Original link: https://codechina.org/2022/10/low/
In 2015, the famous Japanese writer Omae Kenichi wrote a book called “Low Desire Society”.
Purchase link: https://u.jd.com/kdI8hSS
If you have the heart, you will find that Japanese writers and many concepts of Japanese society in the past 20 years have been continuously exported to our country. Concepts such as otaku, old age, low desire, etc. are all exported from Japan. On the one hand, the reason is that Japan’s animation and TV drama industries are very prosperous, and there is a lot of entertainment content that is popular with young people in mainland China.
On the other hand, if you think about it carefully, you will find that China and Japan have a lot of cultural affinity, and they are both called the East Asian Confucian Cultural Circle. In some respects, Japan is more ancient than China. At the same time, Japan’s economy took off 20 years earlier than ours. When we were still immersed in the madness of the Cultural Revolution, Japan had already begun to recover and become developed.
In the past 20 years, under the pressure of population and various factors, various trends of thought and phenomena have occurred after Japan stepped down from the economic altar. If we look closely, our development is very similar to that of Japan.
Before the 7th census, I had articles and comments that China’s population growth would follow the footsteps of Japan. But most people don’t believe it. On the one hand, many people are blindly confident in our system’s superiority, thinking that as long as the government wants to arrest the population, it can definitely go up. On the other hand, many people have not felt the real population data.
And today, most believe that the decline of the population is unstoppable. At this time, we will have more confidence and basis to observe the phenomenon in Japan.
The low-desire society has actually begun to appear in China a long time ago.
It’s just that our names are different. We call it lying flat, we call it the Buddhist system, and we call it the last generation. Lying flat is a low desire for struggle, Buddhism is a low desire for consumption, and the last generation is a low desire for reproduction.
The reasons are comprehensive. On the one hand, before Japan entered a low-desire society, the level of social development has reached a certain standard. The situation in Europe is similar, with benefits reaching a certain level. Many people will find that the period of rapid economic growth has passed, and it is very difficult to get rich overnight. There is not much difference between active efforts and welfare.
In addition, when the economy was highly developed and the bubble peaked, many people pursued real estate and investment. In the process of economic decline, some real estate even became negative assets, leaving many people in debt for life. This also makes many young people today do not want to pursue real estate. The rent-and-occupancy rights in developed countries have also caused many people to be inactive about buying real estate.
When human beings are under the greatest pressure to survive, they often choose to have multiple births in order to maximize the probability of continuing their genes. However, they are not active in having children after they are satisfied with food and clothing, and they invest more in education and parenting. Now there are even seriously unreasonable high costs of education and parenting, but the actual results are not necessarily satisfactory.
I myself am an example of a low desire life.
Between the ages of 30 and 40, I probably started a business twice, and when the business was good, the income was high. Also began to spend extravagantly. Later, after I failed to start my own business, I went through a very depressed time and was under great financial pressure. So I started to reflect on what exactly I needed. After really reflecting, I found that although I have some requirements for life, the requirements are not high.
These reflections made me decide to go back to Tianjin and prepare to go to Japan in the future .
In the more than a year since I returned to Tianjin, I experienced several severe depression problems, some of which were related to my own health, some related to temporary emotions, and some caused by the national epidemic prevention situation.
All in all, for more than a year, I have been very flat and low desire.
I didn’t travel anywhere because I was worried about being quarantined at the tourist destination. But I don’t even go out of the community and the building gate even a lot of the time. All supplies are takeaway and courier. I don’t even bother to cook.
Everyday life is to lie down, wake up in the morning and choose TV to watch, choose video to watch, then eat melon seeds, watch TV, watch video, and then suddenly feel that it is 12:30 in the evening when I want to do something. Too sleepy to go to sleep. Repeat every day.
The money is not much, except for the more expensive take-out, there is nothing else.
However, the receipts are less, and some accounts payable that should be required are too lazy to rush. Instead, the customer asks me when I will give him an invoice every three days so that he can pay me.
In fact, it is not difficult to keep food and clothing in such an undisturbed manner with my ability.
For more than a year, I actually lived through it like this, lying flat at work, picking up advertisements when there were any, and sometimes just too lazy to talk. The article didn’t write much, and the video didn’t do the same. The Buddhist system treats everything the same, and it is the same for everything. Just take out one that can fill you up, and eat fried rice for a few days in a row, yes, no problem.
In the past month, I have begun to reflect on myself for a long time, and I have begun to slowly update daily.
Start to return to a more normal state.
Yesterday I was chatting with a friend about his recent situation and some of mine. He has been in Japan for a few months now and everything is going well.
And I probably still need 1-2 years to prepare. Talk about a lot of things I’m going to do in Japan, etc.
It made me reflect on the year of low desire living.
In fact, if I don’t want to go to Japan, it’s not difficult for me to have low desires in China all my life. I can write a few articles a month and write a little code. However, what I want to do isn’t. I want to live in Japan, and I want to die in Japan.
Then I still need to spend a lot of money at one time, and I need to live and work in a highly active state for at least a few years to expand the business, so as to ensure a long-term status in Japan.
That’s the problem with living with low desires.
If I’m completely out of ideas I can certainly live with low desires. Living with low desire was fine when I was 60-70, but not today.
It’s cool to lie down for a while, but you don’t know what ideals you have in the future and what goals you need to achieve. Lying flat today and not starving to death is not difficult in modern society. But when you need the money to buy a house, buy a car, immigrate, have a baby, make a big investment, etc., it’s hard.
I still have to get out of the low-desire life state.
Not for this society, but for myself, to have more choices, and to be prepared to deal with those choices.
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