Other than Japan, I have always had a long-standing fascination with Taiwanese society. This is a bit morbid, but I find myself gravitating towards watching 月光族 (Moonlight Tribe) posts on YouTube when I am enjoying the school holidays. This year is no exception.
Moonlight Tribe refers to people who spend all their disposable income and find that they can’t save much at the end of the month. They are bound by the same narrative that most of us are grappling with. Low wages. Rising costs of living. Skyrocketing housing prices. Trapped on the treadmill, seeing no way out.
Most of these young people interviewed brought up a Chinese idiom 及时行乐 (Jíshí Xínglè). This means to cherish the present and enjoy yourself right here and now while you can. So, pessimistic about the fact that they are unlikely to achieve big goals like buying a flat or getting married and raising kids, they resort to consumerism. Spending on the latest branded goods or even seemingly innocuous-looking hobbies like watching movies and consuming coffee. Not bothering to save for the future, for who knows what the future will bring?
We do have another idiom 先苦后甜 (Xiān kǔ hòu tián) that matches the low time preference mindset. It literally means first you taste the bitterness before you relish the sweetness later. I guess in an age where fast outcomes and instant gratification are favoured, it’s not that intuitive to want to suffer now for the prospect of a better future.
I feel that sometimes we are culturally conditioned to make decisions that mayn’t be beneficial for us in the long run. For Taiwanese people or anyone who knows the Mandarin language really, the first thing that comes to their mind when they are facing a tight financial situation is 及时行乐. They have to be discerning and make a conscious effort to pivot their thinking to adopt 先苦后甜 before they can build their future with Bitcoin.
Any sort of cultural norms you have had to shake off and unplug when you embarked on your sovereignty journey with sats?