How Eternal Is the 21st-Century Sensibility? | Kenji Kumasaka (Dean, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies)
2005.07.20
It must have been about 25 years ago. Of course, I was still a young researcher myself, and as a late-coming Parsonian, I was quite seriously exploring various concepts for the next society. One day, Professor Junjiro Takahashi asked everyone who had gathered, "What do you think the 21st-century sensibility is?" This was at a time when no one was even thinking about the 21st century. The idea was to contemplate the sensibility of an era that people would accept as a self-evident reality when the 21st century arrived—a sensibility without which one could not speak of the times. It was impossible to know.
But we had to think about it. I also made various trivial comments, but since no one was coming up with anything significant, Professor Takahashi began to speak. The gist of it was this: In the beginning of any society, a person with sacred, magical power created the world and established the rules of social order. This created the categories of the sacred and the profane. However, the world of the sacred was not eternal. The evolution of society, so to speak, led to the rise of the profane world, and from this secularization, the categories of the refined and the rustic emerged. The world of the refined was linked to the development of cities, and its urban style generated social prestige as a mark of refinement. Thus, a refined aristocratic society was established. But this society, too, was not eternal, and the rustic world of the frontiers began to guide the major currents of the era. This was the world of the strong, who rose to prominence through politics and military might. The power that pacified society through force thus created the categories of the strong and the weak. And finally, from among the weak, those who manipulate currency emerged to create the society we have today. In short, the history up to the 20th century was merely a history revolving around who possessed scarce goods, a phase transition of media: sacred (value) → refined (prestige) → strong (power) → wealthy (currency). Wow, I thought, as a Parsonian, this is a compelling framework.
So, the question returned to what the 21st-century sensibility was. We discussed other categories like beauty and ugliness or wisdom and foolishness, but in the end, we concluded that we wouldn't know until the 21st century actually arrived. It was a bit pathetic, but I thought that the future could not exist in any way other than as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now, however, I immediately understand what the 21st-century sensibility is. It is the network sensibility generated from the world of the internet. I can fully sense that this will trigger one new possibility after another. Moreover, I am convinced that something is lurking within it that will overturn the logic of history up to now. What an interesting era it has become.
But if asked whether I would want to be born again into such a 21st-century world, I get a little sentimental, thinking that it would be a rebirth only after erasing the memories of my dreams as a 20th-century boy. It seems I don't yet have the courage to erase my own memories. The flow of 58 years was a considerable amount of time to shape me into the 20th-century being that I am. Therefore, I don't have the energy to freely draw and write the future on a blank slate. For someone like me, who insists on being eternally young at heart, I wonder if this is a bit pathetic of me.
(Date of publication: 2005/07/20)