Global Perception and You(part 3): The Issue Minded Prick

Have you ever met people who spit out stuff like this? ‘Bullfighting is Barbaric!’, ‘Our jobs are being shipped overseas!’, ‘The Gov’t spends as much on the military a day as they do on our libraries each year!’ and so on. Those are the people aware of the events driving cultures across the globe, and they’ve entered the teenage stage of subject study, people I refer to as ‘Issue Minded Pricks’. 

With Issue Minded Pricks, it’s not out of the ordinary for them to be seasoned students of both the language and culture. With more than a few years of study under their belt, they’ve had to establish what they wanna say, how they wanna say it and the process of keeping their skills sharp. They’ve seen beyond commonplace Japanese history and have learned things that would make your stomach do flips. These are what they refuse to be silent about, taking every viable chance to voice their stance. In fact, this has a strong presence within language studies due to the simple fact that every country has a deep history filled with bright times and dark days, Japan included.

Those who see a country’s grit and ugliness as its truth tend to view the country through the filter of Dolphin and Whale Hunters, Unit 731, Comfort Women and other things the Japanese Gov’t or those it governs have done throughout the years. It’s these very acts that’ve earned it the collective ire of other country’s patriots, most famously China and South Korea. As you can imagine, it’s created hostile feelings on both sides of whatever issue is at hand, and in some cases it’s cost Japanese and people mistaken for Japanese their safety, their freedom, even their lives. What happened to craft such an atmosphere?

Dehumanization happened. 

 In fiercely holding to our beliefs and precepts, we tend to see only the ideals we think they represent and put the basic humanity of those standing against what we hold dear on the backburner, something no man, woman or child is innocent of, including myself.

As we begin to see those speaking the language we study as people like you and I, with similar needs and desires, all that we’ve learned unite as one and helps us complete the picture of both the Japan we know and the Japan that lives and breathes while we live our lives. When this happens, we reach the next phase of language learning, which I like to call ‘Worldly Curmugeon’

  Example dialogue of the Issue Minded Prick: The Japanese should give more rights to immigrants! Why don’t they allow dual citizenship beyond a certain age !? (‘cause if you were born to a Japanese citizen/ Japanese citizens outside Japan after 1985, it’s all but guaranteed that after 22, they make you choose one country or the other)