Saturday 27 May 2006

Pic of the day: Questions that are more important than what you earn... at least for the young.

The anime generation

The thing about anime is that it is cute. Parents may say that cute is not very useful, or that it doesn't pay the bills. The grandparent generation might have said that cute never won any wars.

Each generation has its own thing that influences the values of most people in that generation. The grandparent generation lived in the shadow of the war: First the world war, then the cold war. It was a harsh time and everybody was familiar with fear, but they soldiered on, as a fitting expression says.

For my own generation, born to the reconstruction of the world, key words are "useful" and "money". The fear of the cold war was abstract and remote, always on but never quite real: War and death were images on a screen, where it was hard to tell apart the horror of explosions in the news and the fun of explosions in movies. It was a nightmare we could close off, for the most part, and concentrate on what we could do anything about: Improving the here and now.

We grew up in an age where money was the thing that limited our dreams. In a way this was our parents' world: They had experienced poverty, at least by our standards, a time when you could not have meat for dinner every day. That age was fading, but we were molded by it. While hunger and cold were not really a problem, living in a small cramped apartment or tiny old house frequently was. I remember when we got an electric washing machine. I remember when we got a car. I remember our first FM radio. Getting new things opened doors in our lives, made it possible to do things we could not do before, or put an end to hard tiresome manual work. It is no wonder our generation fell in love with money.

The next generation was born into riches, by the standards of all who lived before them. Sure, money still helps make dreams real... if your dreams are really small. For the most part, though, it only gives you more of the same. You get a bigger house, but the same people live in it doing the same things. You get a faster car, but you are not allowed to drive faster. There is no point in saving (or borrowing) for a personal helicopters, since you are not allowed to fly it where you want to go. You can buy a new sofa but all you get is the latest trend in colors and shapes... it can still only be used to sit in, and it's not really any more comfortable than the old. Only the computers and mobile phones and such can do more and more things as you buy the newest model. And even that is meeting the law of diminishing return lately.

We will probably continue on the path we were set until death puts us out of the misery we don't even see. But the next generation is different from us. They are still a greedy bunch, perhaps more so than we. To them, money is "of course". Having plenty is a human right. But it is not a goal.

You may be familiar with Maslow and his "hierarchy of needs". This is something like that, except I don't quite agree with Maslow. (Flattering as it might be to do so, since his "self-actualized person" is eerily similar to me.) I think he's got some things wrong, or perhaps just ignored the diversity of human character. Be that as it may, his point still stands: If you have your basic needs filled, you won't just stand there and enjoy the bliss. You will at once, automatically, discover new needs and start chasing them. This is what the new generation is doing.

Some of the needs not fulfilled by the Useful society are social. Humans are social creatures, some more than others. While you can buy some esteem with money, it is generally seen as crude and primitive. Being valued for accomplishment is so much more gratifying. The new generation will often spend an inordinate amount of time on useless hobbies; but look closer, and you will see that in their group of friends – their subculture, if you want – they are contributing something that is valued by their peers. This not only gives them positive feedback, which is probably what most newcomers think of when we say "social needs". But perhaps even more important, it makes them feel useful. It gives them positive feedback from their own conscience or some such inner voice. Once you have thanked them a few times, they will start thanking themselves.

The anime-watching youths have two facets: One is developing their own culture of sharing, the other is protesting against the previous culture of usefulness. The central quality of anime and manga is cuteness, which is a kind of distilled childishness. The anime characters have big faces, big eyes and small mouths, all baby-like traits. They tend to move and act with extreme energy, kinda like toddlers going full throttle. And they spend an inordinate amount of time and energy on useless things... and so do the people who watch them.

The anime generation is opposing Useful by going to the other extreme, much like their parent generation in its youth opposed War by doing other extreme things. (Flower Power, anyone? Make Love Not War?) And because Useful is the adult world, anime characters never quite grow up. Even the adults look (and frequently act) childish. Even their gods are immature.

Like children, the new generation lives in a world where money is something that just happens. Of course they know better, but they don't like it, and they downplay it. In a typical higs school anime, for instance, the main character lives alone in a moderately large house, or possibly together with a sister. Their parents are living abroad for some contrived reason, and presumably sending money. Occasionally the parents are dead but the life insurance or nest egg still makes money no problem. Even if there is no parental support at all, the teenager somehow manages to earn money, for instance by programming, enough to have his own home. Money is not really a problem for these people. It is kinda like running water... you only notice it if it isn't there.

The new generation does not really expect to go through life without getting a job (despite the growing number of 30-year-olds living with their parents). They just expect the job to be an extension of their hobbies. That they'll be paid is a given, it is not really a point of interest. If they seek status from their job, they want it directly, not by affording bling and a big car. If they can't get a job they like, they'll take temporary jobs as needed to pay the rent and buy the occasional computer, but whenever they can they will work less and live more.

Of course not everyone is like that. And not everyone is watching anime either, except in Japan. But it is definitely a growing trend. And one that I welcome. I believe that we as a society have reached the standard of material comfort we need, and even exceeded it, because we were conditioned to think that more is better. If you can't afford food, then earning more money is definitely better. If you don't sleep well because you can't afford a real bed, if you can't have kids because you live in one cramped room, earning more will surely make you happy. But if your problem is that you are unable to form lasting friendships, or that you don't understand what love really is, then perhaps you should cut down on overtime and watch some anime. Because that's what these usually are about. Relationships with other people, and with ourselves. What we really are, defined by what we choose, not by what we earn.