I don't look back much as a rule
Maybe two or three years back we read a chapter on our japanese textbooks about the future, 30 years from now. Then we had discussion on what we thought the world would be like then. I don't really remember what I talked about in class, or what others said. However, at the end of the school year, we were scheduled to have a 20 minute one on one discussion with sensei about a random topic selected from the textbook chapters we'd read. Mine happened to be the topic of 30 years into the future. I remember telling sensei that I believed mankind would be extinct in 30 years. As reasons I cited global warming and the inevitable melting of polar ice caps and the subsequent rise of ocean water levels. And the alarming popularity of right-wing politics. I suppose right-wing parties had had successes in elections around Europe around the time. Sensei laughed in disbelief first, but saw that I was being serious. When the 20 minutes was up, she told me that she'd given the same topic to eight students before me, and that each had told her that they hadn't really thought about it.
How telling, that in nine people only one has spent any time thinking what the future will hold, and that one person is the pessimist. SO NO WONDER EVERYTHING'S GOING TO HELL, PEOPLE!
At some point it came up with Koushi that I'm leftist. I think it's only natural, since my parents are proletarian, even though I find my own decision to study and not do real work embarrassingly bourgeois. He emailed me to ask whether I disapproved of his choice of occupation, seeing as investment banking is pretty much the ugly face of capitalism I guess. I told him that I didn't label people according to the work they do, but according to their beliefs. I wrote back, "It's just a job. But if you tell me welfare budgets should be cut, we have a problem.". He assured me that while he's interested in building capital he's always admired the Nordic welfare system. And he seemed strangely happy.
How telling, that in nine people only one has spent any time thinking what the future will hold, and that one person is the pessimist. SO NO WONDER EVERYTHING'S GOING TO HELL, PEOPLE!
At some point it came up with Koushi that I'm leftist. I think it's only natural, since my parents are proletarian, even though I find my own decision to study and not do real work embarrassingly bourgeois. He emailed me to ask whether I disapproved of his choice of occupation, seeing as investment banking is pretty much the ugly face of capitalism I guess. I told him that I didn't label people according to the work they do, but according to their beliefs. I wrote back, "It's just a job. But if you tell me welfare budgets should be cut, we have a problem.". He assured me that while he's interested in building capital he's always admired the Nordic welfare system. And he seemed strangely happy.