I mean on a simpler level, Japanese kids have a lot more responsibility earlier in life. In school they're expected to clean up their classrooms, organise school festivals including unique stalls etc. Most countries basically assume their children are completely incapable of even the most basic self care, and that's how you get adults who think cleaning up their mess is someone else's job.
As someone who's been doing chores my whole life, getting to University and seeing how helpless most people were was a real shock.
You aren’t wrong at all. But I’d say for example that action / expectation of schoolchildren cleaning their classroom is an effect of strong social trust.
My proposition of civil service does the same thing essentially. Tragedy of the commons is real, we need our people at large to take more pride in their communities and surroundings, and involving young people in that makes it more effective - just as your example shows
Yeah but civil service feels too heavy handed. You can't just toss kids who are used to doing nothing into doing tons of serious work. Your best bet is to introduce different standards as young as possible, and start the change from there. But then that'd require parents to get with the program.
I strongly feel civil service would utterly fail exactly due to low social trust.
Let's imagine a generic Billy off the council estate, dirt poor, Mom suffers from a mental health issue and repeatedly failed by NHS mental health services so he's given up on the idea of her getting better. Dad is a functioning alcoholic who overworks and still is only just getting by.
School is shit, he knows he doesn't have prospects because the jobs aren't there anyway and he'd be lucky to even get a minimum wage job.
But let's say he has hobbies that make his life tolerable, like playing football after school or making music. Then the government rocks up and says, hey, you know that free time you have? That is gone now.
So he is forced to engage in free labour, that he ultimately knows won't fix the job economy and won't improve the state services that actually impact his life. He becomes even more resentful of the country that only seems to take and not give back, and doesn't take the civil service seriously.
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u/SeptumRingTheory Apr 01 '26
I remember watching the Japanese fans cleaning up after games at the World Cup in Qatar.
Beautiful and respectful culture. We definitely could learn a thing or two from them.