Peak growth shows a lot of entropy waste indeed. But is Japanese modernism still that relatively gaudy? Just remains of the legend, I tell. The market for technological awe is shrinking, the supply as well. Internet addiction is as special as their financial bubble, and even radioactive waste is repeatable anywhere.

We are left with a fruitless dichotomy which must be transcended if we are to survive.

transcending it is so 60's, it worked as an escape valve, but ultimately just that...

turn on, tune in, drop out was an open invitation too political passivity, enabling the rummies and boltons and negropontes to make ground over the next three decades.

transcendence's only real function is to prepare for death, helping us to stay sane in a crazy era.

it doesn't get the legwork done.

i wish i knew what did... the closest i have seen is the 5*ers, who are writing a new book on participatory democracy.

as for the comments about japan and the rest of asia, japan was the first to take on western consumerism and then asianise it, taking it global so toyota and sony became the new coke and pepsi.

then followed malaysia, singapore, s. korea and china all racing to do to japan what japan had done to us!

so it goes... give man a brain, he'll figure out how to use it to poke himself in the eye.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty