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Chapter 139
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I was all by myself at night. Sitting on the table while letting my pen run through a piece of paper with a lantern lighting the room. I wonder how many days have passed since I arrived in this strange world as I glanced at the date shown on my wristwatch.
The days I spend in this world are getting longer. Well, it’s only natural since the temperature outside is starting to change too.
Today, I was planning on thinking about the hypothesis about “declining birthrates is an inevitable phenomenon due to the popularization of internet usage”.
The things that occasionally popped into my head were often more important than I expected. So everytime it happened, I always tried to gather my thoughts and left it in writing.
Now then, let’s get to the main issue right away.
In a period without the internet or social media. Humans could only communicate through direct one on one communication. However, as the internet became popular and due to the development of social media, the world of human’s communication became much wider and at the same time, more diluted.
People started to get comfortable with shallow relationships. Because the burden on the mind became light, it was now possible to prevent the overcapacity of the mind by being selective of who you communicate with.
Contrary to that, the burden on the mind regarding love was extremely heavy. In fact, you could even define love as the overcapacity of the mind itself. Humans were creatures that instinctually would go in the direction where the comfort and ease were at. The developments of science and technology was also the by-product of our base desire for comfort.
As a result of that, humans started to refuse anything that could cause the over capacity of their mind and so, the inclination to refuse love was born. People no longer felt comfortable in being in love.
If people stopped being in love and direct communication dramatically decreased, it was only natural there would be no children born. Maybe we could conclude that this was the reason for the declining birth rates?
I had a lot of things I worried about regarding Yurina-san. In other words, my mind was at over capacity. And then, my brain, which already became dependent on the internet society, deemed it as not a good idea and caused my heart’s self-defense mechanism to activate.
I like her but my mind is rejecting that feeling.
You could think my seemingly contradictory attitude was based on this behavioral principle…
Suddenly, I felt sad and so, I placed my pen on top of the table. I calmly dug deep into my heart, searching every nook and cranny but instead of finding an understanding, I came to believe that there was no human more miserable than me.
I’m going to drink today. I still have the distilled liquor I received from her.
And so, after emptying the bottle of distilled liquor so I wouldn’t be reminded of her again, I hid in my bed and cried.
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T/N: Our MC is so difficult ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Letting down your emotional walls is seriously not something easy to do for many people. I can relate to how he breaks down crying from the internal conflict of it.
I think that although “shallow and easy socialization undermining socialization with greater depth” is a valid observation of a weakness in modern society, it isn’t a big factor regarding declining birthrates. Having kids is just a huge economic and social burden for the parents in developed countries, one that many people aren’t willing to take on. Many people also just have the choice to focus on aspects of life other than having a family, now, where they wouldn’t have before. Globally, the birth rate shrinking isn’t even a bad thing, it’s just that aging populations are difficult to adapt to, and that’s a problem that can be solved with immigration since it isn’t happening everywhere.
Immigration is only a stopgap measure that brings with it its own problems. You can expect various (sometimes even violent) conflicts rising from the difference in values between the original inhabitants and immigrants happening until they assimilate enough and then you can expect similar decline in birthrates among immigrants happening after they assimilate enough. Or maybe you are supporting the take-over of the prevailing values in the host country by the values favored by immigrants from the start, which would be the the only long lasting solution brought by immigration to the problem of declining birthrates. /politics
It’s definitely a stopgap measure, but it’s a fundamentally temporary problem to begin with. It’s not that we can’t cope with having an older population base economically at all, it’s just that it’s a large change that requires us to restructure our society a bit to properly handle. Immigration in this case is just buying time to ease the process.
Of course, if population growth continues to decline to lower than replacement levels, that would become more of an inherent problem, at least long term, but the non-band-aid solution to that is to actually address the economic factors limiting people from having families even though many people desire to have families.
I’m Canadian, although we have nationalists and Quebec is necessarily very protective of their culture so they don’t get assimilated, part of our culture is that we’re on average more accepting of other cultures existing alongside us… In theory, at least. I don’t particularly see a need to assimilate people, it’s pretty much ok as long as they follow the law and the rest isn’t my business. I would like them to have passable English or French, though. It’s more important that there are hands to do the work that needs to be done, and it’s only a bonus if that means more opportunities for people in rougher parts of the world.
If people are concerned about population demographics and being outnumbered, then we should stop suppressing developing countries already and let them face the same issues we face, lol. It would be funny if racial fear ended up solving our systemic exploitation of “third world” countries.
“as long as they follow the law” indeed. There are enough examples to the contrary. For some other concerns, like spreading their religion, are more important than the local laws. I wouldn’t want the local recreation of Boko Haram where I’m living, personally.
Thanks for the chapter! Interesting idea.
Thank you for reading~ ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝
Thanks for the chapter
Thank you for reading too!˚ʚ♡ɞ˚