The Rubbish Generation
The Rubbish Generation.
On entering Steven’s room in his boarding house that I manage, it is hard to walk around without treading on rubbish. Used food cartons, empty cans of energy drinks, unwashed clothing and plastic bags are piled high between the door of his room and his bed.
On the latter, dirty sheets and blankets are piled high. The colour of the sheets cannot be determined. Where they rub against the wall the paint has turned black. His pillow is also grimy and black from over use without cleaning.
The focus of the room is a large expensive computer monitor festooned with the latest in storage devices, game cards and desk top speakers.
As he eats this food, unable to turn away from his current screen game, Steven simply throws the food container or empty container of drink on the floor. As the evening wears on these builds up. Steven also has a store of energy drinks he has purchased from a machine in the hostel and he boasts of drinking thirty to forty cans of this high energy stuff each day.
Every evening, his arms filled with energy drinks and takeout cartons, Steven carefully negotiates his way to the computer chair through the mounds of rubbish.
Steven is twenty seven. Hs is a Hikkiomori, a gamer. The Japanese term encapsulates the idea that young people, opting out, game all night, live in squalid conditions and have become a feature in Japanese society but while the Japanese are prepared to name and identity this group, Western societies cannot grapple with the notion that Hikkiomori are now feature here as well.
The Hikkiomori are not to be confused with the Gomiyashiki or rubbish houses which also feature in Japan. As the Japanese population falls and fewer people carry out the basic duties of cleaning Gomiyashiki have also proliferated. In Western societies we equate these with Hoarder houses owned by people who have psychological problems, usually adults over thirty or much older. Hoarders can occur in all societies but mainly affluent ones.
Hoarding is a psychological problem occurring at any age, though mostly in people over thirty and is characterised by the subject’s inability to let go of items they are convinced have special meaning for them or will have some proven future use without which they will not be able to sustain themselves. So they believe, even though that future never arrives.
Hoarder’s collections can reach gargantuan proportions and often something has to be done by authorities when neighbours protests become alarming.
Gamers, however, are a distinct group, invariably young and computer game addicted. They are often driven by a class of “influencers” young people greatly admired by young gamers because of their skill at computer games.
These influencers sit at the top of the pyramid of “computer geeks”. They are not unlike modern chess champions, people whose whole lives are dedicated to a game.
Ironically though, Steven lives alone in his own room cut off from the world, the nation of gamers he interacts with, though never actually meets, is legion.
Steven like many of his young fellow gamers illustrates the very worst aspects of modern technology which is decimating the young.
The combination of poor education, partial illiteracy associated with absence of reading combined with the mental over-stimulation of modern computer games is producing a generation of zombie-like beings whose views of the world are completely distorted. They know nothing about history, geography or ethics.
Steven is sustained by an invalid pension. It is uncertain why he was awarded this income. He seems healthy in all respects but nonetheless insists that he has a mental diagnosis.
Sometimes he claims, this is Attention Deficit Disorder, at other times Autism. In any case he has been able to select a diagnosis from the modern smorgasbord of ubiquitous modern mental illnesses that are imposed on the young and from which his doctor or psychologist or both, at one point, diagnosed for him, like the items from a Chinese menu.
Like most of the totally dedicated modern gamers who seem to have no other life, family and kindred are totally estranged from him. It is as though the gaming life is a mistress that has no tolerance for wives or relatives. It is a Babylonian whore that has him in its jaws and will not let him free.
Steven may be rejected by family but the figures for those young who live at home are bleak. Studies by Melbourne University in 1923 quoted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and echoed by those from Western and a number of Asian countries show that 60% of young men are like Steven but continue to live at home and have an unemployment rate three times the national average.
Steven takes no exercise. He spends the night until 3-4am playing his games and he sleeps till midday and after. In of the early part of the evening he shops for food, takeaway, processed packets of chips, sweets and MacDonald’s fast food.
As he eats this food, unable to turn away from his current screen game, he simply throws the food container or empty container of drink on the floor. As the evening wears on these builds up.
At twenty five it would be expected that Steven will have formed some attachment with a woman (or man) like most of his age group. But studies show that Steven is part of an even more disturbing demographic.
Research from Indiana State and other Universities in the USA have confirmed that the figures of sexual contact of young men below 25 have collapsed with 48% of young men reporting having no sexual relationships in the previous year. Even if Steven could find a partner, how could he take them back to his room filled with rubbish.
This landscape of loneliness is the result of two major factors, internet dating apps and an education system that is churning out illiterate and ignorant people.
Steven lacks the verbal and literate skills that once played such an important part in relationships. He cannot write letters or even send emails because his written hand script is poor for letters and he cannot compose an email paragraph.
Even if he does find someone what would he talk to them about?
Literacy in the education system has collapsed as a result of deliberate policy by education authorities. Children in primary school are not encouraged to read, to understand the rules of English grammar , its basic building blocks, or to copy legible hand script.
The insistence that all learning and communication be distilled through computers has effectively ruined communication between the sexes.
Professors at the most prestigious Universities in America where students attend literary courses are struck by how little Steven’s generation reads.
One student interviewed by her professor confessed that she had never read a book even in school. However when asked about video gaming, students admitted that they spend between two to three hours daily playing games.
Young men when asked what means they would use to approach a woman cited cell phone text messages. As a form of communication these are woefully inadequate and unacceptably brief.
The language of mobile communication is referred to as textese, SMS language, or text speak, all referring to the abbreviated, slang-heavy form of communication characterised by shortcuts and phonetic spellings which are developed to fit character limits and communicate quickly. This is not a language of romance.
To illustrate, this strongly contrasts to the romance of Cyrano De Bergerac, the play by Edmond Rostandin in which Cyrano composes love letters for the inarticulate Christian to win the heart of Roxane and with these succeeds in wooing her. This has long been the template of romance, the idea that a reluctant partner can be persuaded by courtship.
Increasingly young people rely on dating Aps to find partners. 80% of women date the top 20% of males based on the physical appearance of the prospective date. This is the basis of “scrolling” the repetitive changing of screens on dating aps which display pictures of the prospective date.
Other information attached to the “profile” of the date is notoriously unreliable and most subjects lie about their qualities and income. Most dates that arise from this process fail.
In the case of Steven and his fellow Hikkiomori, it would not be possible the imagine that any partner enticed to meet him, could tolerate exposure to his living arrangements.
The future for Steven is clear. He has no future. He has now been evicted from this hostel where he had this room filled with rubbish because of his failure to clean his room. Support agencies have found him another home but soon enough that accommodation will fail for the same reason.
Though the image may be incongruent, Steven is the canary in the coal mine. No technological advances including AI will save his kind. So society may as well keep doing what we have done to date, pretend he doesn’t exist.