Quote:
Originally Posted by Alawen
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The contrast of the two images in HBB's original post is really compelling. It's somewhat hyperbolic, of course, but we are just not doing a good job of keeping our country beautiful. We let our urban centers decay, and we do stupid shit like blowing the tops off mountains and mining wilderness with toxic chemicals for trace elements.
I am not a religious man, but I agree with the Dalai Lama when he says that happiness is the meaning of life. In one of the few studies of happiness, Adrian White at the University of Leicester found that the United States doesn't even make the top twenty for happiest countries. Materialism is not the path to happiness, or at least it's not my path. |
Having lived in Hiroshima and many, many cities of varying size across Japan, I can tell you that that picture is not only misleading but does not reflect the reality of most cities throughout Japan. There has been a trend over the last 20+ years of young Japanese people moving from small cities to the 2 major population centers, and now a decentralization is underway from the cities to the surrounding suburbs. Combine that with a steady population decrease and you will find an overabundance of unkempt and uninhabited property from 2 blocks off the Shinjuku station in downtown Tokyo to the smallest village on Shikoku. Murica might not be the best but I can tell you from personal experience that Japan isn't either.