The Strength of Silence: Anchoring the Self in a Loud World

Now that the era of competing solely on numbers and probabilities has become a relic of the ancient past, I feel strongly each day that true silence—found within stillness—is the next generation’s weapon for survival. The era of fighting with a single weapon is a product of obsolete thinking; we must voluntarily abandon it. What is required of everyone now is the high-level technique of utilizing new concepts befitting a new era, without ever allowing them to separate within oneself.

Here, I wish to advocate for what can be broadly divided into two logics. First, let us examine the “Shotgun Logic.”

If we translate Shotgun Logic into a modern mode of thought, it is the ultimate extreme of “Linear Thinking.” It is the structural bracket that has supported the “quantity over quality” paradigm, which became excessively elevated in the fields of modern business and creation. However, as is glaringly obvious from the trends since the 2010s, this mode of survival functioned merely as an absolute rule within an excessive dopamine economic sphere. Meanwhile, those who sought quality over quantity fell into situations where survival itself became difficult; thoroughly beaten down by the linear logic of numbers, they could only self-affirm by saying, “Seeking quality is the highest human capability.” However, the cruel reality remains: the future was never there to begin with.

The “former future” we stepped into was, ironically, one that thoroughly enforced a rule of selection: those who cannot move forward in any era cannot move to the next. To put it another way, the intensity of culling has increased for those who possess the resolve to move forward but lack the ability to decide.

The symbolic event is the rise of AI, which has transcended the dualism of quality versus quantity that has been fought on the human dimension. As everyone understands, the most important characteristic of AI is the undeniable fact that humans can absolutely never win against it in “linear processing power” and “generation of quantity.” However, there is one inconvenient fact that the majority still refuses to acknowledge. AI has already achieved a high level of quality as well as quantity; the pre-modern debate of “quality or quantity” has become a completely meaningless artifact.

The critical point is that people who have lived by the Shotgun Logic were, in reality, people who could only be used by tools. They were able to survive reasonably well simply because victory or defeat was determined by the negligible differences in processing speed between human brains, or by which tools they used. Pre-modern people often loudly proclaim “human creativity,” but from my perspective, such people have no qualification to speak of it. Why? Because they calmly proclaim it despite not knowing what “human creativity” fundamentally is. To state the inconvenient truth that no one admits: if “human creativity” is to be brought into the AI debate, the answer lies precisely with those who were quickest to switch to production most closely aligned with AI.

And now, because the existence known as AI has begun to permeate with a destructive power that drives out all who stand on that obsolete arena, the possibility of surviving solely in the realm of linear thinking has become zero.

As everyone suspects, continuing to fight with numbers, or even a certain level of quality, is now equivalent to a suicidal act for humans. This is because, in the domain where the Shotgun Logic—mass generation and mass firing—is instantly possible at high quality, it is clear to everyone’s eyes that humans can absolutely never defeat AI. It is foolish to cling to old tactics on a new foundation where the old premise of human-versus-human battles (competition) has already collapsed. The same is occurring with the generalized fear that AI will steal jobs. This, too, is a misunderstanding born from humans trying to fight on the same stage as AI—that is, the realm of linearity. Personally, I view those who currently list their accumulated social career on their profiles as a calculation formula as being, without exception, destined for elimination. This is because, from the perspective of AI, they are regarded as pre-modern humans who do not understand that the rules have changed.

However, my purpose here is not to adjudicate which is correct, nor do I intend to pander to Western AI debates. I wish to show the “beyond” of that generalized argument so that readers are not dragged into the stagnation of a collective retreat.

When looking down from a bird’s-eye view at the trends of a dopamine world made excessive by the Shotgun Logic of quantity over quality, there is one thing I keenly realize. In contemplating this, a possibility for a new era became visible. For me, the major premise is the firm fact that the act of scattering bullets while in a state of suspended thought is not the practice of a success law, but merely being used by a tool. This point is extremely important. The recognition of the difference between “using a tool” and “being used by a tool” seems to be fatally missing, or misunderstood, by the vast majority of people even now. The act of scattering bullets without thinking is a state of having lost oneself, and in the state of being used by a tool, it brings the most fatal blow to the person as a price. That is the “Loss of Presence.”

While firing a shotgun wildly, the person shooting completely loses the ability to read the opponent’s presence (kehai). Because they are used by the tool, they abandon the most important element in battle: “human creativity” (that which AI does not possess). Because they are linear thinkers, they see only the visible world, the measurable world; thus, their vision is obstructed by a wall of roaring sound, dust clouds, and piles of shell casings. And after a while, they succumb to the illusion that the enemy is gone and begin to rest in false peace. What I am discussing in this text is the daily life of those winners who emerged in the startup bubble after the Lehman Shock, or the winners of social media, who devote themselves to mindfulness. They do this not because they must to stay sane, but as a natural reaction to having already lost sight of themselves. And if one loses one’s own presence, one loses the ability to detect the presence of the opponent. What I want to assert at this time is that the world which appears as if the enemy has been eliminated from before one’s eyes is merely a world clouded by one’s own noise.

Regardless of the type of noise, those who scatter noise are fated to be buried within it themselves, unable to detect the fatal crisis creeping up on them. To be unable to detect a crisis means one is also unable to detect an opportunity. That is why those who have driven out opponents with the logic of numbers to stand atop the market cannot survive in the long term, and are constantly frightened by the anxiety of being in a replaceable state. Mindfulness has been used to escape this anxiety, but it is nothing more than a promised temporary rest in a reality that is not real. It is precisely because these people are constantly frightened by the anxiety that you will be the one eliminated in the next instant that mindfulness was able to become popular as a hollowed-out package.

In this unstable arena, even if one acquires some profit temporarily, it is immediately copied and diffused; one must simply keep shooting wildly as opponents appear one after another. eventually, as you keep firing the shotgun, you gradually lose sight of yourself, become completely a slave to the tool, and no longer even know your own standing. You can no longer see where you stand or from where you are firing the shotgun. Therefore, you are finished the moment you are shot by a human holding even one gun (the latest tool) of higher performance.

The obsolete type of human who views the Shotgun Logic as absolute has lost the root and strongest sensor of a biological being: “reading the opponent’s presence.” At this moment, the positions are reversed. This becomes the entrance to the other logic I advocate: the “Logic of One-Cut” (or Ittoryodan).