
Abandoning a Cat - luckysahaf
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/07/abandoning-a-cat
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elteto
"All we can do is breathe the air of the period we live in, carry with us the
special burdens of the time, and grow up within those confines. That’s just
how things are."

That is such a beautiful quote.

~~~
mikelyons
We can make our life purpose the awakening of humanity.

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ehnto
His book (fiction), The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, is about many things, but
trying to find a missing cat, and an old soldiers memories of war, take up a
good bit of the book.

I was told some of his books would be considered "I-Novels" or "watakushi
shōsetsu". Which are meant to be books that are based on events in the authors
life, yet still entirely fiction. I wonder if this article is speaking about
the events that correspond to that particular book.

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dfxm12
A great many of his books involve cats :)

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jjtheblunt
I read this and, despite his parenthetical explanation of it being somehow
normal at the time, rhetorically thought "what the hell is wrong with people
and societies?".

~~~
mikelyons
The answer to your question is that societies are in transition from Spiral
Dynamics stage blue/orange through high orange (late capitalism) and on their
way to green, which will be a very painful but necessary evolution for our
survival.

For more information, check out Clair Graves' model of psychological
evolution, Spiral Dynamics, Leo Gura of Actualized dot org does an excellent
video series on this model and the blog post about The Big Picture of Global
Politics is an excellent application of this model to everything we're dealing
with from China to Trump currently.

Humanity must awaken to it's devilry.

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rwmj
I found out when I visited Japan last year that (some? all?) shinto temples
are run as kind of private family business, handed down from father to son.
Coming from a background in a christian country with an established religion
this surprised me.

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Rotten194
Murakami is a great author. One of his most famous pieces is _A Slow Boat to
China_ , which is definitely worth a read. It's not too long, and touches on
very interesting social themes resulting from Japan's rapid post-war
industrialization and the failure of the 1960's anti-ANPO student protests /
riots.

Link:
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/4384180](https://www.jstor.org/stable/4384180),
also works in sci-hub if you don't have access.

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dfxm12
I enjoyed reading this. If you're a fan of an author writing about a passed
father figure, check out Moonglow by Michael Chabon.

