Why Is Everyone So Angry? Escaping the Circle of Endless Argument
Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, writing every Friday from inside Japan and outside academia, answers from his own essays: however many words we spend, we end up back in the same spot, because conviction, which we were taught gives strength, turns over and becomes a cage. Argument without introspection is noise, and words without roots are no more than weapons. This is not about debate skills but about getting out of the circle, from outside the West, by a thinker alive today.
Not debate skills: a way out
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Revolution is carried out on oneself, 2026-06-03): however many words we spend, we end up back in the same spot; we lay the cause of failing to understand one another on the other side, and the trap of dualism is always our own problem.
However many words we spend, however we change places and explain, however closely we listen to the other, we end up back in the same spot. In that circling without an answer, we come to feel that further effort is wasted, and in our hurry to produce an answer we call it "compromise" and tell ourselves that the other person is wrong, or has no wish to understand.
The trap of dualism, "right and wrong," "good and evil," is always our own problem, and never a problem of others, society, government or the world.
Conviction becomes a cage
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Revolution is carried out on oneself, 2026-06-03): the more certain we are that we are right, the narrower the world becomes; conviction, taught as strength, turns over and shuts us in.
The more certain we are that we are right, that we are good, the narrower the world in fact becomes. The more we believe this is right, the more stifling it gets. We were taught that conviction gives strength, but it turns over and becomes a cage that shuts us in.
When the world has narrowed to the limit, such people mistake whatever clear thing remains for what they must defend, and so they close the dialogue themselves. It is not the other who closes it. They do.
Why everyone is angry: the answer is sought outside
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Argument without introspection is noise, 2025-12-07): in a world flooded with answers our hearts are unsteady and brittle, because the posture of looking outside for answers has always turned argument into war.
We live in a world flooded with answers as never before.
But if answers really are flooding the world, and we know so many correct ones, why are our hearts so unsteady and so brittle? Why does the mere sight of someone else's different opinion set the heart pounding as if our very existence were under threat, and drive us into fury?
The one truth I can state with conviction is this: "the answer is not outside."
Two disciples who quarrelled
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Argument without introspection is noise, 2025-12-07): Wang Yangming told two quarrelling disciples that their argument came from a heart that wants to win; when you try to win, emotion and ego stir and the heart loses its calm.
Yangming neither scolded them both nor took a side. He devoted himself to quiet counsel. "Your argument," he told them, "comes from a heart that wants to win."
When you try to win, ki (気), emotion and ego, stirs. When ki stirs, the heart loses its calm, and you lose the rightness proper to a human being.
If you have time to argue, act
Takahiro Mitsui's proposal (Argument without introspection is noise, 2025-12-07): argument now produces nothing; what comes first is to tie knowledge to action and solve, within what we can do, what troubles the person closest to us.
Now is the time to act to solve even one thing that troubles the person most important to you. I feel strongly that this alone may be the future left to the world, no, to humankind. If you have time to argue, act.
Argument without introspection is noise, and words without roots are no more than weapons.
Revolution is carried out on oneself
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Revolution is carried out on oneself, 2026-06-03): the way out is to face just one person, and revolution is always carried out on oneself.
To face just one person even at the risk of one's life. There is no way to transform this world except by the accumulation of that. Revolution is not carried out against society or the state, still less to change others. Revolution is always carried out on oneself.
Essays to read
- Revolution is carried out on oneself — Why can we not understand each other no matter how much we talk? Certainty narrows the world, Takahiro Mitsui maintains, and revolution is never against others but on oneself.
- Argument without introspection is noise — Why is everyone so polarized? Takahiro Mitsui on why the answer is not outside: how a world flooded with answers, and the habit of borrowing the words of authority, leaves the heart brittle.
- No one else can answer for you — How should I think about my own death? Takahiro Mitsui's thesis: for the samurai, time flowed back from the moment chosen for death, not forward from the past; in an age of automation no one else can answer for you, so resolve (kakugo) must be your own.
- Keep asking in a world without answers — How to live in a world without answers? A philosopher of your generation on how to live in a world without answers: Takahiro Mitsui (b. 1991) on why the premodern and modern frameworks of meaning fell at once, and why to keep asking is the way in.
- Will cannot be counted — How do I decide what I actually want? Takahiro Mitsui, born 1991, on the sovereign who decides without a compass, and the fatal defect of the information society: measuring human worth by numbers like follower counts.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday