The PM shared this on his page yesterday from the Japan Times. It is a graphic way to explain to us what our tomorrow might be even if he conveniently ignored if it was even appropriate to compare the two societies in the first place.
Just as the homogeneous Swedes were never a society that is naturally accepting of asylum seekers and immigrants from other cultures, which they are learning the hard way; so the lessons from Japan may not be the right one for us. Beyond the old and the young, we have many fault lines across race and religion, and increasingly between the haves and have-nots. Some of these potential problems could be bigger and over shadow the rupturing relationship between the young and the old.
So what if we read this story? Are we going to do anything differently? Everyone rushing home to make babies? Everyone asking for more immigrants to come in? It's not happening as surely as the threat of a bad and earlier death visit those who refuse to kick their smoking habit. So this was a story to share with his colleagues, but pointless for citizens.
I bet the Japanese reading this story in far greater detail in their own language are only going to talk about and do nothing.
Government should spend more time bolstering their courage and ability to persuade people to accept necessary even if tough policies like we had in our early days than be order takers and populist.
Sad is the day when some of us decide the only way forward for those us with the means is to protect ourselves.
This is the constant refrain of Hstory that people everywhere are always looking for leadership but they regularly did not know how to say so because they often thought that was impossible. Without good leadership whole societies resigned themselves to sad fates.
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