One prevalent cliché in contemporary social criticism is the line of argument against the younger generation which runs as follows in Japan. The older generation, after the war, has worked and worked tirelessly in order to better their lives and to pass on a better world to their children. They were energetic and committed. However, the younger generation takes material comfort for granted. This prevents the youth from feeling hungry for progress. They are always calculating how to get the most out of the least amount of work. By not experiencing the hardships of poverty, the youth has become lazy. This is the reason why they will not commit to something "real" and that they will not act in the ways that the older generation sees to be good. I might add here that Tatsuru Uchida's The Regressive Attitude (a tentative translation of the original title, 『下流志向』) popularized this train of thought quite effectively.
One of the key premises of the above criticism seems to be this: commitment is good, detachment is bad. Or, to put it another way: career and family is good, personal activities and non-family relationships are bad. In short, it is "regressive" to opt for the latter.
This premise is very symptomatic, and it overlooks one crucial point which turns the entire argument around. The decisions to not fit into a "normal" career, and to not pursue a "normal" family, are seen by the exponents of this critical view as signs of a pure lack of interest. This is true, but only from a certain perspective, which assumes the above stated premise. What if, however, career, family, and commitment perpetuate inevitably the real problems which the modern progressive life-style has given birth to?
Now I take it that each and every social organization - whether it be family, solo, office, etc. - limits the number of possible situations in which each individual may find him or her self to be. These situations further limit the kind of choices and decisions which these people can make. For example, by choosing to work at an office, as a marketer, for a major electronics company, one is obliged, for example, to dress up in a certain way, produce certain products, and sell them, regardless of other factors external to the business system. The main aims of his actions are already given to him by this company or this system. He has no freedom to say no unless he can show that his own alternatives better serve the objectives defined in such a way. The same constraints hold for other modern institutions such as the family or the school.
In a state of poverty, the first objective is naturally to improve one's material conditions. There is no point in asking further the reason for trying to relieve this material poverty. Rather, such a relief appears as an end in itself, a goal to be pursued for its own sake. It was doubtless not an easy goal to achieve, and the younger generation ought to feel deeply thankful that they do not have to repeat this process for themselves. If we decide to neglect completely what the older generation has given to us, then of course we are open to all sorts of moral criticisms.
The younger generation is thus largely freed from a state of dire poverty. This means that for the younger generation, material security is not an end in itself. It must be questioned. The urge to further ask "to what purpose is this material security for?" already implies that a new goal has been set.
What is this "new goal?" The new goal is peace.
Peace is a very tricky concept. One thought implied in the concept of peace is that every human being ought to be educated to be self-responsible and autonomous, and that unnecessary conflict and harm be minimized. Here it is further implied that peace demands a very complex and sophisticated culture, within which each individual is able to think and understand the state of the world at a very high intellectual level. On the other hand, peace does not require that we stubbornly attach ourselves to existing institutions and norms. Rather, if peace is not actualized, then one of the essential demands of peace is that such institutions and norms be reflected upon and questioned. They must be understood primarily as habits, suspect to change, open to improvement.
The younger generation has a much better grasp of this concept of peace than the older generation. This is the reason why the former refrains from so blindly flinging itself into the system laid out by existing institutions. The former knows that something is not working, and so is more cautious. Seen in this light, it is clear that this attitude is not regressive at all. Rather, it is regressive to demand the youth to force themselves into the framework which, although those who contributed to it most actively may not see any fundamental problems with it, appears to the newcomers as highly problematic, filled with anomalies and dilemmas which it does its best to disavow.
On a related note, one idea might be to write a treatise on the principles of freedom, which must ultimately culminate in the concept of peace.
In any case, I definitely stand by those who are reluctant to accept commonly prevalent ways of designing one's way of life. It is not the time to disavow, but to think more seriously.
