"Eric Takabayashi" <etakajp@yahoo.co.jp> wrote in message
news:3FBE1EDB.CE83D7B0@yahoo.co.jp...

> What happened to you Ed? You used to be the guy who argued against the
> existence of absolute morals. Now you suddenly discover (and care) that
> "Japanese are not kind"?

I still do. Morality doesn't "exst". It subsists upon intersubjective moral
values. In other words, intersubjective morality exists because the culture
exists and the morality "exists" dependent upon the culture. Take the
culture away and the morality ceases to exist. True existence is not
dependent upon anything other than existence. Kinda like a tree falling in
the forest. It makes a noise regardless of no ears to hear it.

But you asked what happened to me. I guess I've just gotten tired of the
borg cube. The endless procession of stern-faced salarymen going to work,
the hatchet-faced housewives who have spent their lives hating and refusing
to believe anything that doesn't agree with their misery, the children who
grow up with no more incentive than to buy the most fashionable clothes, the
old hen-pecked grandfathers who have no conception of anything other than a
life of frugality and misery, the grandmothers who have henpecked their men
towards a goal of death and futility.... I think Thoreau stated it best when
he mentioned living lives of quiet desperation. I can live with the pain,
agony, frustration, joys, hunger, fear, etc. of life. But I can't live
without them.

I applaud your efforts to help the homeless in this country. But the
homeless of Japan is not what I am concerned with. There will always be
homeless. What I am really disgusted with isn't the plight of the homeless,
but rather the plight of an entire nation which doesn't value the kindness
required to help those less fortunate.