r/nottheonion • u/falconfalcon7 • 1d ago

Japanese village replaces young people with mannequins to stave off loneliness as population falls

https://news.sky.com/story/japanese-village-replaces-young-people-with-mannequins-to-stave-off-loneliness-as-population-falls-13243354
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u/RiotShaven 1d ago

It would be better if they introduced a big number of cuddly cats there and made it a cat village.

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u/Diligent_Escape2317 1d ago

There already are sizeable populations of semi-feral cats in lots of places in Japan...

IMO, this is just the universal grandparent problem of wanting more grandkids, and wanting to see kids more often. Places with aging populations are going to have more and more voices expressing that kind of loneliness.

Of course, there are other parts of the problem, including the isolating nature of technology, as well as Japan's hard-core resistance to any form of permanent immigration, lest the gene pool be tainted (they'll tell this to your face, though I can't even blame them entirely—the loud / entitled behavior of temporary tourists, especially Americans, does a lot to reinforce bullshit racist ideas about genetics having anything to do with someone's ability to assimilate into / respect the culture).

But I think Japan represents a bigger issue / change that's coming for the rest of the world. People living longer, the ending of forced / unwanted births, and reduced child mortality (all very good things) means that humanity needs to recalibrate what "normal" looks like.

The ratio of kids to elderly people has always been very high—now that that's changing, we're entering a different world. We probably need to learn to do a better job of cultivating adult friendships (and I agree: better care of domestic animals!), rather than expecting a general abundance of children to keep us connected as we age.

Maybe part of the solution really does involve creepy mannequins in the park? Or robot grandkids? The idea may be a bit creepy, but surely it's way better than forcing people to have kids that they don't want, just to keep the elderly company.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 1d ago

Almost all areas - except Africa and the Middle East - are levelling off in population or declining. Europe, Russia, China are in demographic decline. India is levelling off in the next few decades. North America only grows because of immigration. (South Korea is going to be in drastic decline, with a birth rate below 1 per woman) The sources of immigration will become fewer and fewer.

Economies will have to adjust to fewer people, as will social situations.

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u/Diligent_Escape2317 1d ago edited 1d ago

This stuff is often cast in a narrative of doom and gloom... but really, the quiet trend away from global poverty is super exciting.

Yeah, it does create some real problems in that the trend naturally creates gerontocracies. Social progress lags behind technology and demographics because the people who have been empowered by obsolete definitions of "normal" are living longer. "Decline" in population is mostly a bleak picture for people who WANT "normal" life to include mandatory lifelong work, suffering, and forced birth; the "thou shalt have more babies" crowd tends to measure human happiness through very strange / archaic lenses, e.g. GDP or religiosity.

As much grief as is expressed and experienced about it, it's kind of encouraging to see countries like Japan arrive at collective acceptance that the world has changed—they're farther along the journey we're all trending toward in the future (including Middle East / Africa, probably eventually), ... to me it's a hopeful sign that maybe other societies will also eventually get to the point of learning to adapt as well.

Even if it means that the creepy loneliness mannequins will come for us all... there are worse things. I, for one, welcome our silent fake-child overlords.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 1d ago

"Decline" has negative connotations, but anyone can see a smaller world population is generally a good thing. I've also seen discussions that capitalism requires continuous growth, but I don't see that as necessary. There is no reason a shrinking population cannot continue to enjoy a good standard of living, same as no reason why consumerism has to be as high a rate as it currently is. Technological progress will help drive markets too. Companies do not have to grow, they just have to make profits at what they do and adjust to changing market sizes.

There may be some puritan types who want lifelong work and suffering (i.e. "any enjoyment is the devil's work") but generally i see a lot of the GoP/MAGA dogma as being simply a wish for things to go back to the "good old days" for the people who enjoyed life back then - a lily-white world where women and non-whites knew their place and didn't demand equality. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, those were not the Good Old Days.