Ikigai: What We Got Wrong and How to Find Meaning in Life

baring the closeness part, this seems rather ubiquitous

This "Ikigai" hype reminds me of the earlier hype about "Naikan Therapy", "Morita Therapy" etc.

These terms, mostly void of any formal philosophical roots, are ways of defining and affirming the value of life within our linguistic and cultural contexts. Who's to say that future generations, whether foreign or native, won't feel a sense of novelty or exoticism in analysing these phrases of old, much like the discussion surrounding 'ikigai' today?

This is the important part. Most people simply work themselves to death and never find the time to ask these kinds of questions. Or, they did ask themselves these questions at one point and realized working themselves to death was a more pleasant route than struggling with such existential problems.

I have best heard these moments called "now what? moments."

I've been starting to think about this as i've got maybe 4-5 years left to prepare, it's not that comfortable of a thought. I read an article in the WSJ about new empty nesters and one guy described it as similar to getting fired. Like he had worked so hard for 18 years and then one day he gets "by dad, see you at Thanksgiving" and it was over. haha (but not really haha)

> You need to love the life more than its meaning.

Purpose in life is important, but for a healthy mind being lost is fine. It's "the next step", something you will inevitably face again.

>Sometimes it comes out as "I don't understand why anyone would have kids when it's much easier to just get brunch"

If I have kids, I derive meaning from providing _them_ with the ability to derive pleasure from brunch. Then, they have kids and those kids go derive pleasure from their kids having brunch. It's brunch all the way down.

This (like so many other things) is a very ontologically tricky proposition due to the deceptive distinction between abstract and concrete "is-ness". It is true that at least one Human in each country possesses at least some knowledge of such things, but how well distributed is the knowledge? The so casually deployed symbol "is" makes no distinction, and Humans generally do not have the ability to consider such things.

Even weirder: Hard Whorfism "is" "false".

> It strikes me that westerners have lost the roots of their culture and are having to relearn it from elsewhere.

Absolutely agree....perhaps this is (at least in part) because we never learned in the first place (other than abstractly, and even there only for a small percentage of the population) the difference between abstract and concrete "reality", because such things are not taught in standard curriculum in school (see also: financial planning, how to be nice, categorization in general (ontology/taxonomy), etc).

I often wonder if all of the sub-optimalities in our "advanced, 'scientific' culture" are purely coincidences / oversights. That people seem to so reliably (in frequency, and form) have an innate and very strong aversion (a lot like how religious or anti-religious people get nervous/agitated if one is to call into question the truth of scripture) to discussing such matters in the context of concrete reality makes me more than a little suspicious.

As the Enlightenment already absorbed eastern concepts into the western plane to some degree already (see the roots in Hume for instance), the relationship of westerners with eastern concepts as like hiring a consultant to tell you all the things that your employees were already saying, but which were ignored since they were merely grunts.

With all of these examples. The trick seems to be in 'how'. Everyone can read this article, or a Buddhist text, or some Stoic essays, and agree and think it would be a good idea.

The 'how' to get there, seems to be the gap.

Everyone agrees having 'purpose' is great. The 'how to find a purpose' is the problem. Not just intellectually 'decide on a purpose', but 'believe in a purpose'.

A world like now never existed before: Millions of people living in cities were they are not able at all to live in nature or can't afford to move away or into the cities.

A world with high speed communication.

A world with unlimited possibilities.

A world were you grew up without ever having to learn were your water comes from and how your food is made.

The world doesn't need most of us, this was never the case in the past. I'm a smart person, i'm not needed because there are still enough even smarter people.

And regarding your quote of the Christians: They don't live it either or never lived. The dark ages produced a lot of christian focused 'art' full of gold.

And in the past, if you had any mental illness, you just might have been killed or put in shackles.

If it were possible to compare every model for happiness ever conceived, they'll likely have a few things in common. Mostly, they will propose factors that are familiar within a group's common frame of reference, those factors will address that group's common experiences and habits, and the formula will project a roadmap for making changes in those habits to realign the experiences with "happiness."

In other words, "we all tend to do one thing, but doing another is probably better, and it's easy to forget, so here's way to remember." If it's useful to anyone at all, it's of value. If it's useful to larger group, then a utilitarian might say it has greater value. But even the assessment of value is culturally-dependent, so it's kind of pointless to argue about the virtues of different models on the basis of their cultures of origin.

So of course different cultures present things differently. It doesn't have to mean anyone is losing the roots of their own culture. Foucault would argue that being anything other than a part of your own culture is impossible. Even if you reject your own culture, you're rejecting the culture you're a part of, and that becomes a part of that culture. You just can't _not_ be who you are, where you are, and a product of your experiences.

If the differences in habits among various cultures become more apparent in a direct comparison, that's mostly down to the different frames of reference that determine the signs and signifiers used to express and internalize the models. But within each culture, the mechanisms themselves are often fundamentally the same. We manage resources as a group, we figure out who's us and who's them, we defend the group against threats, and we generally aim to reproduce. Whatever else goes on, our culture is how we communicate among ourselves what to expect from each other as we all go about those activities. It gives us the language we use, which Pinkerton et al might go so far as to say shapes the very ideas we have about ourselves and each other, including our "secrets to happiness."

The point is, there are many models for understanding happiness. Some we know more about because they've established a large socio-economic footprint, like the major religions, and some are more academic thought experiments, like what the ancient greeks tended to get up to. Others are more directly products of and by their host culture. Ikigai is this. If people find it accessible and useful, that's nothing but great. Is it a very Japanese way of looking at it? Sure. Is it some innate universal truth and wisdom? I dunno, but I bet someone pushing that narrative has a book or a seminar to sell.

In any case, for most purposes, the meme is probably enough. Do what you can to do what you love, that you're good at, that helps you survive, that helps your group survive.

In "westerner" kindergarten, they simplify it even further: do only what is necessary, helpful, and/or kind. Don't even need a graduate philosophy degree for that.

Rome defeating Carthage was legitimately one of the worst things that ever happened in history.

They're labeled on the linked image.