集団的な強迫観念と沈降する社会Collective Obsession and a Sinking Society

Modern society remains in the grip of a certain kind of collective obsession, unable to escape, continuing its subsidence. One characteristic of this collective sinking is the prevalence of speech that appears to say something while, in fact, saying nothing. Despite saying nothing, because one can stage the pretense of having spoken, rewards in the form of praise for self-actualization, or even criticism, are prepared from the start. As a result of this farce spreading on a planetary scale, humanity has committed a monumental and fatal error.

The sinking surfaces on the individual level as an indescribable sense of irritation or burnout. The manifestation of burnout increases in proportion to the intensity of the lack of introspection. At this juncture, even if one attempts mindfulness as a symptomatic treatment, it merely results in an inability to escape the deepening quagmire. What I am intensely convinced of is that mindfulness, in its modern form, was never the meditative tradition of the East itself.

In other words, even if materials such as meditation have been packaged into mindfulness, the essence of meditation possesses no such lukewarm gentleness. The "intense pain" inherent in authentic meditation is the most important fruit of one's introspection; yet in mindfulness, this must be thoroughly eliminated—otherwise, it cannot be generalized (that is, commodified)—so it is completely ignored. Therefore, it is nothing more than mindfulness as a hollowed-out trend. In this state, no matter how many new meditation methods are developed, the essence does not move an inch, and the play of the surface merely takes on a more ludicrous hue. Regardless of West or East, those who truly know meditation do not commit the folly of avoiding that intense pain.

Not limited to the above, if one points out that the primary cause lurking at the bottom of this subsidence may stem from things we have not thought about until now—no, things we did not want to think about—what kind of escape route can be conceived? Or, now that all sides are already solidified and guarded by sentries, is there no escape route for us at all? This is what I wish to ask this time.

The major premise is the fact that we have treated every friction, pain, or element of loneliness in individual life as if it were a defect of life, and have tried to thoroughly eliminate them through institutions, technology, and furthermore, human benevolence. This is not solutionism in the context of technology believers; rather, the fundamental perversion of solutionism lies in the weapon known as human benevolence itself. I will take this as my standpoint.

We have become too sensitive to unpleasant noise in life, with a tendency to over-identify it as "evil" upon discovery. Moreover, we are desperate to exterminate it all, believing that making things clean is the ideal. To be more comfortable, safer, and less hurt is not consideration in the essential sense, but merely a wall (a clean room) constructed by "pushed-upon consideration." If a human stays inside a wall for 100 years, they forget the threats outside and even the existence of the outside world. Similarly, people raised safely within the invisible walls of "pushed-upon consideration" begin to possess one common characteristic. That is growing up regarding pseudo-reality as reality, completely unknowing of the impossibility that authentic reality possesses. Its ultimate form appears collectively as a posture of rejecting the impossibility of reality.

In my view, reality is always impossible. It is reality precisely because it is filled with impossibility. To challenge this truth, a certain requirement is necessary: the answer to the question, "How much have you faced yourself?" This answer is not given in words, but is answered as actual practice (pratique) itself. However, the majority of people reject such things because they involve intense pain. The rejection here is a self-abandonment of one's own living, and no matter what anyone says, it is entirely a self-responsibility. And this self-abandonment equates to abandonment of reality.

Therefore, people who have rejected reality globalize the pseudo-reality that has been alienated from the impossible reality, and bury themselves by living therein. If one forms a world within alienated pseudo-reality, over the years, one can feel as if pseudo-reality has become reality; eventually, adapting to such an environment is called "evolution," and the group begins self-affirmation (self-praise). However, there is actually no vitality of life there. It simply centralizes the form of alienated pseudo-reality, forms a membrane of collective common illusion, and over time, manifests as an institutional dimension fueled by rules and norms.

In truth, there is no center or anything there, but the people who rejected reality and wished to be confined here idealize a peaceful life here—that is, spending time in a "prepared reality" where "intense pain" has been eliminated to every corner. Furthermore, alienated pseudo-reality enters a state of trying to eliminate "intense pain" in diverse forms, such as social institutions and ultimately over-protective intervention by the government, beginning to blindly believe that confining individual lives in a condition like a sterile room is success. The fact that this has resulted in the mass production of people who waste their lives and end their days solely for adaptation to a fake "comfort" is the greatest proof of all. Because having a beating heart and living are essentially different. And what is interesting is that such people are the ones who fear "death" the most.

Looking at society, from welfare and education to corporate services, "not getting hurt" and "not getting lost" are upheld as top priorities, and even the speech of developed nations has fallen into a state where it is constantly monitored and managed, leaving people unable to move. There, things have inverted into a serious situation where one cannot digest the days except by becoming extreme or doing nothing. They self-affirm excessive protection, loudly claiming they are protecting people from evil and depravity to pride themselves on their legitimacy, but if one goes outside, it is immediately obvious that the exact opposite is occurring. If you ask why they cannot understand something of this degree, it is because, as mentioned before, this type of person blindly believes in pseudo-reality as reality, and thus does not look directly at the impossibility of reality. The strange inversion of modernity is like the dead living, and the non-real becoming the real. And while intellectual people feel something is wrong, they have not been able to doubt their own standing basis itself, and because they profit reasonably well, they do not reach the point of seriously thinking that the foundation itself is the problem.

Then, since the world is a prefabricated shack formed by an accumulation of pseudo-reality that is easy for them, only the voices of those who do not look at reality and have abandoned life become excessively noisy, increasing their influence. This is natural, for the echo chamber of that world is made of materials convenient for them. Therefore, those who sing counter-arguments are ruthlessly excluded. This is because the fantasy structure has become so complex, but the crucial point is that this world has no texture. In other words, those voices have no heat; there is a fabricated semblance of heat, but no heat as a tactile sensation. You all likely understand better than I, a Japanese person, that a fierce collision between the two has continued here over the past few years, but then, where are the true modern sages?

While surveying the disastrous state of the era, what always comes to my mind is an ancient Chinese tale. That is the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove.

They lived in mid-3rd century China, exactly during the transition from Wei to Western Jin. It was considered a dark age where betrayal and purges were rampant; the Sima clan, who held real power, were eliminating political enemies one after another, and what was used to justify their power was Confucianism. However, this Confucianism had forgotten the teachings once preached by Confucius and was merely a regime philosophy convenient for the rulers. At this time, the important moral wisdom regarding introspection that Confucius originally asked—"Be polite to yourself," "Be faithful to yourself"—was converted directly into the command "Be polite to power and follow it faithfully." In this suffocatingly unrestful era, seven sages chose by their own will, not to raise their voices to change politics, but rather to dare "not to speak of politics" in order to live their own lives even in a turbulent age.

They gathered in a bamboo grove away from urban politics, exchanged cups of wine, and devoted themselves to philosophical discussions centered on Laozi and Zhuangzi thought, called seidan (清談), pure conversation. Rather than speaking of the politics which reality could not change—politics that did not touch reality itself at all—they abandoned it, and while immersing themselves in the cosmic truths of Laozi and Zhuangzi, they chose the path of confronting reality to the end. What I personally find interesting here is that while modern people regard this as "escapism," the ancient Chinese sages teach us that it is the opposite.

And they performed eccentricities such as daring to drink heavily and get dead drunk, or casting off their clothes to ignore "propriety," one of the teachings of Confucianism. These were not escapes from reality or depravity, but expressions of life-staking non-compliance, and the very resolve to face reality thoroughly. In other words, the seven sages refused to pander to the regime by contenting themselves with living in pseudo-reality. That refusal was not a simple Yes or No, but facing thoroughly the impossibility that is reality, and living in actual practice (pratique) therein. By deliberately acting out madness, they appealed to the powerful, "I have no political ambition, I am just a useless person," avoiding the blade of the purge while devoting themselves solely to sharpening their own introspection. And at the same time, by opposing the natural spirit derived from Laozi and Zhuangzi against the hollowed-out Confucian morality brandished by the rulers, they severely satirized their hypocrisy.

In fact, they did not overthrow the political regime. As the leader Ji Kang was executed, it is sometimes evaluated that they were powerless before the violence of authority, but I do not think so, and I even think that the way of understanding them is completely wrong. Modern people are trapped in the fixed concept that raising one's voice and overthrowing or correcting power is revolution, but that is within pseudo-reality from beginning to end, and is not reality. Originally, revolution is nothing other than one's struggle against oneself. I believe that these sages were the most radical anarchists in the sense that they proved with their own bodies that "no matter how harsh the times, one's self is the one thing that cannot be dominated." They were sages who invented not a way to change politics in pseudo-reality, but a "way to carry oneself through" in a hopeless era. When I reconsider their way of life, I cannot help but feel that the modern era is the same, or an even worse era.

Ironically, there is a proverb in Japan: "The weaker the dog, the more it barks." When modern people hear the tale of the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove," they tend to imagine them like modern pro-democracy activists, but this is a complete error that understands nothing of them. They were not Marxist revolutionaries who gathered in the bamboo grove demanding freedom of speech and appealing for political change. Because they knew such things had no value, they were sages. What this tale conveys to us today is that asserting social justice politically is not necessarily the correct thing to do. And that while it masquerades as revolution, it is not revolution. I constantly think that revolution lies not in energy radiating heat outward, but in extremely quiet silence. Not speaking can sometimes become the most radical act.

What must not be misunderstood here is that this silence is not closing one's mouth out of anxiety fearing cancellation in the "position of pseudo-reality (social status)" due to the spread of overly tyrannical social justice, nor is it killing one's true feelings to pander. Because such persons have no power to change anything; while they may be treated as heroes by one side, they are homogeneous in that they also do not engage in introspection, and it is merely a story of fighting for interests within the same pseudo-reality. It seems very strange to me that freedom of speech is viewed as a problem here. Even if one continues to overproduce the speech of pseudo-reality while continuing to refuse to face the speech of reality, it will never lead to humans truly living. In other words, the opportunity to dissipate the illusion of alienated pseudo-reality and confront reality is never born.

That said, tyrannical despotism that executes people one after another under the great cause of social justice, claiming that the more one screams the more correct one is, also has no power to change anything. In quiet silence lies the most radical assertion. And the modern sages, who are the most radical and anarchist through quiet silence, are always waiting for the time. Because silence is not closing one's mouth out of anxiety or fear as mentioned above, but revealing the truth by speaking the appropriate words at the most appropriate time. Indeed, for the modern sage, where is the Bamboo Grove of the past?

I no longer see that answer in the external world formed by pseudo-reality. It is not in some mountain range, nor in an underground city, nor on Mars. The last paradise left to humans is inner exploration. The inner world, boundary-less and more vast than the universe—this will be the next Bamboo Grove.

However, if people push forward with inner exploration, the maintenance of the gains (social gains) of people who have neither the resolve nor the determination to live by themselves through mutual dependence will be threatened. Therefore, they continue to ignore this reality, try not to see it, and end up piling concealment upon concealment on a human scale while disguising it with pseudo-reality. What is being done here is the inversion into a "self-domestication" that extracts the fangs from humans, rendering them harmless and powerless. If asked why I consider this the most serious problem of all, it is because the place where I was born and raised, Japan, is one of the places where self-domestication into the system shows most clearly. For me, who understands this situation of self-domestication painfully through my life, this is a grave issue that must be questioned to the end. After all, the extreme of the non-existence of the individual lies here.

If the over-protective intervention into others until now had truly been the correct answer for humanity, in this modern era where the population has exceeded 8 billion, such intellectual decadence and spiritual emptiness would not have spread on a global scale like a pandemic. Why are the souls of modern people so devastated, their life force extinct? It is because individuals lack the resolve to move forward and are postponing the decision. Because of this, resources are not poured into thinking about a state of spiritual plenitude, and instead, only maintenance-like behaviors that tinker with the various problems of the world formed by pseudo-reality with cheap tricks occur frequently and are justified. In other words, despite doing nothing for reality or for themselves, they pretend to be doing something. Moreover, there is no way left but to forcibly affirm or praise this with the power of numbers. It can even be said that they enable system maintenance by not admitting the impossibility of reality as a major premise. The moment the impossibility of reality is admitted, the true identity supporting this system would be exposed.

Because reality is impossible, we must continue to stand against it. But in the modern age, we are only able to avoid this impossibility of reality, fabricate only the convenient parts of alienated pseudo-reality as a possible domain, and behave as if a world of peace has been established. Therefore, everything holds risk of collapsing at any moment while containing instability. Facing this very troublesome problem, we cannot move forward unless we expose the decisive deception held by the concept of compassion spoken of in modern times. This is because what the potentially egoistic individual wearing the skin of compassion does to others is not salvation, but the the deprivation of tenmei. Since the individual in this context is alienated, I define them as an "individual who possesses no reality."

To summarize up to this point and suggest for the future: I believe that what alienated pseudo-reality from reality was actually the moment language took on a structure that sets up a "subject." And if we name this rift the "alienating rift," then the "alienated individual" that has long been regarded as a problem does not actually have its epicenter in the individual, but the key lies in the mutation of language. I will continue to disclose this area over the years.

Now, let us look at the the deprivation of tenmei. tenmei is one of the major themes centered in Shitsurae, and is one of the concepts left by Confucius in ancient times. This is the clear teaching that living by devoting oneself to the mission given by Heaven to everyone is what it means to truly live. Therefore, the deprivation of tenmei is the basest and most cruel act against human existence—stripping away the fundamental mission of life for which a human was born into this world to complete spiritually as a human, or to reach that state. Strangely, while it is argued that war is wrong, no argument is made against this cruel act. Therein lies a hint.

If I define modern compassion, in my phrasing, "compassion = the deprivation of tenmei." However, as everyone knows in their hearts, that is not the possibility or power that compassion originally possessed. Probably, many people are aware of this.

Then why is this violence invisible to many people's eyes—no, why is it ignored? It is because in this three-dimensional physical dimension, the act visible as "removing the obstacle in front of someone's eyes" appears to be completed as a good deed in the short term, stimulating dopamine. Taking pain from those in pain, and confusion from those who are lost, looks like beautiful compassion at first glance. However, that has not escaped the realm of adjudicating matters based on the criteria of pleasure/discomfort in the visible world (pseudo-reality).

Certainly, the person whose pain was removed by someone's compassion feels relief at that moment. But it is only for that moment, and is nothing more than a problem of an arbitrary "point" separated by slicing the time axis infinitely. If the perspective captures life as an enumeration of separated "points" in the first place, even if the problem of a "point" extracted by detailing is removed, the totality itself does not move an inch. This is because when one surveys an individual's life from a spiritual perspective, the true meaning of what is correct inverts. The limit of the perspective that views things in "points" always ends here.

So let us invert the way of thinking once. What if the obstacle or hardship that person is facing is actually a perfect opportunity for spiritual growth that only that person can experience, and the very ground for which they descended into this world seeking that opportunity spiritually? It is the possibility that it was an indispensable rite of passage to reach the place they should head for, and the only spiritual training to forge the soul.

Furthermore, that obstacle should have functioned as a trigger to push that person up from a cheap place flowing low to a height. From a perspective that ignores the spiritual dimension, it is merely that friction or pain that looks unhappy and pitiable, and if noticed, removing it is justified as compassion, but actually, the trap lies precisely there. Because it is an opportunity for spiritual growth obtained only by the person overcoming it by their own will. What is truly important at this time is whether that individual reaches the strong determination to try to overcome it by their own will or not, and whether they can stand up when that opportunity visits hangs on a single point. Because life is always "do, or do not."

However, modern society continues to strengthen the cycle of preemptively expropriating this through the adjudication of one-sided values, using the tyranny of humanism—"because it's pitiable," "because it's inconvenient"—as a weapon. What is most troublesome is that this act of spiritual expropriation manifests even in social and institutional dimensions in various forms such as compassion, kindness, human rights, and consideration, packaged in pleasant-sounding words that no one can oppose, spread globally, and justified. The greatest problem, or characteristic here, is absolutely not admitting that each person has a unique tenmei. I see the cause of rejecting the fact that each person has a unique tenmei in the error of the location of identity.

The claim of diversity that "everyone is different," which has been propagandized too much and exhausted the masses, is strangely installed one after another while being limited only to the visible world, while the diversity of the invisible world continues to be ignored. Moreover, for some reason, the diversity of the visible world is actively affirmed or denied, but regarding the individual's tenmei, which is the diversity of the invisible world, the situation is such that even proposing it is rejected. In other words, why can they not admit so stubbornly that each individual possesses a tenmei? The reason is simple and clear: there are too few people who can introspect.

Based on the above, I believe that the struggle for me to be me should not originally be spoken of in social justice. Social justice is correctly something that is born afterwards, and is not something that should be placed first; in fact, to push further, I believe there is no justice or anything in society itself. In other words, the standing point when causing a movement or setting a problem, and furthermore the vector, is wrong, but far from there being any sign of this mistake being corrected, I feel that only the blind belief justifying that it is not wrong has become extreme. Because the madness of people who have lost themselves has begun on a global scale.

The more the lack of introspection increases, the more this runaway to the extreme becomes unstoppable. It is inevitable in this sense that the characteristics of social movements of the social media generation converge to such extremes. This is because the trigger for the runaway to the extreme in this generation is the dopamine spike, similar to a blood glucose spike. I fall into the Millennials category, but I constantly feel that among those who maintain silence in this generation, including Gen Z, there are true sages. They are figures who absolutely do not appear on social media, but their influence will quietly permeate in proportion to the magnitude of the tide where the runaway without introspection radicalizes in the future.

Personally, as I examined the turmoil of the Japanese student movements in the late 1960s, it became visible to me that while the majority of them devoted themselves to social movements and loudly declared revolution, they ignored and abandoned the revolution that had to be done before that. My fundamental thought is that true struggle is for making oneself clear to oneself, and is one's own problem from beginning to end.

This is because a social movement that exceeds the individual's struggle holds a serious risk from the start. That is, through the social movement, the individual's struggle is rendered non-existent, and the majority of the social movement inevitably becomes an accumulation of non-existent individuals. As long as it is a social movement, falling into this cannot be avoided no matter what is done. That is precisely why I cannot trust any social movement. If you ask why social movements become hollow shells when prolonged, it is because the accumulation of the non-existence of individuals is fundamentally fragile in binding strength. In a manner of speaking, it lacks time durability. Lacking time durability means that even if it can change political policies of pseudo-reality in the short term, it does not possess the power to change anything in the long term.

A healthy social movement is a wave that oscillates as a vibration by each person performing the individual's struggle thoroughly. Because the nature of the era applies pressure to all people living in that era, and if fierce introspection with oneself responds to it, it inevitably becomes a social movement. The characteristic of this form of social movement is that it does not share a "purpose consciousness," and thus does not accompany praxis. However, because the social movement as an accumulation of non-existent individuals has fragile time durability, if "purpose consciousness" is not emphasized as a premise, it immediately falls into the risk of dissolution, so it thoroughly asserts praxis toward purpose completion.

However, in the interlinked social movement that oscillates through individual struggle, such praxis toward purpose completion does not exist; there is only actual practice (pratique). Therefore, I am skeptical even of whether this can be called a social movement. Just as the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove were not a social movement. Hence, I do not believe in social movements.

Unfortunately, in everything currently spoken of as social movements, this individual struggle is non-existent. Without the experience of the most difficult combat called individual struggle, the accumulation of non-existent individuals pushing forward into social movements is beautified, normalized, and increases only in frequency. Moreover, it is thorough enough that rewards are prepared from the start where participating is affirmed as "raising one's voice" and praised. In other words, social movements are conducted under the fixed guarantee that even with the individual struggle remaining non-existent, one can satisfy the desire for self-actualization to some extent by joining the social movement. If you ask why people gather in such collectives, it is because there is a temporary rest from abandoning the living that is individual struggle. But this rest is not a serotonin-based rest of parasympathetic dominance where HRV rises, but a dopamine-based rest of sympathetic dominance, so that rest is triggered by the stimulus of transient excitement. To put it differently, modern social movements are "triggered physiological phenomena." Since this is a dimension that can no longer be expressed by convenient words like escapism, I call it the self-abandonment of living.

The present where non-existent-individual social movements have been standardized. The violence that strips the solitary struggle from the individual and tries to collect everyone into a homogenized destination called "comfortable and safe happiness," which all humanity should aim for in common, is heightening excessively. The more this movement heightens, the more the non-existent individual becomes a ghost wandering in nihilism, and reality becomes completely invisible from before their eyes. At this time, the object disappears completely, which is why I persistently state the importance of "seeing the person."

With this, it is natural not to know what one was born for. Because without making the resolve or decision to live their own lives, packages for consuming time are prepared in all directions, and by continuing to deceive oneself throughout life inside the cage that feigns that pseudo-reality as reality, it has become possible to consume a life of about 80 years. And as a resolution to moderately satisfy the desire for self-actualization, various participation events are even prepared. A society where everything is set up like this and one can live without doing anything oneself is certainly attractive to the masses. Therefore, no matter how much the social system screams or how dilapidated it is, they try to protect or repair it. Their eyes can absolutely never achieve the gouging out of reality itself.

Essentially, the fact that the earlier the timing of the system's collapse, the sooner we can move to the next, is ignored. Because considering the average human lifespan, everyone wishes to live easily within the scope of their own life. Thus, the debt is deferred to future generations in a snowballing fashion.

From reality to pseudo-reality, from pseudo-reality to reality. One must not forget that the reality, so cruel to the masses, appears suddenly before one's eyes.