Agree. A sad development. A nation in need of psychotherapy. Other nations are different. Consider the item below on Japan. This was sent offline by Karen to some Japanophiles. I have taken the liberty of posting article only to FW. Thanks Karen.
------------------ Never Lost, but Found Daily: Japanese Honesty By Norimitsu Onishi, NYT International, January 08, 2004 TOKYO, Jan. 7 - Anywhere else perhaps, a shiny cellphone fallen on the backseat of a taxi, a nondescript umbrella left leaning against a subway door, a wad of cash dropped on a sidewalk, would be lost forever, the owners resigned to the vicissitudes of big city life. But here in Tokyo, with 8 million people in the city and 33 million in the metropolitan area, these items and thousands more would probably find their way to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Lost and Found Center. In a four-story warehouse, hundreds of thousands of lost objects are meticulously catalogued according to the date and location of discovery, and the information put in a database. Smaller lost-and-found centers exist all over Japan, based on a 1,300-year-old system that long preceded Japan's unification as a nation and its urbanization. More recently, it has apparently survived an economic slump that has contributed to the general rise in crime. Consider that in 2002 people found and brought to the Tokyo center $23 million in cash, 72 percent of which was returned to the owners, once they had persuaded the police it was theirs. About 19 percent of it went to the finders after no one claimed the money for half a year. If the original owner is not found after half a year, the finder can claim the object or money. But most finders don't bother making any claims, and the objects and proceeds usually end up going to the Tokyo government. Hitomi Sasaki, 24, sporting a suntan and a nose-pierce, found $250 in a tray under a plant outside the restaurant where she works. "I always hand in something I find, like purses," said Ms. Sasaki, who had come to claim the money after waiting half a year. "I imagine that a person might be in trouble, losing money or a purse." "I used to live in Chicago, so I can tell you how wonderful this is," she said. "Inside the center, I saw a woman come to pick up an umbrella today. Only for an umbrella. It's something almost impossible to imagine in other cities in the world." Children are taught from early on to hand in anything they find to the police in their neighborhoods. So most of the 200 to 300 people who come to the center every day take the system for granted, as did Tatsuya Kozu, 27, who had just retrieved his leather business card case. "I'm glad," he said. "I just dropped by here to pick it up, since my office is nearby." On a recent morning, shelves were heaving under bags containing lost items that spoke of the rhythms of commuting life: keys, glasses, wallets, cellphones, bags. A small bicycle helmet with "Suzuki" on it and a toy horse testified perhaps to a child's fickleness. Skis and golf bags attested perhaps less to misplacement than to an abandoned hobby; unclaimed wedding bands perhaps spoke of the end of something larger. Wheelchairs and crutches were harder to explain, though Nobuo Hasuda, 54, and Hitoshi Shitara, 47, veteran officials of the lost-and-found system, had well-rehearsed lines. "I wonder what happened to the owners," Mr. Shitara said. Mr. Hasuda said with a smile, "If they didn't need them anymore because they got better, it's a good thing." One floor was a sea of umbrellas, the most commonly lost item - 330,000 in 2002, or 3,200 for every good rainfall - and, at a rate of 0.3 percent, the least reclaimed. The low rate is an indication of how rapidly Japan has grown rich in the span of a few generations. "In the past," Mr. Shitara said, "one person barely had one umbrella, or a family had to share one. So your father scolded you if you lost an umbrella." Everything changes. Mr. Hasuda remembered that at a local lost-and-found center decades ago, people brought in cabbages, radishes, oranges and other vegetables and fruit they had found. Because the products would spoil, the police sold them at a bargain to the finders. Nowadays, fearing contamination, the authorities immediately dispose of any food. The item with the highest return rate - 75 percent - is the cellphone, which has flooded the center in the last three years. Owners typically call their own phones, or the center traces the owners through their subscription and sends a notification postcard. The lost-and-found property system dates to a code written in the year 718, according to Hideo Fukunaga, a former police official who wrote a book on the subject, "Notes on the Law on Lost Property." Back then, lost goods, animals and, mysteriously, servants had to be handed over to a government official within five days of being found. After a year, the government took over the belongings, though the owner could still reclaim them. The code stipulated that people had no right to keep lumber found adrift in a flood. In the 18th century, finders were given more rights and were rewarded with a certain value of the found property. Finders who did not hand in objects were severely punished. According to Mr. Fukunaga's book, in 1733 two officials who kept a parcel of clothing were led around town and executed. A new law was created in the late 19th century and then reformed most recently in 1958. Currently, a finder must hand in an object to the authorities within seven days, or lose the right to a reward or ownership. In the case of lost money, if the original owner is found, the finder has the right to claim 5 to 20 percent of the sum, though usually it is 10 percent. Today, the authorities are thinking of ways to update the system by creating an Internet listing of the items at all lost-and-found centers nationwide, or at least those in Tokyo. The system's survival, though, will depend less on technology than on simple honesty. Last June, Tsutomu Hirahaya, 55, a photographer, found 13,000 yen - about $120 - on a counter at a betting booth. He handed over the money to an employee and left his name and address. A few weeks ago, he received a postcard from the police informing him the cash was his. "I feel uncomfortable holding another person's money," Mr. Hirahaya said "I think many Japanese people feel the same way and hand over something they find. I think among Japanese there's still a sense of community since ancient times." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/international/asia/08LOST.html?ex=10746017 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 11:04 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] Fwd: Land of the Fear [maybe they should try a bit of magnesium...] Fear is driving parents in the United States to strange behaviour By Olga Lorenzo, The Age http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/05/1073267964070.html America, these holidays, has been on a high terror alert. This means that every time you turn on the news, a banner informs you that the terror risk is high. It's like a high fire danger or a high pollen day, but the word used is "terror". People generally acknowledge that there isn't much they can do about the "terror threat" and little prospect that their lives will be touched by terror. They tune out the dire warnings. But one wonders how such emotive words impact on children who, because of their inexperience, are more apt to conclude that the world is a terrifying place. Visiting the United States after having been educated there and leaving two decades ago, some of the more visible cultural changes struck me as bizarre. Our neighbourhood, Hialeah, was a middle to lower-class Anglo suburb of Miami; we were some of its first Cubans. It looks no more or less affluent, only now it's almost entirely Hispanic. Like everyone else, we rode our bicycles or walked alongside the drainage canals to school. Visiting a fairly seedy part of Montmartre before arriving in the States, the streets were thronged at eight, as one would expect, with children on their way to school. Not so in Miami. On a morning jog to my former primary school, I met not a soul. Only when I nearly reached it did I see children who lived within a block of the school walked by parents to its gates. Like other public schools in Florida, the windows of Twin Lakes Elementary are now boarded with aluminium cladding that allows no light, and the school is surrounded by high walls. Inside, where we had played hopscotch and swung from the monkey bars, now children are led to sit on the asphalt. Even those in the upper grades are led by the hand, and many of these children are obese. We had the school "fatty"; now the healthy-looking child is the exception. Many who aren't overweight are pale and overly thin - the nerdy, nervous children who whittle away their hours in front of TVs, computers and electronic games. Going by "terror alerts" emitted by the Government and seized by the media, it would seem that terrorists have succeeded in frightening a nation. Children don't play outside after school as they once did; while we were there, the sounds on our block came from my Australian teenagers. "Why must they be outside?" my mother lamented. "Why not?" I asked. She admitted there was no real reason to keep them in. Yet children are kept in. My brother told me of a girl who was not even allowed to be alone in her fenced backyard. The fear of kidnapping and sexual molestation had overwhelmed her parents' common sense. I walked from my school feeling angry, sad and relieved. Relieved that despite my parents' objections and sorrow I had raised my children in Australia. Sad for those robbed of their freedom and, ultimately, their childhood. And angry because it seems unnecessary - the crime rate has not increased significantly, nor have child abductions. Why then are American children being raised as if they were Muslim women under the Taliban - given so little unsupervised freedom, denied the chance to move about unescorted, to discover that life is not overwhelmingly precarious, that it can be navigated and even trusted? Another day, I jogged to my former junior high school. When I was a student, it was the third most overcrowded middle school in the nation. Our hours were curtailed to allow for two shifts, seven to noon and noon to five. Some classes were in the auditorium, with more than 200 students. It is no longer a two-session school but, from the outside, shuttered and enclosed, it could be a maximum-security prison. Every student has to show identification to the guard at the entrance. It is similar in other places I've visited in the United States. Fewer children walk to school, where there may be a private contract with the county sheriff's office for security. A friend remarked that it was almost always the sad result of an adverse incident: an intruder in a nearby school, for instance, or the Columbine shootings. Parents demand heightened security and schools, worried about lawsuits, respond. Long before September 11, 2001, it seems many children were being raised in an atmosphere of distrust. Although racial tension, drugs and guns disproportionately afflict depressed ghetto areas, even in middle-class neighbourhoods life has changed, with emphasis on the potential threats that children face every day. Another side of the obsession with social standards seems to be the phenomenon of proclaiming your child's achievements. People actually drive around with car stickers that read: "I am the proud parent of an honour student at...". There are placards outside homes, small billboards on the lawn with the student's photograph and achievements. I am told that this trend began about 10 years ago, perhaps arising in the ghettos where any scrap of pride is elusive. It has spread to middle suburbia. I think that an Australian child would axe their parents, thus adding to the crime rate, rather than allow such an embarrassment. The mainland has survived two world wars and other foreign engagements without anything more than a spent Japanese torpedo drifting onto a California beach. Militarily, this is the best-armed nation on Earth. Given the odds of harm to any one citizen (which are infinitely less than the likelihood of dying from a car accident), Americans should be mostly undaunted by al-Qaeda. Yet, going by "terror alerts" emitted by the Government and seized by the media, it would seem that terrorists have succeeded in frightening a nation. They may be aided by several decades of over-reaction to the social malaise that is endemic to the poorer and disenfranchised parts of America. It seems that at least one generation has already grown up in the grip of largely irrational fears. A loss of equanimity and that much-vaunted value - freedom - seems to have been the cost. Olga Lorenzo is an Australian novelist. Copyright � 2004. The Age Company Ltd ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
