The Generation of Meaning
A Meditative Essay on Living in a World Without Despair
For the past several years, the same atmosphere has been spreading across the world. It is not a particular recession or a particular war. It is a far deeper sensation, as if the very ground beneath us is quietly disappearing. The problems of economy and geopolitics appear rather to be phenomena that began to surface all at once as a result of this sensation spreading through the world. We do not now possess “the means to truly solve problems.” Because we try to handle the complex problems of the present in this state, we may be making the problems even more tangled.
In a world that has lost the power to suppress problems already surfaced, we should be probing the root causes and the essence and moving toward problem-solving suited to the distinct troubles of each country and people. Yet this conception is absent. Many people besides me likely feel that every morning when they see the news, the day begins in an unpleasant mood in endless repetition, and some may be in despair. But what I want to ask this time lies here.
“Is that truly despair?”
The empty and powerless sensation spreading through the world, the sense that “there is nothing more we can do,” was not in fact born from a lack of ability on our part. I consider this an inevitable sensation that arises in an era when two frameworks have simultaneously lapsed. For us who live the present situation, this sensation is the inevitability of the era and cannot be avoided by our own will. We must therefore accept that sensation ourselves and act after taking on the responsibility.
The two frameworks I speak of here are these. One is the premodern framework in which “place, ritual, and community” gave people the meaning of life. The other is the modern framework in which “labor, progress, and career” promised a future. I have simplified greatly, but the character of the eras can be condensed here. The problem is hidden here. Why?
Because these two frameworks have now collapsed simultaneously.
People born and raised in countries that have reached the impasse of modernity all face this problem. This problem is in truth occurring in a limited way to particular countries and peoples, yet people are under the illusion that it is occurring simultaneously on a global scale or a human scale. Careful attention is required here. For countries and peoples who have been able to retain one of the two frameworks, many people do not feel this emptiness and powerlessness in the same way that those who want to think “everyone is the same” assume. They do not share it. Being aware of this distinction is important. The true inquiry begins from understanding that “the world is not one.”
To lay out the elements, they are place, ritual, and community, and labor, progress, and career. Anyone who lives a life that strongly retains even one of these does not in fact fall into the despair that can be called the greatest problem of the present. The essential problem is that “two frameworks have now collapsed simultaneously,” but for people able to retain these, this problem is void. This voidness is proportional in particular to the strength with which the premodern character is retained. They have something to lean on. Many people have now completely lost this thing to lean on.
The premodern framework was mercilessly destroyed and trampled by modernization. I was born and raised in Japan and have conducted research on Japan, so regarding this destruction by modernization I likely understand more than people of any country. Modernization destroyed all of “place, ritual, and community.” As its replacement, the modern framework designed “labor, progress, and career,” but the endpoint of this ironically resulted in the wholesale replacement of the very workers who had carried “labor, progress, and career.” Regarding AI and automation, many people until last year still had the composure to scoff, but that is already a thing of the past. The extremity of modernity was the nullification of human beings conducting social life, the rendering of human beings useless within the frame called society.
Here many people, out of anxiety and impatience, or irritation and anger, invert this problem in an easy direction. AI, automation, and algorithms are certainly problems, but the true problem is that even now with the two frameworks collapsed, many people still design their lives on the premise of “society.” No one speaks of it, but the true problem lies here.
Since the modern era destroyed “place, ritual, and community,” it is hard for us to picture, but society did not exist in the premodern era. It is a new space of governance born in the modern era. The modern framework of “labor, progress, and career” consists of elements that can survive only in society, and the premodern framework of “place, ritual, and community” does not in fact exist in society. This is the key point. If you feel you are confusing this distinction, that expresses the strength with which you are socialized. Contemporary technology has begun to occupy “the framework of society.” It does not have the power to occupy place, ritual, and community.
I do not want to speak of some outdated notion of returning to the premodern. In Japan too, a trend of people exhausted by city life moving to country life advanced after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, but what I want to consider is not there. To keep thinking this through, I want to consider what exactly we have lost, what is truly precious, and how we can find and nurture the next sprout from within now that the two frameworks have collapsed. To put it more clearly, the inquiry is “what was the most precious of the things we lost?” Continuing to think through this single point thoroughly is important.
As a first step, what must be corrected first is that we are not in despair. We are merely feigning despair. For people living in a world where the two frameworks have collapsed, there is not even room for despair in the true sense.
The reason I want to consider this meaning is that many people misjudge it here. We are not in fact suffering from having “dropped out” of these two frameworks. Because by rights, beyond the point of dropping out there should still remain another framework. Looking back even on the twentieth century, everyone should be able to agree that beyond dropping out there always remained many yohaku [余白] in the world for forming another framework. The disappearance of this yohaku beyond the drop-out point from the world may perhaps be a matter of only the past decade or so. Human beings invariably fall under the illusion, when their present painful situation continues, that the situation has continued from long ago, but this is not actually so. From this perspective I propose that the true problem lies not in dropping out but in the disappearance from the world of the yohaku for making another framework beyond the drop-out point.
Dropping out itself is not the problem. But the matter is different when it concerns the modern framework of “society” (labor, progress, career). Dropping out of society was possible after the Second World War but is now impossible. Society has filled the world’s yohaku to that extent. The true problem lies here. What filled the world’s yohaku is society. What I want you to consider again is why it is called “social” media.