Famed Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki’s hatred of technology has lately taken on a distinctly survivalist tone – now he is fulminating about how modern technology is robbing the poor children of such crucial life skills such as fire-making and flint-knapping.
He yields the following pearls of wisdom in a recent interview:
The environment children are now in, including our animation, is all virtual. TV, games, email and mobile phones, and even manga, everything we do in other words, they’re all robbing children of power.
[…]
Before they learn their letters, we must teach children the essentials, as we have done from the stone age.
How to start a fire, keep it burning, put it out, the nature of water, how to climb trees, how to wind rope, use a needle and thread, use a knife. I think the state must teach the children these things before they teach them to write.
In response, some have pointed out it seems rather more likely that what is robbing the youth of Japan of power is that the nation is now run by and for the sake of a class of old people possessing views almost as outmoded as those of Miyazaki.
I greatly respect Miyazaki’s works, to the point where I won’t insult him for his other beliefs. Though they are very questionable…
So, basically, what he’s saying is “Participation in Japan’s equivalent of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts ought to be mandatory.”
That might not be so bad.
He’s a crazy old man. Very common in Japan.
Something’s telling me he doesn’t mean any of it literally.
“The environment children are now in, including our animation, is all virtual. TV, games, email and mobile phones, and even manga, everything we do in other words, they’re all robbing children of power”
Here he’s probably saying: “kids sit on their ass all day, every day, watching TV and playing games as they rot”
“Before they learn their letters, we must teach children the essentials, as we have done from the stone age.”
Here he’s saying we should teach kids how to live and survive in society; how NOT to be dead weight.
Seriously, Miyazaki has said many intelligent things in the past. I wouldn’t be quick to judge him on such a statement, which I would assume he didn’t mean literally.
So… according to him, the world should return to the stone age?!