Saturday, July 22, 2023

Deaths of Despair along with Disappearance via Disengagement

In researching Lying Flat, I make a connection I had seen but not observed (in Holmes's terms).  

Tang ping (Chinese: 躺平; pinyin: tǎng píng; lit. 'lying flat') is a Chinese slang term that describes a personal rejection of societal pressures to overwork and over-achieve, such as in the 996 working hour system, which is often regarded as a rat race with ever diminishing returns. Those who participate in tang ping instead choose to "lie down flat and get over the beatings" via a low-desire, more indifferent attitude towards life.

Tang ping can be considered as the Chinese equivalent of the American hippie counter-culture movement and the Japanese herbivore men phenomenon. Novelist Liao Zenghu described "lying flat" as a passive-aggressive resistance movement, and The New York Times called it part of a nascent Chinese counterculture. It has also been compared to the Great Resignation, a surge of resignations that began in the United States and much of the Western world at roughly the same time. The National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center, an institution affiliated to Education Ministry of China, listed the word as one of the 10 most popular memes for 2021 in the Chinese Internet. Chinese search engine Sogou also listed the word at the top of its list of most trending memes for 2021.

Unlike the hikikomori in Japan who are socially withdrawn, these young Chinese people who subscribe to "lying flat" are not necessarily socially isolated, but merely choose to lower their professional commitment and economic ambitions, simplify their goals, while still being fiscally productive for their own essential needs, and prioritize psychological health over economic materialism.

The phrase "quiet quitting", meaning doing only what one's job demands and nothing more, which became popular in the United States in 2022, was thought to be inspired by the tang ping movement. Another newer related phrase is bai lan (Chinese: 摆烂; pinyin: bǎi làn; lit. 'let it rot'), which means "to actively embrace a deteriorating situation, rather than trying to turn it around".

In the West we have a steep increase in deaths of despair - suicide, drug overdoses, substance abuse, etc.  They are at historic highs and immensely tragic.  

That would seems somehow connected in some way to Tang ping, Lying Flat, hikikomori, herbivore men,  hipsters, slackers, hippies, ANTIFA, etc.  

Both groups (deaths by despair and versions of Lying Flat) are in some way either removing themselves from society or from engagement with society.  Definitions make it challenging to measure but there seems, across major economies, to be a rising concern about evidence that material numbers of citizens are withdrawing from those societies/cultures.

Is it real?  Is it due to culture or economics or governance or loss of religion?  Or everything or other things?

I have been concerned over the past decade about the dramatic rise in America's rise in deaths of despair.  But I wonder now whether I ought to be thinking about Deaths of Despair along with Disappearance via Disengagement.  Perhaps Canada's rise in euthanasia ought to be included in the latter category as well.

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