You can be too careful
I've been thinking a lot about Ryutaro Morimoto's brush with crime the other day, and all the reactions it's brought and is sure to bring in the future. At this point, the reports say he had a confrontation with a stalking, persistent, way-over-the-line "fan," who talked about having a knife and grabbed Ryutaro's phone. Scary stuff, and who hasn't been in a situation where they felt some of that fear?
In an instant, panic can be a lifesaver. You dodge the bullet, the possessed mom lifts a car off her baby, someone leaps to safety from a burning building. You do things you never thought possible, and sometimes a great heroic act, without stopping to think. From what we read in the news, Ryutaro's moment of panic made him run away, a smart reaction.
In the long term, panic leads to bad decisions. You don't make smart choices when everyone's full of emotion, screaming about how "everything's changed" and "you can't be too careful." What usually happens is designed to prevent one bad situation from ever happening again, but hundreds of other bad situations usually crop up as a result.
Should Johnny's Jimusho house all its young performers in dormitories? It would protect them from another crazy stalker, but it would also destroy half their life, with families and friends, the life that 90% of them will go back to after their Johnny's days come to an end. Meanwhile, they'd be raised by their friends and enemies in Johnny's dorms, in an artificial world that might not be any safer than their family neighborhood.
Should kids be driven everywhere? Sure, it gets them away from a subway criminal, but it forces parents to become taxi drivers, for children's lives to be full of schedules and appointments, and it keeps them from learning how to respond on their own to "real world" challenges. A kid on a bike gets to plan his own route, a kid in a car is dozing with an iPod while everyone else plans his life for him.
What I'd do for Ryutaro and all the Johnny's kids is to help them get through this kind of specific situation with their own street smarts and the help of family and the office. Before they sign up, have everyone in the family meet with a senpai and learn about life in the public eye. The office, as part of the deal, should make everyone take a basic self-defense course and offer more ongoing instruction. Get restraining orders and prosecute stalkers who are known to be going over the line. Provide the option of shuttle or taxi service for late night travel. All parents should set limits and keep an eye on what their kids do online and on their cellphones.
But don't let panic rule the decisions. The media thrives on panic and they do their best to fire it up on the news every night. Watch out when people say "in this day and age, you can't..." Human nature is not all that different in this day and age from any other. The number one job for all kids is learning to make their way in the world, not to be "safely" kept away from it.
In an instant, panic can be a lifesaver. You dodge the bullet, the possessed mom lifts a car off her baby, someone leaps to safety from a burning building. You do things you never thought possible, and sometimes a great heroic act, without stopping to think. From what we read in the news, Ryutaro's moment of panic made him run away, a smart reaction.
In the long term, panic leads to bad decisions. You don't make smart choices when everyone's full of emotion, screaming about how "everything's changed" and "you can't be too careful." What usually happens is designed to prevent one bad situation from ever happening again, but hundreds of other bad situations usually crop up as a result.
Should Johnny's Jimusho house all its young performers in dormitories? It would protect them from another crazy stalker, but it would also destroy half their life, with families and friends, the life that 90% of them will go back to after their Johnny's days come to an end. Meanwhile, they'd be raised by their friends and enemies in Johnny's dorms, in an artificial world that might not be any safer than their family neighborhood.
Should kids be driven everywhere? Sure, it gets them away from a subway criminal, but it forces parents to become taxi drivers, for children's lives to be full of schedules and appointments, and it keeps them from learning how to respond on their own to "real world" challenges. A kid on a bike gets to plan his own route, a kid in a car is dozing with an iPod while everyone else plans his life for him.
What I'd do for Ryutaro and all the Johnny's kids is to help them get through this kind of specific situation with their own street smarts and the help of family and the office. Before they sign up, have everyone in the family meet with a senpai and learn about life in the public eye. The office, as part of the deal, should make everyone take a basic self-defense course and offer more ongoing instruction. Get restraining orders and prosecute stalkers who are known to be going over the line. Provide the option of shuttle or taxi service for late night travel. All parents should set limits and keep an eye on what their kids do online and on their cellphones.
But don't let panic rule the decisions. The media thrives on panic and they do their best to fire it up on the news every night. Watch out when people say "in this day and age, you can't..." Human nature is not all that different in this day and age from any other. The number one job for all kids is learning to make their way in the world, not to be "safely" kept away from it.