Hegel and Nietzsche were two philosophers who saw philosophy as directly influencing all of life.  Both of these philosophers saw knowledge as an activity. They believed that we didn’t have knowledge to stand back and observe the world, but to live within it.  That real philosophical problems effected the way we lived and thought about ourselves. They can give us hints into how and why our world changes. When you cut their books, blood will come out.

Consequently both thought that philosophy came not from wonder but from crisis.  When man begins to lose his place in the world, when our truths break down internally, and when the question “Why?” finds no answer, the world undergoes paradigm shifts. However Nietzsche and Hegel had a different idea about where we were going.

G.W.F. Hegel

In Hegel’s first and best book the “Phenomenology of the Spirit“, he argued that the history of man and his place in the world was the history of repeated failures. History for Hegel is the movement of one kind of consciousness to another. Each way of seeing the world that man forms turns out to be one sided and begins to break down internally. Crisis erupts. In sketching out these failures of man to find the truth he promises to take us on a “road [that] can therefor be regarded as the pathway of doubt, or more precisely as the way of despair.”   When our ideas about who we are and what is true fall away, we are devastated.  Hegel says we are progressing toward a goal, a final truth and the progress towards this goal is “unhalting”.  However “short of it [the goal] no satisfaction is to be found along the way.” We are forever marching toward a goal that we repeatedly fall short of, and our whole world breaks down again and again. Despair and suffering will not leave us until we finish this quest. Paradigm shifts were nothing to be taken lightly in Hegel’s view. However we learn through these failures and each also contains a part of the truth, pushing us forward towards our goal.  At our goal, we have discovered the ideal way to exist and live in the world, and happiness finally comes to us. Hegel was optimist about the final outcome of history.

Nietzsche too believed that when the world changed there was a crisis in the dominant culture of the time. Nietzsche was a philologist and was especially interested in ancient Greek culture. He saw the time of Socrates as a time of a great transition. In one of his most powerful books Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche talks about Socrates as being a sick and anti-Greek decadent. He says that Socrates was overly rational and used his dialectic as a kind of revenge on everyone around him. However Nietzsche sees something fascinating in that Socrates was able to get himself taken seriously by others.

Nietzsche

“Honest things, like honest men, do not carry their reasons in their hands like that. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there?”

Nietzsche knew that in stable times there was no need to explain and reason things out. Things appeared natural and normal to everyone and didn’t need to be justified. When there was a need to know “Why?” the crisis had begun.

“But Socrates guessed even more. He saw through his noble Athenians; he comprehended that his own case, his idiosyncrasy, was no longer exceptional. The same kind of degeneration was quietly developing everywhere: old Athens was coming to an end. And Socrates understood that all the world needed him – his means, his cure, his personal artifice of self-preservation. Everywhere the instincts were in anarchy; everywhere one was within five paces of excess: monstrum in animo was the general danger. “

Nietzsche saw that the “instincts” of the Greeks were out of control. That they could no longer preserve their way of life. The danger had been with them for some time and they shifted to a more rational, and for Nietzsche weaker and decadent lifestyle. Jesus and the success of Christianity in Europe was the same story for Nietzsche, brought about by a sickness and weakening of the culture.

Nietzsche unlike Hegel sees no progress in history. He often sees man sliding farther and farther down into decadence. We are not leading to a goal, or headed toward any kind of truth or perfect way to live in the world. Nietzsche warned that we would be descending down to a kind of man who can no longer do great things, and create profound art.

Both Hegel and Nietzsche saw the movement of history and philosophy to be part of a series of breakdowns of the dominant culture.  We will always have time for logic puzzles, but real philosophy comes from a life consuming problem or crisis. It is nothing that can or will be ignored.

[This is another translation of a conversation between Beat Takeshi and Takashi Murakami found in the book Two Art. Here Beat Takeshi talks about his thought process when making movies movies.]

I am a Lone Otaku

These days the otaku culture in Japan is getting to be really big. But I wonder, why is it that otaku are always looking for friends? None of these otaku ever come out alone. They probably do things in groups because they have no friends and I think they are just lonely.

But I think the things that we are doing are the same things that otaku are. Maybe the only difference is that we don’t have anyone to make a group with. There is just no one that can work with us. I am a lone otaku. But I’m not lonely. You see, I am an otaku of myself. Especially when it comes to movies, I am an otaku of myself.

I really don’t want producers who worked with me to hear this but, I don’t really care if my movies become hits or not. I start every project with that attitude. Of course, it is great if they do become hits. That’s how I work. Actually I really don’t know what to do if my movie becomes an overnight hit. When everyone is clamoring about how great my movie is I feel like somehow “they’ve got me”. Once everything that I want to say has been accepted, I won’t have anything left to do. The next thing I would make would only be greeted with a kind of “Yeah, I see what he is trying to do.” I think it’s best if my movies are half understood and half a mystery.

But it just feels sad if I have to sit down and plan it out so that it comes out that way. And it’s even worse if I just make it incomprehensible on purpose.

I do what I do because it feels right to me. And once that is done, parts will be understood, and some will naturally be not understood.

]]> http://the-gnosis.com/2009/12/08/i-am-a-lone-otaku/feed/ 1 http://the-gnosis.com/2009/12/01/kobayashi-yoshinori-the-truth-about-spoiled-children/ http://the-gnosis.com/2009/12/01/kobayashi-yoshinori-the-truth-about-spoiled-children/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:39:39 +0000 Dustin http://the-gnosis.com/?p=325 This is an essay by renowned manga artist and thinker Kobayashi Yoshinori.(小林よしのり） One of the most fascinating and interesting personalities in Japan, he has always been willing to shock and go against the majority opinion. He has been called conservative, and super right wing by many in the western media, but that description doesn’t fit him well. This essay was published in his book “The nightmare called public opinion”

The Truth About Spoiled Children

“Relaxed Education” and the “widening gap between the rich and the poor”

“Relaxed education” was an educational reform put into place under the assumption that the gap between the rich and the poor would vastly widen.

It began after the 1970’s, when the fierce competition during entrance exams and the standardized educational system was under criticism.  The national council on education responding to inquiries from the then prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, made clear their policies of “liberalization of the schools” and “liberalization of education”.

In response the ministry of education began planning to implement “relaxed education” in the 1990’s.

These educational reforms tried to value children’s “willingness to learn by themselves” and respected children “just as they are” and their “individual freedom”.

The creation of “comprehensive study time” which greatly cut time away from regular subjects was criticized for creating a decline in academic standards. The ministry of education said that they had begun to rethinking these plans but the “liberalization of education” continued unchanged.  At the end of last year (2005) during the regulation reform meeting, yet again another report on “reforms for children” was worked out, and the government made a cabinet decision to do as much as they can to honor the decision. According to the report people without educational licenses such as housewives, business people, and engineers will be able to teach now.

The goal is for children to be satisfied and have fun learning, and the teachers are to help this process along. The teachers and the students are to establish a cooperative relationship.

Well it seems we have a most generous and childishly deceptive reform where the children are the stars. This reform is to insure that children never lose that sense of “omnipotence” that they have when they are infants and to inflate their ego even further.

The report also includes plans for a “school choice system” where there are many special types of schools that can be freely chosen by children and guardians.

It goes so far as to introduce a “Teachers Assessment System” that is done by students and guardians and even can be put up on a webpage.

These “reforms for children” which “respect individuality” are in actuality ways to raise “many types of individuals that can be utilized in the neo-liberal economy”.

If you can’t do it, that’s OK?!

“Relaxed education” launched with a plan to cultivate Japanese living in a global village, promote learning on your own initiative, respect individuality, and create personalized schools.

When it was announced that other subjects would be cut, conservative critics criticized the plan saying that if you cut pi to only 3 children’s academic scores will decline. However the problem wasn’t the choice between “relaxed education or academic scores”.

Nobody realized that that the result of this change in educational policy would be an “approval of an increased disparity between students”.

The age when every student would receive the same education came to an end. What began was an education that would be determined by each family’s economic status, cultural level, and passion. This will be directly reflected in children’s future, and create a vast widening of the classes.

Perhaps I could restate it so that it is easier to understand. A small and wealthy part of the population will prime their children to be the future elites of society by sending them to schools that will encourage learning. Meanwhile the vast majority of people in the middle and lower class will have to send their children to public schools where children with no ambition to learn and their parents will be made to believe that this is all for the best by using pretty words like “respecting individuality”.

The journalist Takao Saito, who interviewed Shumon Miura, the then chairman of the education curriculum council, went so far as to say “The real purpose of starting “relaxed education” was that it was just another way of starting elite education without having to say so.” and “The idea is that those that can’t succeed, don’t have to.”

“Relaxed education” was also demanded by the financial world. They needed people who could adapt to a “neo-liberal” society left to market fundamentalism with the ultimate responsibility resting on the individual.

“The widening gap between the classes” is the necessary result of the path of Americanism called globalism that Japan chose to walk down. To continue on this path the reforms were enacted just as educators and the business world demanded.

A society where only the effort of the rich is rewarded

Even though “economic recovery” is proclaimed everywhere the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider. There are 1,040,000 households receiving livelihood protection [*financial aid],  23.8% of families have zero savings, there are 16,500,000 people who don’t have full time employment, 640,000 people with no jobs, 240,000 people have applied for bankruptcy, there are 25,000 homeless, and every year there is a new record set of the number of people who commit suicide.

Prime Minister Koizumi has declared that “A widening of the gap of rich and poor isn’t a bad thing.” And also “Being jealous of success and getting in the way of those with talent are habits that must be discouraged.” What the prime minister and other politicians don’t realize is that something more frightening is going on. The feelings of “jealousy of success” by young children of lower classes are almost gone.

“Jealousy of success” has positive and negative effects. Isn’t “jealousy of success” also the motivation for competition? “Equality of opportunity” doesn’t exist for children of lower class families when they start life with a disparity.  Politicians are too thickheaded to realize that “desire to strive” only comes to and “hope” and “effort” only offer results for the children of rich families.

Feelings of jealousy are being lost in the so called “lower classes”.  When they “stop” learning they can still affirm themselves by saying that they have found their “individuality”.  Politicians and the economic world’s ideas of “self-responsibility” have been realized in the creation of the so called “losers” of society.

That is how the gap between the rich and the poor will be and remain enormous.

There are 780,000 wealthy families in Japan with financial assets over 100 million yen and 2,460,000 families that are ready to join the upper class with over 50 million yen in assets. If these families started to buy luxury items, the economy would probably recover.

But by creating a monopolistic capitalism, increasing and making permanent the gaps between big corporations and small medium sized businesses, part time workers and full time workers, the cities and the countryside, and by taking away “equality of opportunity”, will the people’s fears of the future really be eased?

Japan isn’t becoming a society where “if anyone works hard they are rewarded.” It’s becoming a society where only the effort put forth by the rich is rewarded.

Most people aren’t looking to have huge success in life. They want to work hard, marry, have children, make a family, and plan for a comfortable retirement. They just want to live a “normal” life.

The underlying principal of education is “forced normality”

I think that the real aim of education is “forced normality”.  I won’t say that elite education shouldn’t exist, but the role of adults is to make a society children can hope to live a normal life. Rebelling against this “forced normality,” some will be destined to drop out. I was one of those. When you can’t help but to show your talents to the world through some method, you don’t have to obey “forced normality”.  That is what “individuality” really is.

Being an “individual” and “individuality” are different things. Everyone is wonderfully “different” and “individual” from everyone else, but individuality is created by and has a purpose within a society.  “Individuality” rebels against society’s restraint and emerges out of that struggle.

The middle class in Japan used to be the personification of a “hope for a normal life”. Being rewarded for your efforts is something that should not be monopolized by societies “winners”.

We have to create a society where even people in the lower classes, with struggle and effort, can escape from their environment. Creating an environment under the banner of “self-responsibility” where people no longer feel the ambition to improve their surroundings and are unable to escape their own class is unfair. The ones who are talking about “self-responsibility” while at the same time stealing “equality of opportunity” are Koizumi, Takenaka, and the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy.

When a country destroys the middle class, the guarantor of a hope for a normal life, the customs of that country will not take root in it’s people. However this is not just a problem of social order, if you include problems such as retirement funds, public lifestyle assistance, and social security the country itself will no longer be stable.

Words like “unfettered individuality” “diverse individualities” and “self-responsibility” are still mantras in education today. There was also recently a hit song that had the lyrics “I don’t want to be number one; I want to be only one.” This song that plays to the lower classes need for self affirmation is in reality a hymn to the omnipotent market fundamentalism called “neo-liberalism”.  This truth will and must be realized very soon, and we must stage a rebellion against this trend.

Japanese Common Sense #20 – Land Area

Japan is a Small Island Nation

“Japan is a small island nation” so….?

Japan is a small island nation so….  This is an expression that I have been hearing for a while now.  When you look at a world map huge nations like America, China, and Russia really stick out.

We can’t help but compare ourselves to those large nations and end up thing that Japan is a small island nation.  But is this piece of common sense actually correct?

The land area of Japan is 378,000 square kilometers.  This of course includes the four northern islands, Liancourt Rocks, and the Senkaku Islands.

If you list all of the 193 nations and regions of the world in order of land area Japan is 60^th.  This places it in the top third percentile.

How about that?  It’s not as small as you may have thought.

Let’s also compare territorial waters.  Japan’s territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles (22.2 kilometers) from its coast.  Countries have a right to the sea and the seabed within their territorial waters.  This means that the fishing resources and oil resources in the seabed belong to that nation.

Japan is surrounded by the sea so its territorial waters and exclusive economic waters are large.  If you add these into its area it becomes 4,510,000 square kilometers; making it the 6^th largest nation in the world.

Returning to the discussion of land area, let’s look at Japans position among Asian countries.  Among all the 48 nations and regions in Asia, Japan is 16^th.  This places it in the top third percentile.  The nations larger than Japan are places like China, India, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Iran, Mongolia, and so on.

Now some of you may be thinking, “What? Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia are also part of Asia?”  When we say Asia we usually think of East and South East Asia and forget the rest.  Kazakhstan is in Central Asia and Saudi Arabia is in West Asia.

A Big Country in Europe

If Japan were located in Europe how would it rank among European nations?

Of the 43 nations of Europe Japan would be the 6^th largest nation.  Number one is Russia.  Now some of you may be thinking, “What? Russia is part of Europe?”  Whether Russia is part of Asia or Europe is an issue filled with lots of philosophical problems but if you have to put it in one, it’s probably Europe.  Russia is an enormous nation but the other European countries are a bit cozy.

France and Spain are box-shaped so they appear to be big but if you bunched up the long and narrow northern and southern parts of Japan it would be a large nation (not that that is anything to brag about).  England and Italy are among the European nations that are smaller than Japan.

Japan is a big country, isn’t it?

Japan Loses Out in a Feeling of Spaciousness

But in order feel like you are in a big country you need a certain amount of a feeling of spaciousness.  Japan has a population density of 342 people per square mile.  This is pretty high.

While Japan’s population density is low compared to places in Asia like Singapore with 6334 people per square mile, Maldives with 1104 people per square mile, and Bahrain with 1048 people per square mile with its population density as high as it is, it won’t feel spacious.

Although main European countries like England with 246 people per square mile, Germany with 232 per square mile, Italy with 193 per square mile have a smaller land area than Japan they have a lower population density so they feel spacious.

Also 61% of Japan’s land area is covered by mountains and the amount of land that people can use is small so this also creates a lack of feeling of spaciousness.  This is very different from the large hilly land of Europe.

Japan will, however, gain a feeling of spaciousness if its current population decline continues.

In Terms of Population Japan is a Big Country

Next let’s compare Japan’s population with other countries of the world.  As of 2006 Japan’s population is 127,680,000.  It is 10^th in the world.

China and India have populations over 1 billion, America’s population is just about at 300 million and Indonesia’s population is over 200 million, leaving a sizable gap between their populations and Japan’s. However Brazil, Pakistan, Russia, Bangladesh, and Nigeria are all in the 100 millions with no sizable difference from Japan.

Japan is a pretty big country.

So the common sense notion that Japan is a small island nation is false.  It’s actually somewhere around “big island nation” and “pretty big country”.  Preconceptions are pretty scary aren’t they?

Summary

The expression “Japan is a small island nation” is a very Japanese in its humility but in actuality Japan’s land area is pretty big and its population is more than enough to make it a large nation.

But it’s probably best not to act like a “big country” in the end anyway.

This is another translation from Idiot Economics, a new economics book out by author Takeuchi Kaoru.  He here dives into the mysterious world of just what money is.

Idiot Economics

If there is a worldwide recession, then where did all the money go?

Takeuchi: We are in a worldwide recession right now right? As long as we don’t burn it all up at once, the total amount of money in the world pretty fixed. So I can understand if when one place has a lot of it, it is having an economic boom, and when there is little of it that place is in a recession.  But how can countries all over the world have little money? This might be sound stupid but, did all the money just disappear?

Teacher:  It didn’t disappear. There are 2 kinds of money, actual existing money such as paper bills, and virtual money that doesn’t exist as paper bills. Most of the money in the world exists as virtual money, so when there is a recession the amount of paper bills does not decrease but virtual money does.

Takeuchi: Oh, so that’s how it works!

Teacher:  That’s how it works. For example in Japan the Bank of Japan is the one issuing the paper money. We call that currency.  And there is virtual money, money that is put in the Bank of Japans transactional account by many other banks.  This is called quasi-currency .  You understand so far?

Takeuchi: I think so. So when this virtual money, the quasi-currency, goes down there is a recession, right?

Teacher:  Yes, but it’s not just that. The combined amount of currency and quasi currency is called “high powered money” or the “monetary base”. This further vastly increases the amount of virtual money.

Takeuchi: Hmmm… Can you give me an easy to understand example?

Teacher:  I’ll give you an example using currency.  You take 100,000 yen printed by the Bank of Japan and you deposit that money into Bank A. Next that bank lends that money to me. At that moment, your account has 100,000 yen of virtual money in it, and I have 100,000 yen in real cash in my hands. Now the 100,000 yen that the Bank of Japan has printed has become 200,000 yen.

Takeuchi: Hey, that’s right! The amount of virtual money increased by 100,000 yen!

Teacher:  After that I will deposit that money into Bank B. And then someone else will borrow the money and the amount of virtual money just keeps on increasing.

Takeuchi: I see!  Working under the assumption that the real money is there, transactions are occuring.  In a recession those transactions decrease and so the amount of virtual money does too. That’s it isn’t it?

Teacher:  That’s right. This process by which money is increased is called “money creation”.   High powered money increased by money creation is called the “money supply”. Basically virtual money that is created on faith is what makes up most of the money in the world.

Takeuchi: Got it. By the way, that last example used currency. Is quasi currency the same?

Teacher:  It’s the same. Whether the beginning of the process is real money or virtual money is the only difference. First when Bank of Japan lends money to a bank it increases the money in its transactional account. Then the bank lends that money to a person… and the process starts all over again.

Takeuchi: This isn’t just Japan right? Is this happening all over the world?

Teacher:  In countries with a central bank, they are doing the same thing. On a side note, Japans high powered money is about 90 trillion yen. The money supply has about 750 trillion yen in it.

Takeuchi:  Money always felt like a real thing that you would exchange for something like gold. But it’s different now. Money is created by faith. You could call it the shared illusion of mankind. I’ll take that to heart.

——————————————————————————–

Translators note: For those interested further in what money is, watch these videos. It will perhaps shock and amaze you as to what money really is.

Money As Debt (1 of 5)

Money As Debt (2 of 5)

Money As Debt (3 of 5)

Money As Debt (4 of 5)

Money As Debt (5 of 5)

This is a translation of a conversation between Beat Takeshi (Kitano Takeshi) and Takeshi Murakami. It was in the book Two Art. Beat Takeshi is a world renown director and also a superstar and major personality in Japan. Although jumping around at times he makes interesting points. Enjoy.

Art is the god within each of us

Just what is art anyway? Whenever I see Duchamp’s fountain I am reminded of the ideas of Japanese Shintoism. In Shinto sometimes a  strange crack in a tree or a phallic rock end up becoming the “God of the harvest”. According to Japanese religion, everything has a god within it. When nature itself is seen as a representation of god, then I think that art begins to be treated like a god too. In the West, whenever anyone talks about God nobody knows exactly what they mean. Art is the same way. People recognize the existence of art but nobody knows what art is. That’s why people are always fumbling for answers.

I kind of get the feeling that “religion” and “God” and art are pretty much the same thing. It seems like we are the ones treating them differently. Whatever you call art is art and whatever you say isn’t art, isn’t. It’s just the same as with God. In the end, maybe what God and art are, depends on whatever each person feels in their heart. Perhaps the people that feel that Duchamp’s fountain is art are the same as old women in the countryside who say things like “Don’t touch that rock! A long time ago Toyotomi Hideyoshi sat on that rock.” It’s just a rock, but to that old woman it’s Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s rock. In the same manner it’s just as foolish to say that Duchamp’s fountain is “just a toilet”.

Duchamp's Fountain

I think that the debate about whether there is a God or not overlaps with art. If there is a God, then everyone has to wonder why are there children who are born handicapped, have to go through repeated surgeries, and still suffer and die.　Then you begin to talk about “Why doesn’t God save that child?” You feel terrible when you see things like that and you ask believers “What do you think when you see children like that?” They say “Of course you feel bad and want to help don’t you? It’s your freedom to do so. If God helped people or punished the bad ones nobody would try to do anything. God doesn’t confine you, He gives you freedom. He gives you the freedom to do anything, even to commit murder. That is Gods promise to us.” If you change that a little bit, you could say the same thing about art.  Art itself says nothing. Art gives you freedom.  I think you could make a lot more comparisons.

You could say that “Art is God”, however on the other hand you could say that art brings you closer to reality. That is another kind of art. Recently, Islamic terrorists took over an airplane and flew it into the World Trade Center. When everyone watched the images of that incident they saw them as very real, but seen as images alone they were really quite pathetic. If about ten years ago a computer graphics artist created a movie scene with the same images as from 911 and brought it to a movie director, the director would have probably said “What is this garbage?” If a movie director before 911 had asked someone to “make a CG scene where hijackers take over a plane and fly it into the world trade center along with the passengers” there is no way they would have made same images that we saw on that day.  And if you were to line up the real images from that day and the images that the CG artist thought up by himself and ask which one was real, I think that everyone would think that the one the CG artist made was real. The images from 911 were just that pathetic.

I don’t quite know how to put it but, maybe everyone’s head went blank when they felt how real it was. Reality was a hundred times more amazing. It also strains us psychologically. I think that explosions created for movies will be different from now on. They will try to imitate what we saw on 911. They will create computer graphics in order to imitate it. That is one more pattern that art follows. Testing to see just how close to reality that you can get. Of course I think that things that are totally removed from reality have the possibility to be art too, but I just think that those images shocked one style of art. I think that something definitively changed.

On the subject of going blank I remember the images of the Vietnam War. There were videos of the marines just blasting away at the Vietcong. Those videos are still shocking to me. Movies about gangs or just violent movies in general have to be that way.  They don’t let you say “ouch” they just let the bullets fly and let the bodies fall. Then you kind of blank out.

My violent movies are that way too. Just before you feel the pain the movie ends. When you are finished then you begin to feel the real pain and go blank. There are other kinds of movies where they go off saying stupid things like “I’m going to shoot you” and “I’ve always hated you”. Aren’t they embarrassed? Don’t they feel stupid saying things like that?  You just go in suddenly and shoot. That has been the standard for me since I saw those images from the Vietnam War. You can learn from reality like that.  That’s why I feel that the fundamental principal of art is trying to get as close as you can to reality.

But impossible worlds that are not real at all can be art too. The architecture of Antoni Gaudí is inspired from plants and animals and is quite beautiful. Also worlds like those of Luis Barragán where strait lines are linked by colors are artificial but very beautiful.