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Notes -
I. On Self Esteem, or How Do You Compare with Your Same Sex Parent?
A year or two ago, I watched a video that I found interesting. It said that one of the main factors of self esteem was how we compare ourselves to our same sex parent. (Which is to say, how a man compares himself to his father, or how a woman compares herself to her mother.) If someone is doing much better than their same sex parent, they are much more likely to have positive self esteem than if they are doing worse than their parent. I have thought about this a lot and I found it really insightful when looking at my own self esteem and that of other people I know in my life.
My father passed away at the end of 2021. He was kind, patient, funny, charming, and the sort of person who others are drawn to and liked to talk with. But he had some demons as well. He always hated his parents to a degree that I could never understand. My grandparents were always kind to me. As a child I once accidentally broke a door to one of their cabinets and I was terrified that my grandpa was going to hurt me because I knew my father hated him so much. But my grandfather simply fixed the cabinet door and forgave me. Why did my father hate his father so much? Well, I don’t think I’ll ever really know entirely since they’re both gone, and you can never really know everything about the people closest to you. But I imagine that my father resented the success of my grandfather compared to his own failings. Crucially, my father was the fifth and the last in his line of 5 generations in our family business. My grandfather sold the family business to a corporation in the 1980s. My father, in his anger, left the business at the time, resentful of my grandfather. I think this seriously affected the self esteem of my father and he spent several years not speaking with my grandparents- I did not see my grandparents for probably 6 or 7 years of my life, until my senior year of high school when they reached out to my mom (my parents divorced when I was young) who took me to see them. My father had other problems as well which affected me negatively.
When he died, I had to come to terms with the reality of who he was. I no longer had to lie to myself about the sort of person who he was, I became free to remember fondly the good parts of him and negatively about the bad. Early in the grieving process, when I finally let myself realize the bad parts of him, I was really annoyed with him, irritated that he couldn’t have been a better person and father to me and my brother. But since then I’ve grown to accept him for who he was and really see it as a blessing in disguise: I can always compare myself to him and see that I’m doing better than he was able to do.
II. France
France is the most beautiful place in the world. I have visited France more than any other country outside of my own (The US.) It is easily the most photogenic place: every time I see pictures I have taken of Mt. St. Michel or the chateaus of the Loire Valley I am shocked at how beautiful they are and that I have been there and that they’re still over there, just being gorgeous, as life marches on around them.
But France is also a strange place. All that beauty, but it’s all in the past. Stray a few streets outside any well preserved medieval village, or stunning baroque or rococo era neighborhood or city center, and suddenly you’re surrounded by some of the ugliest architecture in the world. One of the ugliest places I’ve ever been is a roadside hotel in Brittany. The new build exterior is a series of white and gray and fluorescent yellow rectangles with tiny square windows that barely open. The way this architecture stands in stark relief to the class, elegance, and beauty of the past is glaring.
So what went wrong in France? I put the height of French beauty and elegance around the time of Louis XIV, the Sun King. Versailles is an incredible monument to the capability of humans. How could Louis XV and Louis XVI compare to this? These were clearly men standing in the shadows of giants. The 19th century was tumultuous for the French, but they still managed to produce beaux-arts (itself mostly reproductions of baroque and Rococo style, but beautiful nonetheless.) The belle époque, and the art nouveau, of the late 1800s up until World War I was the last gasp of greatness of the French civilization. It would be so convenient for me to place the end of French greatness at the end of the Ancient Régime but really, the decline began decades before, and the French people managed some greatness after that.
But post WWI? There were some moments of glamour in the 1980s, but besides that, France today is living in the shadow of itself.
An aside. I briefly dated a very cute French guy in France. We were looking at the city from afar, and he said he wished he could tear down all the new buildings and just leave the old ones. This is probably a bourgeois and classist sort of opinion to have in France, but really I agree with him. Contrast this with someone I dated in Vienna. He was from Dresden, a city I’ve never visited but suffered greatly from WW2 and apparently is filled with rather utilitarian buildings now. We were visiting some beautiful baroque palace in Vienna, walking the gardens and enjoying all the splendor you’d expect from a baroque palace. Then he points at some medieval support wall, and tells me that he prefers the medieval support structure to the elegance of the palace. Uncharitably, this is the sort of opinion you adopt when you are looking for points for intellect. I preferred the French guy.
III. Japan
Growing up, Japan was the land of the future. Sci fi vistas of skyscrapers and neon lights, hyperfast bullet trains, they were already on Playstation 7 when America just got Playstation 2. It’s still like that today, right?
Sadly, no. Japan’s economy and culture exploded during the early 20th century, culminating finally in the bubble economy of the 1980s. The rapid wealth the Japanese amassed in such a short time is unparalleled to this day. For nearly a century, every Japanese generation greatly improved their standard of living from the one before it. Then the bubble burst and the country has faced stagnation since the 90s. The population is extremely old, and you feel it in the streets. Showa era cafes without a single change since the 60s are strangely common. These are charming, in a very surreal way. Crustless egg salad sandwiches eaten with melon soda floats are delicious but go against every food trend and nutritional guideline of the past 30 years at least. Really I’m glad they exist, and it’s very comforting to know that there’s a place in the world where tradition can be kept alive with such thoughtfulness and attention to detail. But there is also something that feels very wrong about these places.
Being in Japan today feels like witnessing the end of a civilization. It feels like it’s going through what France must have been going through a hundred years ago. Tokyo, only a few decades ago the center of East Asian youth culture, feels like a creaking behemoth. Shinjuku Station, one of the scariest places I’ve ever been, is an exercise in absurdity. Five separate train companies run trains through 53 platforms in the heart of a city of over 14 million people. You can imagine how this gets built in the chaos of the 20th century but it’s patently ridiculous with the technology and capabilities of the 21st century. Everything in the country feels like it was an exciting idea in the 20th century. The youthful energy of the Showa era is gone.
IV. Thailand and South Korea
Chiang Mai, a city of 1.2 million in northern Thailand, feels more vibrant and exciting than Tokyo today. They have 4 modern shopping malls with extremely good, extremely affordable food and shopping options, and countless day and night markets with even cheaper food and shopping. People are optimistic about the future and seem proud of their work and way of life. They still have some catching up to do in terms of health and building standards compared to the rich countries of the old world, but it feels like they’ll get there sooner rather than later. It seems like there’s more opportunity and willingness to hustle among the Thai people than the Japanese. And the highly functional economy of Thailand seems to spur innovation at a much higher degree than today’s Japan, Europe, or the US for that matter.
I am not nearly as well read about Korean history as I am about Japanese history. I have spent about 2 months in Seoul. The main difference that strikes me about South Korea compared with Japan is that South Korea seems to have modernized much more recently than Japan has. In Seoul, you will notice that older people above 50 or so are significantly shorter than younger people. It’s apparent that famine and food insecurity is within living memory for the South Koreans. But South Korea feels like the only country that is truly living in the 21st century. The food is plentiful and nutritious. Young people are healthy and attractive. Technology is cutting edge. Spaces are clean and well designed. People speak really good English. Shopping in Tokyo, you feel suffocated by outdated trends and ancient traditions. In Seoul, shopping feels like you’re touching the future. Apparently the population decline is bad and they have North Korea looming as a constant threat but if anything it gives the culture a fighting spirit that other rich countries have lacked since WWII.
V. The USA
France has already experienced decline. Japan is rapidly declining today. Thailand and South Korea are on their way up. Where does that leave the US? To put it shortly, I don’t know.
As an American it’s difficult to pinpoint where exactly the US is at. I am from a rust belt town in the US. The town I am from peaked with oil money in the Victorian era. There are still glamorous mansions and downtown buildings built around the turn of the century, some of them in great shape, others not so much. Different cities in the rust belt have fared differently since the Victorian era- some of them boomed during the 60s, some of them have just declined, and others have recently been having a bit of a resurgence (especially from people leaving bigger neighboring cities. I suspect there’s been a white flight 2.0 since 2020 but I haven’t been able to find stats backing this up.)
But outside of the rust belt, how is America doing? Let’s look from West to East. Hawaii is beautiful. How sustainable is American power projection in Hawaii? I have been there only for a few weeks, but in that short time I gathered that native Hawaiians are broadly hostile to the American government. Downtown Honolulu was surprisingly sketchy to me (especially Chinatown.) I was there in 2022- huge swaths of tourist industries seem to have shut down around the time of Covid. (I suspect a lot of this was also a victim of the identity politics of the late 2010s- white tourists buying native Hawaiian culture isn’t very woke etc.) Besides that, Hawaii is a very expensive place- the cost disease of the American economy can’t be overlooked. I have broadly the same impression of California from my short time in LA as I do of Hawaii- both are beautiful places with great weather but with a possibly unsustainable culture whose most vital energy is in the past.
I spent a lot of time in New York from around 2010 to 2019. It was the closest megacity to where I grew up so it attracted me as a young and ambitious person. But the city begins to wear on you. It’s really degrading to witness so much filth and extremes of human behavior. It is such an outlier that I hesitate to draw any conclusions about the state of America from the city of New York, but I think the rot is broadly the same across all the major Northeastern cities of the US, from Cleveland and Erie to Baltimore and DC. If I had to put a pin on it, I would say that the Northeast is in decline, but seems to attract enough talent, money and innovation to keep things current.
The South is much more pleasant than the North. If you grew up in the North, you are raised to hate southerners and their culture, but basically this is because the north are haughty and arrogant. People in the south are polite and respectful in a way that the north has not been in decades, if ever.
Speaking of respect, this is the central issue of American culture that I am going to try to tease out. Respect has completely been lost in the realm of public life in the northern, eastern and midwestern US. People constantly interrupt each other. We do not listen to each other. People in the north act confused when I respond to the things they are saying rather than giving a short and flippant response. Being in France taught me the value of listening to others and having patience. There were times when I was in France, when I would go from having a strained but polite interaction, to suddenly having the interaction turn very rude. I didn’t understand what I was doing, but I eventually realized that I was cutting them off, talking over them, which is very rude in French society. In turn I realized that this is very rude in every society, we just get used to it in some cultures. The Northeast is the absolute worst in terms of disrespecting other people and once you have been away from it it is shocking and demoralizing to witness again. Extreme displays of behavior from "Karens" may go viral but they're just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the ambient level of rude interactions all the time in American culture today.
Circling back to the self esteem point I opened with. There are trends on civilizational scales that we can look at. Fortunes go up, people are excited, they create great things. Fortunes go down, people feel worse about themselves, they create fewer great things. Where does the US fall in this? The vibes are telling me we’re in the decline stage. The boomers in my life are poorer and less married and successful than my grandparents’ generation. My grandparents and great aunts and uncles all drove clean elegant cars and kept tidy homes. The generation of my parents and their siblings are still working well into their 60s, dress slovenly or like people much younger than they actually are, and seem to lack the confidence in themselves to rightfully command the respect that they imagine they deserve from those around them. The baby boom generation seems to be the first generation since the 1930s to be doing worse than their parents. Gen X and Millennials seem to be continuing the trend broadly. I anticipate decades of decline based on this trend alone.
I was reading along fine until your critique of Japan, which I found rather superficial. You may be right that Japan is in decline, at least according to your own metrics. But I don't feel the ways you suggest can be felt when you're eating the egg sandwiches and milling through Shinjuku station. But then I'm in Kansai. Nothing feels wrong to me about the old men in Mah Jong parlors or the Komeda Coffee chains that actually spell coffee in kanji (珈琲), at which point you know you're not in Starbucks. To me, these places are amazing. Old men in old men coffee shops, grandma playing ground golf in the fenced in area beside the rice paddy -- these are people living their lives--and, crucially, living their lives socially--not rotting in front of a mobile phone. Or at least not yet.
I've spent less time in France, but when I was there, in particular when I was in Paris, I had less of a transcendent experience than you seem to have had in other areas. And when I return to the US I find myself typically in a constant state of wonder and affection for almost everyone I speak to--generally interaction is the key. I can easily despise randos I never talk to.
Just a few thoughts. I enjoy effort posts almost always even when I disagree with the vibe.
I'm glad you shared your thoughts regarding Japan, thank you! I know you live there as I've read posts from you before. I don't doubt that you have a more intimate knowledge of the country and culture than I do (myself having spent only about 5 months in the country on three separate trips between 2007 and 2022). I probably came across as more harsh and critical than I meant to. I really like Japan a lot. The kissaten and mah jong parlors are amazing to me too, but undoubtedly signals of stagnation. It's actually deeply respectful and cool in a way- I wish the rust belt city I grew up in kept its own culture alive to with the same affection and attention to detail that Japan is doing.
And on the other hand, I don't actually always have a transcendent experience of France. I mentioned that I've been there more than any other country outside my own which is true but I don't really know why. The social mores are opaque and exhausting to me. Every time I leave the country I feel relief that I don't have to worry about pissing off a shopkeeper without understanding what I did. But all of that is true even while the positive things I said about it are also true.
Glad you enjoyed my post, thanks for engaging!
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