While in America the trend started as a reaction to the economic decline-after the mass redundancies caused by downsizing in the late ' 80s-and is still linked to the politics of thrift, in Britain, at least among the middle-class down shifters of my acquaintance, we have different reasons for seeking to simplify our lives.
Certainly people do not seem less interested in success and its signs now than formerly. Summer homes, European travel, BMWs--the locations, place names and name brands may change, but such items do not seem less in demand today than a decade or two years ago.
Last year Mitsuo Setoyama, who was then education minister, raised eyebrows when he argued that liberal reforms introduced by the American occupation authorities after World WarII had weakened the "Japanese morality of respect for parents".
But it is a little upsetting to read in the explanatory notes that describes a fight between a Turkish and a Bulgarian officer on a bridge both fall into the river--and then to find that the line consists of the falling and the weights of the officers, "Pluff! Pluff!" A hundred and kilograms." a certain line off which they noise of their eighty-five.
Nor, if regularity and conformity to a standard pattern are as desirable to the scientist as the writing of his papers would appear to reflect, is management to be blamed for discriminating against the "odd balls" among researchers in favor of more conventional thinkers who "work well with the team."
