After America - Mark Steyn [153]
As Africa and the Muslim world got younger, the West got older. Once America fell apart and it became clear that there was no longer a U.S. cavalry to ride to the rescue, many around the world slumped into fatalism. In the new Europe, death was a living, and euthanasia clinics (the “dignified departure” lounges) boomed. For those less despondent, the trickle of Muslim “reversions” became a flood, as the middle class did what was necessary to get by. One day the office in which you work installs a Muslim prayer room, and a few of your colleagues head off at the designated times, while the rest of you get on with what passes for work in the EU. A couple of years go by, and it’s now a few more folks scooting off to the prayer room. Then it’s a majority. And the ones who don’t are beginning to feel a bit awkward about being left behind. What do you do? The future showed up a lot sooner than you thought. If you were a fundamentalist Christian like those wackjob Yanks, signing on to Islam might cause you some discomfort. But, if you’re the average post-Christian Eurosecularist, what does it matter? Who wants to be the last guy sitting in the office sharpening his pencil during morning prayers?
The rowdier remnants of the old working class clutched at new political straws, variously neo-nationalist, quasi-fascist, and downright thuggish. The death-cult left plowed on, insisting that the world was overpopulating and the best thing you could do to save “the planet” was tie your tubes and abort your babies—or kill yourself. Nobody believes the planet-saving bit anymore, but they still abort their babies, out of a more general malaise. Even if you’re not suicidal, hospitals are prone to sudden power failures, tragic but economically beneficial: if you thought seniors were expensive at the turn of the century, wait until they’re demanding replacement organs grown by nanotechnology.
Untroubled by immigrants, unburdened by grandchildren, dying alone and unloved, the aging Japanese were the first to take a flyer on the post-human future. By the dawn of the new century, they were living longer than ever. The only glitch was that, as the Japanese got older, their young got fewer: the land of the setting sun was already in net population decline, and octogenarians aren’t the demographic you turn to to maintain your roads, police the subways, work the supermarket checkout—or look after you in the old folks’ home.58
A few years earlier, Japan Logic Machine had developed the Yurina—not the most appealing name, especially for a robot that spreads your legs and changes your diaper.59 But it was a huge success with the elderly and bedridden. It could turn down your bed, run your tub, and then lift you up and carry you over to it for an assisted bath. It wasn’t like the old robots of early sci-fi, with cold metallic claws pinching your aged, withered flesh. The Yurina’s hands were soft, softer than the calloused digits of the harassed human nurse one saw less and less of.
Saitama University developed an advanced model—a robot that could anticipate your wishes by reading your face.60 It could tell you were looking at it, and knew enough about you to understand whether a particular facial expression meant you’d like a cup of tea or a tuna sashimi. Professor Yoshinori Kobayashi said this new“humanoid” (his term) was not just for senior centers, but for Tokyo restaurants, too. After all, an aging society has plenty of seniors who like to eat out on wedding anniversaries, but a smaller and smaller pool of potential waitresses. Professor Kobayashi’s prototype dressed like a French maid with white pinafore, cap and gloves, and black dress. A full wig of hair framed her wide-eyed Manga features. There are worse ways to end your days than as the surviving human element in an anime/live-action feature.
The Japanese called these humanoids “welfare robots.” And I suppose, if you look at it like that, it was a more cost-effective welfare operation than