reasons. She did not appear to see the problem. she spoke of tolerance towards people’s beliefs and all that jazz.  At some point during the conversation, where mostly I was rather calm all things considered, she said a sentence I have never heard before in my life. “I do not like critical thinking”. I was astonished and slightly disgusted but there was nobody else there to share in my shock and horror. I asked her why. “because it is mean.” It actually had a very emotional effect on me. I did not think I could be upset the opinions of irrelevant beings anymore.

This attitude is perhaps rather strong in this girl and perhaps more bluntly articulated than in others but it is certainly not the exception in this place, this is the rule. It is so common here that a western girl who has been here for a while has commented that my critical/ judgemental attitude in class is a refreshing western exception. Needless to say, I much prefer the critical thinking and intellectual discourse of the PPE Society cohort to this culture.

Aside from this series of unfortunate events I delivered an 8.5min long 5min presentation on the influence of the internet on political discourse (half of those due did not even present). The gardeners still wear hardhats. The announcement telling non-university residents to clear the premises still sounds off in Japanese and English every day at 9:50pm and my sleep schedule is still as messed up as the seniority-wage system in Japan.

on circumventing the traditional risks of sharing sensitive information

First off, funny story:

>sitting in a restaurant with humans

>3 Muslims in the group with us

> girl with a black Hijab (a bit hard to miss) looks at Manu, frowns

>”is there anything here without pork?” she asks the waitress

> waitress seemed confused about what the girl asked. Clarification? *Mumble mumble*

>after a bit of  confused conversation the waitress finally asks an amazing question:

>”do you want a meal with pork or without pork?” 

Anyhow, there was a girl I know who was unhappy recently because she shared a piece of information with another girl with the agreement  and the girl would in turn keep this information to herself. Unfortunately for the first girl the second girl did not keep her word and shared the information with a party that seemed to be pretty high on the list of parties that the first girl did not want to receive the information. I daresay this is not an uncommon human problem.

I will save you the whole conversation but here is what I think might work to reduce the chances of this occurring in the future:

 a significant factor in why humans share information they want to remain hidden is the emotional discomfort removed by sharing personal and sensitive pieces of information. humans, as social creatures, struggle, for the most part, to eliminate this discomfort without sharing the information with another human.  As such it is attempted to assess, using social skills, whether or not a given human, one wishes to confine in, is trustworthy. If the assessor thinks the person is sufficiently trustworthy he/ she will take the risk and share the secret with them. As economists would know costs can come in form of risks of a negative occurrences in the future rather than a guaranteed and steady price. The problem here is obvious: imperfect information, humans don’t always accurately determine who will handle sensitive information appropriately.

Relying on Social Skills makes sense if one lives as humans have for most of human history: with little contact with people in faraway lands and spending most of their time with one social group. However if the piece of information refers to a specific social dilemma or involves a specific social group it seems to me the last person you want to trust is someone who knows that social group. If you have the freedom to do so: confine in someone from a different social group. Even more effectively, one could speak to a person in a foreign land who has no convenient way to break their pact with you by sharing the information with anyone who 1) knows who you are or 2) would truly bother you if they found out this information about a person they are likely never to meet.

This is obviously ineffective for some secrets, like ones involving serious criminal offences, but in the case of the girl in question this was probably not the case. This technique would seem to me to be more feasible in this day and age than in any other. We have numerous occasions to meet people from radically different social circles with a chance of basically 0 of meeting exactly the person/ people you don’t want to hear the specific secret and an even lower chance of discovering they both know you. This method shouldn’t even, generally speaking, need to be implemented instead of the traditional defence mechanism of assessing trustworthiness using Social Skills, one could use the simultaneously.

People with access to diverse friendship circles with little contact with one another are obviously at an advantage here. Migrants with contactable friends from their birth nation who have skype, people who study in a uni far away from their high school friends, people with friendships with foreigners, people from hobby groups and close relationships with family would be at an advantage here. So it’s a judgement call to what extent you want to apply this in your own life. However, it seems rather reasonable to me, given this opportunity given to us by our modern lifestyle, to at least consider utilizing it rather than thoughtlessly using the traditional, and somewhat instinctive, method utilizing Social Skills alone when easing emotional burdens by sharing sensitive information.