Articles like this, about just how much Japan can take, is one of the many reasons I find Newsweek an insufferable publication:
The simple fact is that the Japanese archipelago is no stranger to cataclysmic events. Over time, the Japanese have endured more than their share of devastating natural disasters. As a people, they have always coped remarkably well—so well, in fact, we are left wondering if there isn’t something especially resilient about them. In fact, the Japanese are the only people on this planet to fully confront the horror of nuclear destruction, and to survive it. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II has become the archetypal nightmare of our time. Strangely, those events share some striking similarities with the recent compound disaster.
And what is the alternative? Has there ever been a situation in the history of mankind where a people have just declared “F*** it!” and collectively hurled themselves off cliffs? We survive because it beats the alternative. It’s a pretty simple equation and there’s nothing magical about it.
I suppose in the Newsweek world, they could all just up and decide to move somewhere else; that perhaps national despair need not rise to the level of seppuku. But can they name any land mass that doesn’t float on a sea of molten rock? Any place where mother Gaia isn’t regularly hatching schemes to screw the human race? I don’t know if anyone in the Newsweek newsroom has noticed, but we live on a planet that’s been trying to kill us most of our evolutionary history. How much can the Japanese take? How much can anyone take? People will survive because they want to live. Only Newsweek could make news out of something this trite.
Interesting you would use the hurling off a cliff metaphor. The Japanese did say F-it during the battle of Siapan and a bunch of civilians hurled themselves off cliffs.
Honor told them better to die by suicide than be captured by the enemy. I’m not sure if you were intending to tie that reference or not, but I did kick my head to the side when I read it.
I am aware of that tendency, but it’s just the idea that people have a choice other than enduring hardship. Pretty much the only choice is to kill yourself or move. If there’s one thing that seems to be true about people, we don’t seem to evacuate places that are dangerous.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully sympathize with what you’re saying. You either adapt and overcome or you get run over by the train and die. It’s as if people some how think there’s a third option while forgetting history doesn’t record those who are run over.
As for moving out of dangerous places, there’s no place that is really 100% safe, though some have more risk than others. Some have less risk each place has it’s own dangers and you need to prepare and mitigate them as best as possible. Getting hit by a tornado when you live in tornado alley though will not get you sympathy points from me. Just live in a retired missile silo, you’ll be fine.
That is not to say there are situations where evacuation isn’t warranted. Like building near Pompey, who really thinks that’s a good idea?
Has there ever been a situation in the history of mankind where a people have just declared “F*** it!†and collectively hurled themselves off cliffs?
November 4, 2008, United States of America.
Zing!
Adapt, migrate, or die. Pretty basic concept of biology.
Actually, I believe it was the Japanese who quite literally did throw themselves off of a cliff in large numbers toward the end of WW2.
…..but you make an excellent point otherwise…..
Considering what Communists did to their own countries during the 20th Century, killing over 100 million people, it’s laughable to say Japan has suffered disproportionately. Compared to Cambodia? And then of course there is the Shoah.
I think the real point Newsweek was trying to make by bringing up the nuking of Japan, was to knock America. They can’t help themselves, since the liberal instinct is to disdain America.
“In fact, the Japanese are the only people on this planet to fully confront the horror of nuclear destruction, and to survive it. ”
Actually many Japanese people didn’t survive when they “fully confronted the horror of nuclear destruction”.
“In fact, the peaceful, innocent Japanese are the only people on this planet to fully confront the horror of nuclear destruction brought upon by evil capitalist Americans, and to survive it. â€
There, I fixed it for them. That is what they meant to say.
“Has there ever been a situation in the history of mankind where a people have just declared “F*** it!†and collectively hurled themselves off cliffs?”
Yes, many, many times throughout history–from Masada to Jonestown. My grandfather got to see it in person (the aftermath I am told) at Saipan (according to my grandmother, he never said a word).
The problem is that the progressives want us all to join them in their longing for suicide.
I’m not talking about groups of people here and there, I mean to say an entire group of people that we call, say, Japanese, collectively decided to kill themselves because it was just too hard to keep living.
The Bushido code made it too hard for some Japanese to continue living during War II, but I don’t think any group has just done themselves significantly on the basis of life being hard, to include people whose towns were bombed to pieces by other people.
Weenies of the Newsweek type are not surivors by nature, I suspect. They are the people who lay down and die in the wilderness, or sit on a curb when a hurricane is coming, because someone else will be by any minute to pluck them out of whatever doodoo they found themselves in. Self-reliance is too great a burden.