#ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmm: Why is there no looting in Japan?
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 2:31PMHad social media been around when I was coming straight from high school, there is NO DOUBT in my mind I would have immediately jumped on board. For izzles - I love that I can be such a fly on the wall and explore human nature in its purest, and rawest form through execution, and not what people merely say they will do; we can find out in real time what they are ACTUALLY doing. Fucking brilliant! Greatest time to be alive. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. Learning so much in this space! Blows my mind, every.single.day. Someone just tweeted this article out, and speaks to the same effect. READ!
Per telegraph.co: The landscape of parts of Japan looks like the aftermath of World War Two; no industrialised country since then has suffered such a death toll. The one tiny, tiny consolation is the extent to which it shows how humanity can rally round in times of adversity, with heroic British rescue teams joining colleagues from the US and elsewhere to fly out.
And solidarity seems especially strong in Japan itself. Perhaps even more impressive than Japan’s technological power is its social strength, with supermarkets cutting prices and vending machine owners giving out free drinks as people work together to survive. Most noticeably of all, there has been no looting, and I’m not the only one curious about this.
This is quite unusual among human cultures, and it’s unlikely it would be the case in Britain. During the 2007 floods in the West Country abandoned cars were broken into and free packs of bottled water were stolen. There was looting in Chile after the earthquake last year – so much so that troops were sent in; in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina saw looting on a shocking scale.
Why do some cultures react to disaster by reverting to everyone for himself, but others – especially the Japanese – display altruism even in adversity?
#interesting
Reader Comments (1)
While I was stationed in Japan in the Navy, I found out that the majority of crime in Japan is caused by foreigners that live there. I also found that Japanese are 1000 times more civil then Americans. They take pride in everything they do, they could have the worst job imaginable but go to work every day with a smile on their face.
One time I was lost on the trains by myself, looking at a map at a train station, a middle aged woman sees that I am trying to see where I am, asked me if I needed help. The woman then told me to hold on, she then went to look for someone that spoke English to help me out.
You asked why there is no looting going on in Japan? Japan the size of about the equivalent of Montana, and most of the 100 million + people that live there live in a land mass the size of Rhode Island. One would think with that many people crowded in such a small space that they would have the highest murder rate in the world. There is no looting going on, cause Japanese people will help other people before helping themselves.
They have pride!