Commenter and longtime friendly acquaintance Curtis S. asks whether I've seen this. I haven't. I've seen plenty of Kurzgesagt videos over the years (Kurz = short, shortly, briefly; gesacht = said, i.e., "briefly said" or "in a nutshell"), but not this particular one. I'm watching it right now. At a guess, it's going to be mostly about the huge demographic pressure weighing down the country right now as South Koreans refuse to breed and collectively age while the economy lacks the strength to sustain the pressure, and something's gotta snap.
The time may soon be coming to abandon ship. You never know. I probably won't live long enough to see the fall over the cliff. Look for an update with comments later.
UPDATE: Yup, pretty much what I thought. This isn't new news. People have been thinking about South Korea's demographic problem for years. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the problem is how people all see the boat approaching the waterfall, but no one's making any real effort to steer toward one riverbank or another. So—over the cliff we'll go. I get that some couples either can't have children or have very good reasons for choosing not to have children. But for the rest of the populace, well, breed, damn you, breed!
I'll be interested to read your comments. This popped up in my recommendations quite some time ago, but I never bothered watching it because I couldn't see the point in doing so.
ReplyDeleteI believe this has been documented before as Universe 25 Experiment. Current society, and the stresses associated with it, has become our own "behavioral sink."
ReplyDeleteIf blogspot doesn't accept my attempted link, the website is located here: https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-experiment-69941
Strangely enough, I've heard of this, but I'd forgotten the name of the experiment. The article says at one point, "As he had anticipated, the utopia became hellish nearly a year in when the population density began to peak, and then population growth abruptly and dramatically slowed." I wonder if that's analogous to what's happening in Korea: burgeoning postwar growth and robustness followed by the current shriveling, withering birth rate. The Kurzgesagt video implies that the slowing in Korea has gained so much momentum that an implosion is pretty much inevitable. But as I noted years back during one of my early walks, there are signs out in the farmland advertising the availability of Vietnamese wives for lonely male Korean farmers. So Korea seems to be trying, even if only half-heartedly, for the same immigration solution that Europe is grasping for, even at the cost of its precious myths of racial purity (단일민족/danil minjok).
DeleteOf course, I noticed, too, that the article is overall skeptical of the experiment, questioning its methodology, goals, and ethics.
DeleteYes, those lack of ethics make the article even more valuable and unbiased in its findings. Today, you can't do any real experiment without offending countless members of the brainwashed horde on numerous of their personal, or perceived as biased, issues. But, it's rather ironic that many of the same people arguing for animal rights, and against their use in experiments, have no problem massacring mosquitoes, spiders, ants, and other bothersome insects while also killing billions of plants for their food.
DeleteI think the rule is that the animal must be cute and relatable.
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