Harvesting my pineapple …and other stuff

I think that you’ll feel better after you get a bit older and don’t feel you need to justify your choices to anyone but yourself. Sometimes doing something light and fun for people is as much a service as giving a homeless person a meal. Making people happy increases the chances that they’ll interact positively with other people. That being said, it is, of course, matters of degree and probability. Clearly, if you help an unfortunate person directly, you’re having a greater impact than making people happy who may or may not then go out and be nicer to people and spread their positive state. It’s like pressing a thousand tiny levers and sending out one volt rather than pressing one big lever and sending out a thousand. That one volt may or may not make a difference, but the thousand definitely will.

Also, as you have said, there is a process of learning your craft and you have to start somewhere. You also have to get recognition and that’s unfortunately, going to be more likely by offering up frivolous content than meaningful content. There’s a reason there are so many gaijin monkeys in Japan and few serious educators.

If you can, when you talk to Arudou Debito, I’d love to know how he feels about all of the foreigners who defend racism in Japan and what he believes motivates this (all too common) tendency to turn on those who are enduring the same difficulties as oneself and to support those who are mistreating others.

2 Responses

Orchid64 says:

June 1, 2009 at 3:35 pm

I think that you’ll feel better after you get a bit older and don’t feel you need to justify your choices to anyone but yourself. Sometimes doing something light and fun for people is as much a service as giving a homeless person a meal. Making people happy increases the chances that they’ll interact positively with other people. That being said, it is, of course, matters of degree and probability. Clearly, if you help an unfortunate person directly, you’re having a greater impact than making people happy who may or may not then go out and be nicer to people and spread their positive state. It’s like pressing a thousand tiny levers and sending out one volt rather than pressing one big lever and sending out a thousand. That one volt may or may not make a difference, but the thousand definitely will.

Also, as you have said, there is a process of learning your craft and you have to start somewhere. You also have to get recognition and that’s unfortunately, going to be more likely by offering up frivolous content than meaningful content. There’s a reason there are so many gaijin monkeys in Japan and few serious educators.

If you can, when you talk to Arudou Debito, I’d love to know how he feels about all of the foreigners who defend racism in Japan and what he believes motivates this (all too common) tendency to turn on those who are enduring the same difficulties as oneself and to support those who are mistreating others.
1. joseph tame says:
  
  June 1, 2009 at 10:01 pm
  
  Thanks for your comment Orchid64
  
  I often used to feel that I had to justify my actions to others. It’s rare these days, and I’m not sure where the pressure came from this time. I think it was partly a justification to myself. For the record.
  
  Looking at the statistics for podcast downloads, it’s clear that the most popular episode was the one about the hostess. Lowest common denominator.
  
  I have made a note of your question for Debito.