Why Does Everything Feel Fake? A Society Without Faces
Everything feels fake because faces have been erased. Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, writes from a country that got there first: when a society's only yardstick is credentials and numbers, what circulates between people is social credit, not trust. What's left of you when everything falls apart? Start from where you actually stand, he says, not from a screen.
Why does everything feel fake?
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Mindfulness is not meditation, 2025-11-24; When order needs no enforcer, 2024-12-21): what feels fake is a semblance of reality that people have taken for reality, built behind a wall of imposed care; in it, voices have no heat you can feel in your hands, and faces have been erased from people.
They take the semblance of reality (現実性) for reality, and grow up knowing nothing of the impossibility that real reality holds.
Those voices have no heat. There is something like fabricated heat, but no heat you can feel in your hands.
Faces are erased from people, and over the years human relationships steadily rot.
Is the American dream over?
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (If everyone looks away, reality is not there, 2025-11-28; Faith needs no argument, 2025-12-13): the dream of modernity was not lost but arrived at; the summit of the staircase is emptiness, and Japan reached it first.
Modern people labor under the illusion that climbing the structural ladder will inevitably bring them to meaning, never noticing the fatal flaw built into the design from the start: that the summit itself is emptiness.
We stand at the far end of a dream already realized and left behind, and yet our discussions, for some reason, cannot budge an inch from the ground of modernity.
Having lived inside Japan's condition myself, I cannot shake the sense that the rest of the world has begun stepping into much the same future.
What is society-ism, and why does it erase faces?
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (When order needs no enforcer, 2024-12-21; Perfect service, and nobody there, 2025-01-06): society-ism, Tetsuji Yamamoto's word, names a condition beyond socialism in which the production of society itself becomes the sole end; the only yardstick left is credentials and numbers, so what circulates is social credit, not trust, and a nameless anxiety takes the place of a problem one could grasp.
Yet the only account that truly rings true is what the philosopher Tetsuji Yamamoto, at the close of the 2000s, called "society-ism" (shakai-izumu): a condition beyond socialism in which the production and reproduction of society itself become the sole end of everything.
The only yardstick left is the set of numbers and credentials conferred by society as a souvenir of having turned oneself into a social agent: academic pedigree, company affiliation, job title. What circulates among people is not trust, but social credit.
Because the malignancy driving people mad cannot be grasped at all, only a "nameless anxiety" ratchets up the tension and batters everyday life to pieces.
Wrestling with this reality myself, I broke free from the condition of "society-ism"—in which one is made to think about society twenty-four hours a day—and built a healthy condition in which I pour my energy into thinking about the future.
Why does fleeing the system keep you inside it?
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Faith needs no argument, 2025-12-13; Will cannot be counted, 2025-11-26): the old strategy of escaping outside the system no longer works; the digital nomad who flees is as domesticated as the one who stays, and complaining that the times are bad is the other face of dependence.
Unless we begin by admitting that the old strategy of fleeing outside the system no longer works at all, we will miss the heart of the matter.
They may play at having broken free, but when it comes to the self-domestication of an internalized system, they are no different from those who stay in one place.
These thirty-four years have taught me painfully that complaining is itself strong consent to the status quo, the other face of dependence.
Thinking from the place you stand
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Faith needs no argument, 2025-12-13; History is the heat of your own time, 2025-12-10): all existence springs from place, so discussion without place is empty theory; the only history you can truly know is where you were born, where you grew up and where you stand now; the moment you see that your habits of thought are not your own, a yohaku opens within.
All existence springs from place. Discussion without place is therefore empty theory, and no matter how endlessly we produce and reproduce it, it amounts to nothing more than a squandering of time, humanity's greatest asset.
The only history any human being can truly know is rooted in their own singular life: in which era they were born, where they grew up, and where they stand today.
The moment you see this, a yohaku (余白) for contemplation opens within your inner world, and within it opens an active, tranquil eye that truly gazes upon the world.
Essays to read
- When order needs no enforcer — Why is Japan so orderly with no one enforcing it? Order with no enforcer is possible, Takahiro Mitsui shows, once society becomes the purpose of everything and people internalize its rules: the philosopher Tetsuji Yamamoto's society-ism.
- Mindfulness is not meditation — Why does mindfulness not help my burnout? Packaged as mindfulness, meditation loses its intense pain, the real fruit of introspection, observes Takahiro Mitsui, a contemporary Japanese philosopher (b. 1991) writing every week, of modern burnout.
- Faith needs no argument — Spirituality without religion, from a millennial philosopher: Takahiro Mitsui (b. 1991) belongs to no church or sect yet lives each day in faith. Are Japanese people religious? They are not non-religious, he argues, and faith and prayer lived each day need no argument.
- History is the heat of your own time — Where do I come from, and what is a motherland now? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, argues history is the heat of your own place and time, and grief is where renewal begins.
- Perfect service, and nobody there — Why is Japanese service so perfect yet people feel lonely there? Perfect service wipes out the human face, Takahiro Mitsui observes: a manual imposed on customers can leave a whole society uninhabited.
- 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
