Apparently the aim is more overt (and more investigated) in Japan, as your perspicuous find sets out. I suspect it's much more an unconscious peer-group automatic thing around here, (and I haven't been to Japan).

Obv Doctor Doolittle Lives.. and has been exceeded in punctiliousness by orders of magnitude. I am amazed, each time - at the quantity of new tech terms required to distinguish -'logically'- that which a listening emotional-brain can parse instantly.
(I know someone with such talents/obsession? Lots has been catalogued - of which most of us aren't even dimly aware. I may pass this on to him.) 'Sociolinguistics' - the mind boggles with a soup of stat/intellectual VS intuitive cognition.

One might notice this phenom in recordings of samisen + voice, but it hadn't occurred to me at all - the social freight involved. This despite knowing of foot binding! We should realize just how much homo-sap genes {surely must} overlap with the chameleon.

In that vein - it appears that we have a nation of p\ufffddophiles. What a Surprise.
cf. Puritan and there's enough material for a thesis at any established Web-University. Or an MA in HR?

Thanks - for YAN enigma of the footbinding plane.


moi

Yah, Brin's more than a silver-tongued orator.. why, he makes neologisms almost acceptable, since he explains what *he* means, invariably. As to

a pre-teen attitude of unswerving obedience

Well ... we know that is what parents Want to inculcate

(for their convenience? - nahh, for respite, often pure survival from their daily love/hate nurture/Kill! experience of the mood swings of their fledglings, each of whom Knows He Knows more, at 16+ than his clod-parents ever will. And behaves as disdainfully, while not actually honing Cruelty 101.)

Sorry but.. I just can't readily pluck out many samples of those who really bought the Koolaid -- (though in my case, for there being Fundies about - it was certainly understood that Sincerity was All. We each could fake that pretty well).

A perspicuous closing observation, methinks..
Compassion is the trait we may be most proud of. Ironically, it can have come from nowhere else than the bizarre story of our ancestors' competition for reproductive success.


moi

Now if you want some comic relief, a glimpse of how the Aristocratic Class (here, from the Mother country) is wont to go about Unnatural Selection: check out Regency House Party on your local subscribed-to PBS station or website. Dunno how widespread the distro though; I have to get it from a San Jose sta. which regularly chooses/pays beyond PBS National menus, for good stuff.
[Blake's 7, Sandbaggers, Dr. Who over many years.. now doing Red Dwarf followed by Hitchhiker, on Sun. PMs]

It's a Hoot. But at least folks learn how to dance, how to move with grace and how to schmooze with a little more engaging repartee than.. Hey, wanna fuck?