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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

Im not sure these people are mentaly ill. In the past such people were lauded as important thinkers. A monk living a minimalist life was not sick. Hermits living alone, most always in pathetic circumstances, were consulted for thier wisdom. How many of our great religeous leaders spent some years huddled in a cave alone? These people may not be normal, but i dont think this is a new problem... if it even is one.

Not everyone gets to have a good job, a wife, kids and a house. Our society is very competative. There are worse reactions than becoming withdrawn. These people are not violent. They are not addicted to drugs. They are not in prison. There are far worse social ills.

And lighthouse keepers. That used to be a thing.

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Being addicted to drugs is probably not as big of a problem as the hikkomori. While doing drugs you can productively contribute to society and most addictions naturally pass as people get older. I’m not sure the same is true with the hikkomori. Also many hikkomori do become violent or engage in self-harm: lashing out at themselves or their family.

After spending 8 years in your room and only talking to your parents through a door, it probably takes a huge toll on your mental health. And since Japan is a shame/honor-society, the effects compound very quickly. To make matters worse, once you fall out of the “right” track in Japan, you are categorically excluded from certain forms of work and social status.

This means that if, say, you stay in your room a year after high school instead of going to college, you will never be accepted into college for the rest of your life. You will never be able to get a high status salaryman job. This leads to a mindset that there’s no going back and that the rest of their lives are ruined.

The hikkimori are a class of people that suffer from a culturally specific syndrome that would manifest itself in other ways outside Japan/Asia. Depression or anxiety probably.

I think a large part of the problem is that it is very common in Japan for children to live with their parents for a relatively long time compared to Western (or at least American) society. And since Japanese culture is built on the honor/shame duality, everytime the child disappoints their parents, the effects compound. This eventually leads to a point where the child is so ashamed, they just lock themselves in their room to escape.

If children just left the house earlier, I think this would solve a lot of problems. They would leave their rooms because no one would be there to judge them.

As an aside, it’s interesting that the problem is only with men. Women are held to a lower standard and don’t feel the type of pressure as men to become successful and honor their parents.

> most addictions naturally pass as people get older

Is this true?

Apparently yes https://www.drugfoundation.org.nz/matters-of-substance/novem...

I don't see it mentioned so I wonder if that 'aging out' effect takes into account people just dying. I.E: On average these addictions are either dealt with by 4/10/15 years or it's deteriorated bad enough for the person do die.

Yes but my point (above) was that in the past these people gravitated to various lifestyles that were then very acceptable. Today those lifestyles are not available. So this isn't a new illness, rather changes have occurred in our society so that these people are no longer well accommodated.

Hikkomori is not strictly a Japanese phenomenon. It is becoming increasingly common in the West.

The whole point of a complicated economic system is to put up with all that precisely because every one gets to have a good job, spouse, kids, nice place to live. And its worked pretty well until lately. The only outcome of failure is substantial real change, war/imperialism/colonialism, collapse, or revolution.

Some argue that retreat into religion has historically resulted. Looking at the modern situation, we seem to be retreating into tech-assisted virtue signalling as our religious retreat. Sounds bizarre to make an argument that facebook or tumblr might be delaying cultural collapse by a decade or two in some areas, but I have read stuff like that.

Not talking about Japan specifically, this is basic human history and archeology stuff.

People can, have, and will put up with anything as long as it "works" for them, and when it no longer works, that's the end of that civilization's business model.

Historically speaking, nothing quite says "war and revolution" like a large and growing population of angry young men who were promised the world if they cooperated and now they're getting nothing.

I've heard the angry-young-men-cause-political-instability argument before - but this is the first time I've seen it applied to young men locking themselves in their bedrooms. To participate in war and revolution don't you have to, you know, leave the house?

Oh I'd agree with you and extend your remarks such that we're unlikely to see a large scale WW2 re-enactment but rebels gotta rebel and you don't need a job or a girlfriend to vote.

I would argue that two effects might invalidate the claim against warfare. Human labor has been reduced in warfare, and democracy abstracts personal responsibility from decisionmaking.

For example, 5M dudes in their moms basement could vote, while remaining in their moms basement and never reaching the front lines, to extend the near shooting war between China jet fighters and Japanese recon planes that happened a couple years ago over that recently discovered East China Sea natural gas field. The kids will never personally fight unless something goes horribly wrong, and if the Japanese win, the kids will never work on offshore natgas platforms, but the economic effects of all those petro-dollars would raise all the boats in the entire country, such that 5M kids might get work at home or even salaryman jobs eventually leading to house, wife, and kids, and I bet a politician could court 5M or so votes using that logic. Politicians always seek power regardless of long term outcome. I mean, WRT the incident from 2014, we're not talking about hikki kids volunteering to personally fight in the jungle, all they have to do is tend to vote for people who tend to support a couple air force pilots being somewhat more aggressive than usual.

A similar dude with a job, wife, young kids, house, is not going to risk a war with China over some natgas fields and is not going to vote for a warmonger strategy politician. A kid kicked out of society because their isn't space in society for him anymore, has literally nothing to lose and everything to gain at the ballot box.

People who acquire the carrot on a stick are inherently small C conservative, and people kicked out of society's lifeboat are inherently rebellious, so its not even a simple binary thing of war or no war, its more an issue where political instability gets an automatic plus 5M points, which will lead to globally crazier outcomes than having zero additional automatic points.

Society failing kids by not delivering promises from national mythologies is a national security threat and a threat to global peace. Naturally of course everyone's gonna blame the kids and parents which is not going to fix anything, and if anything will just radicalize them further. "I thought I followed all the rules and didn't get what I was promised so I was just unlucky or they slightly disliked me, but turns out they hate me, so F them all lets nuke China and take their resources". And of course with a growing population around the world of the dispossessed and lied to, this is going to be a huge mess.

>> To participate in war and revolution don't you have to, you know, leave the house?

2016. One can very effectively wage a "war" through social media. Hacking aside, any angry young man (or woman) with an internet connection can foment serious change. He can get people out on the streets. He can trigger violence.

Let's be honest, I doubt most of these people became gurus or lighthouse keepers. Most of them probably died young or killed themselves. But I do agree, the "good job, a wife, kids and a house" is probably not attainable for everyone. But lets not pretend that this is somehow justified or fair or something; life is full of injustices.

No, but there were probably a lot more opportunities for solo types in the past. In a world that was a lot less committed to everyone oversharing and having a full set of soft skills even to be an engineer or accountant.

I can't agree with this more or upvote it enough. Having alone time and living a life of the mind was something that was /much/ more doable historically than it is in modernity. It's a great shame of modern existence in my mind, perhaps a cardinal one.

Engineers and accountants have always had to have a "full set of soft skills." You'd have to look at agriculture or hunting and trapping to find any significant group of lone individuals.

And even then, during the American colonial period and likely before, anyone who didn't participate in society would be regarded as seriously odd, at best.

That’s not accurate. “Softskills”, a wholly an individual pursuit, is a modern phenomenon. Individualism on this level is not even contextually concievable in historical societies which sufficed a lot of the purposes served by “softskills” with structure and culture. By maintaining a congruence of experience and balance of relations in a society as a whole, “softskills” as you are considering them, are relatively irrelevant. Of course, you will have your exceptions, but until electronic media/radio, great leaders did not even have the opportunity to deliver ther soft skills far. The whole individualist notion of “softskills” speaks to the atmosphere that rationalizes hikkikomori.

You don't need electronics for softskills to matter. You need people to achieve things through other people. That always mattered great deal.

There are whole books of past leaders speeches. Generals trained the speeches. In ancient Rome, rhetorics was the most important things a citizen boy had to learn.

Bob Cratchit didn't need rhetoric, or soft skills, just the ability to keep Scrooge's records in poor working conditions, and say yes sir. Same for a bookkeeper, rail engineer or mill worker.

Nor in the army or navy, unless commissioned (which was bought before about 1860, so you could be as dysfunctional as you like if you could afford it). Some of the most well known Victorians and Edwardians were pretty eccentric. To a degree that we'd probably find them dysfunctional today. Now we seem to expect a little of everything in everyone.

Bob Cratchit was made up, underpaid and abused. How is that argument for anything good? Bookkeeper needed ability to communicate with employer in about the same measure then accounting needs now. Ditto rail engineer. Lack of ability to fit in in army means a lot of bullying that you will have to endure. Nevertheless, it is not like you needed rhetorics to be marine now.

We have well known eccentric people now. Neither implies all that much about average person life. Nor that the average person would get away with the same. House hold servant would not be tolerated eccentricity.

> A monk living a minimalist life was not sick. Hermits living alone, most always in pathetic circumstances, were consulted for thier wisdom.

Monks and hermits were praying to their God and meditating on spiritual topics, not playing video games and posting on internet forums which is what the hikikomori mostly do.

Thought experiment. Which of those provides more value over the long run? Both to the invidividual and to society at large.

Do you consider your posting in this thread to be a overall positive? I do. I think it provides more value than praying over the topic would. For that reason alone, I wouldn’t necessarily consider the hikikomori to be worse than monks.

Just a thought.

Monasteries seek to be self sufficient and work is part of daily routine of monks. Also, monastery has a choice of accepting novice or not and monk has to put in a lot of effort to be accepted in. They are subject to strict rules and discipline. Monks did not just unilateraly closed themselves off expecting parents to take care of them.

Also, monks made or should made thought out choice. They did not locked themselves out of depression, fear and lack of energy to go outside.

I don't find being monk or nun something that makes much sense, but it is not nearly the same thing.

> I think it provides more value than praying over the topic would.

You seem to think I'm advocating religion somehow; if so, you are quite mistaken.

Yes, spending time contemplating philosophical and spiritual questions, whether through a secular context or a religious context, is going to provide more value to the individual (and, indirectly, to society) than playing video games or posting on HN. How is this even in question?

Monks working diligently copying books (which were easily destroyed or lost for a few thousand years, so every copy was additional safety from being lost forever) are the only reason we have so many ancient texts.

I think the sum of monks probably provided more value than the hikikomori, especially if you consider second order effects (preserved texts allowed the Florentine re-discovery of classical Greek/Roman philosophy, starting the Renaissance period)

I don't think a philosopher or mystic who chooses a life of contemplative solitude for a period of time is at all the same phenomenon. There might be a superficial resemblance but the intellectual recluse will be thinking, meditating, or doing, not playing video games and watching TV shows. A Buddha or Jesus who goes into the wilderness comes back and operates just fine.

It's not noble like a monk, lighthouse keeper, or classical hermit if the person is farting around on the internet all day seeking entertainment.

Consider the contents of "The Confessions of Saint Augustine" the point being that a million other kids wasted their youth screwing around, but it only took one with some writing skill to have a ridiculously outsized impact on the world.

And that's just the positive side. On the negative side, it seems a realistic hypothesis that The Unibomber had more total overall long term impact on society than all of Reddit. Realistic in the sense that its doable 50:50 odds debate topic, not realistic in the sense that obviously my hypothesis is unarguably correct. One weirdo deciding to voluntarily drop out of society and live alone in the woods causes X amount of drama, but kicking 5% of your population out of society and forcing them to angrily live alone in the woods will result in one-zillion times Z amount of drama.

Was it really like that and aren't those just myths? You don't become leader sitting in cave, you become forgotten. Your survival in the past was more dependent on community and your place in it, not less so.

Also, based on article, they are in distress and not happy with themselves. Also, they are completely dependent on their families help and don't contribute to household work at all. Even if they would be happy, there is issue of other people being taken advantage off having to care about them despite not wanting to.

Doesn't mean the monks or recluses didn't have some type of mental issue

> And lighthouse keepers. That used to be a thing.

Ah yes the lovely mercury fumes.

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