The New Emotional Shortage Dictatorship

For those who are not familiar with it, hikikomori defines a psychological trait that was believed to be exclusive of the Japanese society. However, by extension the term can be applied to all societies where this aspect is being signaled, although the rate of coincidence out of Asia is quite reduced.

En bref, hikikomori (term coined by Japanese psychologist Tamaki Saito) literally means "pulling away, being confined" and represents an "acute social withdrawal".

Initially, it was noticed among the Japanese teenagers, a few years ago, and was used to describe their tendency towards seclusion and alienation. Long story short, the Japanese teens have chosen to withdraw from social life, leading to extreme degrees of 'isolation and confinement due to various personal and social factors in their lives'. The concept begun to be used to “officially classify reclusive youths who refused to participate in socially established norms”. If it isn’t the definition of every teenager on the planet! Show me a teenager that wants to "fit within the established norms" and I will eat a live toad on an empty stomach every morning.

The number of hikikomori teens was thus estimated to one million (20% of all male adolescents in Japan, or 1% of the total Japanese population- numbers not reliable though).

In order to understand what leads to this self imposed seclusion, we need to speak about the expectations a modern society imposes on children and teenagers currently.

I've never been to Japan, so I have to take this guy’s word for granted when he says ‘though acute social withdrawal in Japan appears to affect both genders equally, due to differing social expectations for maturing boys and girls, the most widely reported cases of hikikomori are from middle and upper middle class families whose sons, typically their eldest, refuse to leave the home, often after experiencing one or more traumatic episodes of social or academic failure.’

What is wrong with the Japanese? We all experienced failures in life, one way or another, but how many of us choose to lock themselves in the house and become emokids? Ooops, hold on! I was about to start finger pointing and mocking the more developed Japanese society, claiming they do this out of sheer boredom and out of too much “brat spoiling” syndrome. So, I went back on the line and deleted until I reached to this word: emokids. Romania’s hikikomoris.

Although initially it started as a punk genre in the mid 80s, today’s emo is equivalent with being emotional, sensitive, shy, introverted, or angsty. You are emo, if you are true. And you are true, if you are over emotional. You are emotional, if you are sensitive and what is more sensitive than a child about to become a teenager? I guess we all made fun of the kids with tight jeans, long black fringes brushed to one side of the face, studded belts, canvas sneakers and thick, black horn-rimmed glasses. We didn’t take them seriously and maybe some of us smiled sympathetically remembering our old good days, when we were Metallica fans and had nose rings and ripped off jeans and ran away from home to see them performing live in Budapest. Hey, why do you look at me?

The emo trend became so popular these days that even a cell phone company is using it to promote a telecom pack (Cosmote: Get rid of the ‘other network syndrome, stop staying in the dark, come join us’).

Of course, since a society is a living organism that breaths, eats and defecates like any other organism, it immediately fined the new trend with jokes (the emo pizza, which cuts itself; the new E.U. approved pig slaughtering methods, with self-stabbing pigs). Pretty much like a language, which is another living organism that keeps society’s pulse and rhythm and grows and modifies with it, the trends also denote the state of health of a particular society. The outcome is not encouraging and if trends and language express our state of health, I am sorry to tell you: we are pretty sick.

In his book "1984", George Orwell foresaw that excessive usage of short words would soon lead to incapacity of using the mind at its full extent. He called it the “Newspeak”. Replacing the already consecrated terms with their encrypted new, short, form could damage not only the language and its evolution but our inclination in using more and more words to express a feeling.

More poetically said, before being a written matrix, the language is a lively animal that needs to be fed and taken care of in order to grow up. Less poetically said, it is a system of sounds, words, and patterns to communicate thoughts, feelings and our deepest tribulations.

Orwell's Newspeak intended to remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple dichotomies (pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, goodthink and crimethink) which reinforced the total dominance of the State. As the schoolbook says "a staccato rhythm of short syllables was also a goal, further reducing the need for deep thinking about language".

Let’s see: sms, mms, tx, 10x, asl, pls gr8, brb, 4get, how r u, u2, luv u, luv u 2, 4c, bbiab, bbl, roflmao, afk, lol, fubar, c u l8r, abt, are only a few of the new Orwellian language we are happily embracing.

Is language’s decadence curable? Moreover, is our tendency to repress our feelings, in order to pass as emotionally mature, curable?Are we doomed to become victims of the Newspeak and of the New Emotional Shortage Dictatorship? Will we end up using indeed 10% of our brain, according to the myth? If we stop feeling, will we stop thinking?

So, let’s recap the paradox: on the one hand, we have the highly emotional teenagers which salutary want to go through all range of emotional intensity. On the other hand, we have “sms syndrome”, which might lead, based on Orwell’s prediction, to a case of emotional aphasia.

Reverting to our state of health and emo kids, I however wiped that smile off my face when I've read that a bunch of these kids committed suicide, in an attempt to reject a society dominated by too many “isms”! What a way to get attention! Our children alienate and kill themselves in order to reach us, and we are too busy labeling and studying them like lab mice, or running after bigger incomes, higher positions in carnivorous mammoth corporations, or after academic titles, bigger houses, fancier cars, and prettier mistresses.

In our insane rat race we forget about our most precious accomplishment, and ultimately about the ones we claim we do everything for: our children. I feel ashamed, sad and empathetically emo today.

Our children are killing themselves while we are busy making other plans.