[Kaijo]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

I don't know what you're smoking, but I'm sure I could make money selling it.

Individuality is the exact opposite of America's problems right now. The dumbing-down of the populace. Groupthink. Mob mentality. Conformism. These are all bigger problems in America, which are also present in Japan (only worse).

If you're talking about "individuality" in the teabagger argument, "SCREW YOU, I GOT MINE" well, that's not actually individuality. That's insane, almost sociopathic levels of greed.

America needs more individuality. We need more people who think for themselves, who don't just follow the herd, who don't just vote Republican or vote Democrat, who don't just blindly recite Bible verses in hopes they'll avoid an eternity of hellfire and brimstone. People who express their opinions without fear, without shame, and without feeling the urge to conform to some societal norm in hopes that they aren't demonized or ostracized.

You misunderstand my point. In the scale of "individual vs. group" America does lean hard on the individual side.

Perhaps you haven't realized it for yourself, but I played an MMO called Final Fantasy XI for a number of years. There, we were intermixed with a large Japanese community, and the difference between Japanese guilds and western guilds was very stark in a number of ways. You used to sit around, waiting to join a party in order to level up. When a group was formed, and you had the tank, healer, and damage you needed, as well as the right jobs for what you planned to hunt, you went out and started killing things. If the group was bad, and thus xp was poor, western people would quit the group immediately, leaving the other members in the lurch. Japanese groups would, on the other hand, keep the group together for an hour or two, no matter how bad it was, before the leader finally called it a day. Japanese players (on the whole), would not abandon a group over their interests. Western players would.

When a guild would go hunting big game with rare loot, that required a large guild to do, there were differences yet again. In western guilds, people would frequently get upset over who got the rare loot, and quit the guild because of it. Even people who got the rare loot would, much of the time, quit the guild once they got what they wanted. Japanese people in guilds, however, generally wouldn't. They'd put up with a lot of crap, all in the name of the group. Whatever was good for the group, was their motto.

THAT is what I am talking about, and you probably wouldn't know, unless you regularly gamed with the Japanese population. You think we have groupthink? You don't know anything.

Yes, we have people in the US that join groups and follow the herd... but you'll still hear them demanding stuff, saying, "This is what WE want!" Even in a group, there is a strong sense of individualism, and if the group starts heading somewhere someone doesn't like, they'll end up quitting the group and perhaps forming or joining another one. We essentially have many groups, functioning as individualistic entities demanding things. Japanese people don't (and I'm being a bit stereotypical here on both sides, since this is on average). To them, the group is more important than the self. That means you don't speak up if the group does something you don't like. You be damn careful about asking anything for yourself, instead relying on general social conventions to eventually have people swing something your way.

Since you haven't had that much experience with a Japanese population, syn, you probably don't realize the degrees of difference. But trust me, there is a world of difference. Anime is, in a lot of case, the exceptions. There we have individuals speaking up and becoming the heroes, and this is the fantasy that attracts individuals in Japan to watching anime and reading manga. Their fantasy is being an individual. When we read it, our fantasy is more focused on having the powers or being in a fantastic world.

Yet, you can still catch glimpses in it, if you really watch anime and read manga. Once your eyes are open to it, you'll start seeing that "Group is more important than me" attitude. If I had a nickel for every time I heard/read one anime/manga character go, "Are you alright? Do you want something?" and the other goes, "No no, I'm fine, don't worry about it" despite the fact that the audience knows the second character dearly wants something, I'd be a rich man.

I get what you're saying, Syn, but we are really talking about different things.

Also, to clarify, yes, I know not all of Japan is like this, and they have individuals, too. These are only general statements from a society-at-large standpoint.

For a film on these concepts, I'd recommend Gung Ho which details an American plant being taken over by a Japanese company. In it, one Japanese guy remains a work, even though his wife is giving birth, because the good of the company is more important. It is this attitude of "Group more than me" that gets Japanese doing insane things like spending a full week at work, never leaving except maybe on the weekends to take a shower. One of the main Japanese characters has, as his growing point, when he begins to adopt more American ideals.