Everything Has to Be Broken Once: Foolish Leaders, Collapse, and What One Person Does
Is civilization collapsing, and what can one person do about it? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, writing every Friday from inside Japan and outside academia, answers from his own essays: to truly make the world better, everything has to be broken once, and if we go on as a herd of dependents there is nowhere to head but decline. So accept it, take responsibility, and act. This is not punditry but one person's resolve, from inside Japan, by a thinker alive today.
Everything has to be broken once
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Everything must be broken once, 2025-12-29): to truly make the world better, everything has to be broken once; everyone knows it, and the world cannot do it because it threatens its own vested interests.
To truly make the world better, everything has to be broken once. Everyone knows it, and the world cannot do it. Or rather, it will do anything else, but never this, because this threatens its own vested interests and social standing.
It is a constant of history that a civilization collapses from below when foolish leaders take hold of government, but at a stage like today's, when the world has been globalized, it may be without precedent that this collapse is happening on a planetary scale.
Not punditry: one person's resolve
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Will cannot be counted, 2025-11-26): the line between strong and weak is only whether you have the resolve to live on your own.
For me the line between strong and weak is only this: whether you have the resolve to live on your own. Everything else is nonsense and excuse.
The only absolute line that divides human beings is whether you have the resolve to accept full responsibility for your own life.
Values that hold in peacetime crumble
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (A quiet split before 2027, 2025-12-09): values that pass in peaceful times crumble in times of crisis; he adds that, with the peaceful era fully ended, no one's help can be expected (SJ 235).
That this was ever universalized as a good was only because we lived in peaceful times, without the pressing need of such a fork in evolution. Values that hold in peacetime crumble easily in times of crisis.
Expect no one's help. Rely on neither gods nor buddhas. This lonely autonomy, almost despairing, paradoxically brings the strongest mental stability. Now that the peaceful era has fully ended, I believe it is the state of mind we need in order to live through the turbulent 2030s to come.
Accept it, take responsibility, act
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Will cannot be counted, 2025-11-26): if we continue as a herd of dependents there is no destination but decline; the strong are the ones who can decide now, in this moment.
Inwardly, we have turned into a vast and serious herd of dependents, mouths open, waiting for someone to decide for us. What matters is that even the definition of humankind is not universal. It shifts with the age. If we go on as the humanity of today, a herd of dependents, there is nowhere to head but decline.
These thirty-four years have taught me painfully that complaining is itself strong consent to the status quo, the other face of dependence.
It will be those who can decide now, in this moment. The strong are not rulers over others. They are deciders, people who rule their own fate and exercise the power to decide.
An idea without action has no meaning
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (Everything must be broken once, 2025-12-29): at the end of the Edo shogunate, the samurai of Choshu learned that the solutions intellectuals thought up had no chance, and that without action there was no meaning.
At this point an awareness rose, centered on the Choshu samurai, that the solutions that intellectuals thought up had no chance, and that without action there was no meaning.
Yoshida secretly turned his private school into an institution for training revolutionaries of direct action, and drove into the young samurai of Choshu who gathered there that an idea without action has no meaning.
Essays to read
- Everything must be broken once — Will Japan's economy and currency collapse? To truly make the world better, everything must be broken once, Takahiro Mitsui argues, and a people must fall further before it can.
- Walking toward war while the world looks away — Is Japan preparing for war? Rulers with no vision of the state and a thirst for private gain quietly begin to walk the road to war, Takahiro Mitsui warns of Japan.
- 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.
- A quiet split before 2027 — Why do my old friends and I suddenly feel out of step with each other? A slow rupture divides old friends, Takahiro Mitsui senses, and the way through is the whole mind, not only the conscious 8 percent.
- 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.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday