What Lies Beneath (and the testament to my leaving the Academia)

            I have been vocal and writing on the topic of Covid-19 since at least the 1^st of March 2020. For irrational reasons, this pandemic has been politicized in North America in particular and people even started to claim resolving the 400-yearlong systemic racism must take precedence over securing the risk of transmission of this much unknown virus as of August 14^th 2021 yet. Since Covid-19 has acquired internationally the status of a pandemic, I have voiced and written multiple essays warning how serious people need to take worldwide with regard to this disease. At first, most people were with me on this, and wearing masks, social distancing and sanitization as well as following the stay-at-home order as much as possible. Many rational people believed (I would like to think) this was a necessary procedure and for the best to minimize the risk of putting people in danger. In April, some right wingers decided to protest against mandating wearing masks on the basis of the lack of evidence that masks work, and also against the anti-stay-at-home order as weeks went by, as the number of infected cases exponentially grew. I was, like my colleagues, against those who took the virus lightly and cautioned each other that we should limit the activities, either inside or outside, for the common good of the world.

            I voiced against the anti-maskers and people who were anti-stay-at-home orders on SNS (because it was so obvious to me that I did not feel the need to take time to write something on my blog about it), but George Floyd happened at the end of May, 2020. Immediately after this, mostly leftist young “activists” with privileges (they knew they would be able to get an immediate treatment if infected) began to plan and started mass protests in many large cities, claiming that they were sick of the systemic racism that has lasted for 400 years and it must stop now. This change was so sudden and radical (ironic, seeing how it has been happening for 400 years) that they acted as if they had forgotten about Covid-19. They all chanted on SNS or in private that they were willing to risk their own lives for this cause. Many even said that “if you use the fear of getting infected with Covid-19 as an excuse not to go out and protest, you are by default racists.” This is the story of those who lived no principled life and those who did not see what is in front of their eyes – the pandemic that lied beneath.

I: Covid-Fatigue, Numbness, and Voluntary Indifference

“Someone told a young invalid who wept because she had to leave her home, her occupation, and her whole past life, “Get cured. The rest has no importance.” “But if nothing has any importance,” she answered, “what good is it to get cured?” She was right. In order for this world to have any importance, in order for our understanding to have a meaning and to be worthy of sacrifices, we must affirm the concrete and particular thickness of this world and the individual reality of our projects and ourselves.” – Simone de Beauvoir

As I kept cautioning any large gatherings in times of a pandemic, my liberal friends with whom I studied and who I thought were smart enough to see through Covid-19 is not a short-term problem, began to turn against me. Until the day before George Floyd’s video circulated on SNS, they were all being patient and staying at home, trying to minimize the spread of the virus. A day after George Floyd, the very same people were chastising me for saying exactly the same thing I had been saying. To many, it was an emotional incident to see the video. It was natural that an emotional burst would erupt, and so it did. The extent to which the protesters and sincere activists took such a major fuss (I say “fuss” because looting and vandalism were also happening) as they did on the first weekend since the video of George Floyd went viral was understandable and perhaps even necessary, even during the pandemic. I was under the impression that it was a weekend blast that at least conveyed the message they wanted to convey, and that the protest would become organized and hoped that they would continue in the manner in which it is appropriate to the pandemic time. However, not only bad actors and opportunists (those who looted and went violent) but also the protesters who seemingly believed that they sincerely wanted to help and save black people’s lives continued to stay on the course and went out to protest on the streets. Those were liberal people, either left or radical left, who used to refuse to listen to the voice of a victim with absolute countenance. A victim of sexual assault said, “Please help me,” but the response from the feminists and liberals was that of dismissal “I am sorry. I am not a saviour, so I cannot claim myself to save anyone,” in a saintly manner. I short, they did not care because it was not happening to them.

Many people, who I thought, were aware of the current situation – that we are in the beginning of the pandemic – and who, I thought, knew better to know what would be the smart thing to do, suddenly became hostile and spoke to one another with aggressive, fascist like language, threatening “If you do not get out and act, you are against us.” Thus, the division in the real sense began. “Act” what? What good does it do to street-protest when people die every time you form a group? After all, that was what their position had been until a few days before George Floyd. The circumstance may have changed but the fundamental issue still remained lurking invisibly all around us. It was not a change from one disaster to another, but it was an addition to what was already an uncontrollable medical chaos. As I kept insisting people to calm down and reformulate the way in which they conducted the protests to best suit the current underlining condition that is Covid-19, I began to be called anti-BLM and a racist without trying to understand why I was saying what I was saying, or without knowing how much I have done against discrimination (sexism or racism) in the past. All it took was “we should stay separated and come up with a different way to tackle this new (i.e. 400-yearlong) problem” for my friends to call me a racist. I unwittingly used the phrase “All Lives Matter” back then, clearly implying every single life matters, not just those who are being obviously oppressed. (by the way, I spoke with quite a few black people during that time, apologizing to them if what I said was offensive. But to my surprise, no black people cared – they knew very well that we were in the midst of the pandemic. The only condemnation I received by saying “all lives matter” came from white people. How strange it that?) This further cemented my image as a right winger and they spoke to me based on the assumption that I am a racist. The phrase, however racist under normal circumstances, needed to be assessed more properly. The context and what I had been saying until then since March must have made it obvious that all I meant was every single life matters, including the ones who are being oppressed. But being as opportunists they were, they took this phrase to label me eternally a racist. Intentions do not matter anymore. I knew that since 2014 in my grad school year – people always made a fuss about a word or a phrase rather than how it was uttered and for what purpose it was said. What Immanuel Kant wrote in the very beginning of Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals did not register the very people who needed to keep calm.

“Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a Goodwill. Intelligence, wit, judgment, and the other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, and which, therefore, constitutes what is called character, is not good.”– Immanuel Kant.

            Many of the people who turned against me had been studying philosophy with me for a long time. I have been invited to their houses countless times and I have also invited them to my house for parties. One of the first things I look when I go to a new house are the bookshelves. I feel that by seeing what books they are reading, I could tell a little about them. Unfortunately, none of the people who treated me as a racist had had any books on black history or on American slavery. The reason why I became so attracted a long ago and went into philosophy was because of Kant and Simone de Beauvoir. I also believed will plays a huge role in ethics – though more in an Aristotelian sense, but I did not know that then. I deviated a little, but the point I was trying to make was (which must have been) clear to anyone especially who has spent time studying with me when I said that all lives matter. Humans don’t change so easily, particularly so if they are principled. My willful mistake was that I put all faith into the idea that people who study philosophy are somewhat like myself in that they care and react intellectually. May those be about animals, environment, societies or fellow human beings. I believed that they cared about something invaluable and they wanted to get rid of misunderstanding and unnecessary conflicts to make the world a better place, where everyone could opine and disagree, yet still be friends. Such was a utopian society I dreamt of and unfortunately I still do.

            Anecdotes aside, after what I might call the Great Academic Shift (cir.2010-2020), I could not help but think the people who had been cautioning against the right-wing protesters in April, too, had been greatly fatigued after (only) a few months of home confinement. Indeed, they must have envied the right-wingers who were out protesting for their freedom, stamping upon the left-winger’s freedom from oppression (i.e. possible COVID infection). Their protest against the anti-maskers and anti-stay-at-home orders must have been rooted in the envy that screamed inside them “Why are you the only ones who get to hang out on the streets, when we are staying at home being responsible?”

            The BLM protest in the name of George Floyd must have been liberating to the Americans and American minded radical left wingers, as it gave them a justifiable reason to go out and meet their friends and act together, when everyone else’s activities were restricted in the rest of the world. It was only the Americans who could act freely without the government interference. This is easily induced from the fact that they stopped talking about BLM by October when it got cold. If they still continued to do the ‘protesting’ activities without being hostile and on the streets, so I assume if they really meant it when they said they were willing to risk their own lives for black people, why did they even have to go out in the summer, antagonizing those who cautioned against any forms of protests or gatherings amidst the pandemic? In fact, their fascist language was so hardcore that it even dissuaded usually apolitical people from learning about racism for fear of being called a racist (since the implication that they did not know how bad racism was until now; that itself warranted them to be racists nowadays). So the quiet moment lasted for a month or so and people started to talk about “I was being a racist without knowing,” newbies who chanced upon picking up popular books excitedly said, “but now I know what it means to be an anti-racist. I recommend you to read this book, because so should you be aware of it.”

            In this way, even the small number of people who were willing to talk with me how important it is to secure our health over eliminating the systemic racism at this point in time, they would not listen. I asked three questions to those who spoke with me: 1) what the protesters want – the manifestos, 2) supposing that they were able to get on to the negotiating table, what they were going to suggest and talk about in terms of policy, because if all they do is yell at the crowd, “Defund the Police” and “Stop killing black people,” without having any specific policy to be implemented, they would be entrusting the very mission to eliminate the systemic racism to the system itself. The last question is 3) if they think the systemic racism in the West (or elsewhere) must be eliminated at any cost – that is, at the expense of every single life on this earth when the pandemic has killed 4.5 million people (reported) as of August, 2021 – in a matter of 18 months – and still growing. None of the people I talked to was able to answer any one of the questions. Not even one person. Not even one of the three questions. They cannot even say what they have done to dismantle the systemic racism, but think that thinking about what to do about it is enough. The assumption is that the systemic racism is universal and anyone who does not address this issue is a racist, and that being a racist – whether actively or not – is worse than getting infected with Covid-19, suffering from it and dying from it. Their thinking is Western-centric since the systemic racism is not universal and eliminating the systemic racism in the U.S. at the expense of 7 billion people’s lives outside the U.S. cannot ever be justified. Furthermore, the activists are willfully oblivious to the very fact that their mission would necessarily be a long-term project. Racism, whether systemic or not, cannot be resolved in a year or two. How could they possibly think that, when at the same time vocalizing the systemic racism has lasted for 400 years? Any types of discrimination would take at least 3 generations, if not longer. This is because the concept of “the others being inferior or could be disposed of” is deep rooted in memory that the concept itself must be washed way. For this to happen, the first-generation activists must keep telling everyone, like how Nazism is evil or how the suffering caused by the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki should never be repeated, to the second generation and to the third, so forth, until such a concept as “white supremacism” becomes an empty phrase that is obsolete and whose meaning no one can articulate. Over 3 generations, the horror of the World War II has been told by the ones involved in it to their grandchildren in many places, yet there are still plenty of people who claim themselves as neo-Nazis or that wars are inevitable. Even the sufferings that could happen to everyone due to a human cause is not universally recognized as evil and taken to be left in the past. Just how long are we supposed to wait until the BLM protesters become satisfied with their vacuous claims during the pandemic – the pandemic being the operative word. If this were a normal circumstance, protesting against discrimination is a great ambition with social contribution, but BLM in the summer of 2020 was clearly not one of them. The protesters, by going outside and gathering en masse, there is always a possibility of transmission of the virus from the unknowingly infected to the vulnerable people, including the very people they say they are trying to protect – the black people. To claim otherwise is beyond absurdity when no one was tracking who was infected and with whom this person had a contact during the mass protests like we have seen in the summer of 2020. Yet, they somewhat found obscure articles that claimed the BLM protesters did not contribute to the spike in the Covid-19 cases after weeks of study. But even within this article, contrary to its headline, it affirms the possibility of protesters increasing the Covid-19 cases! Also, these articles came to be published around June 22^nd to early July. Many of them claim on the headlines that the protesters did not contribute to the surge on the Covid-19 cases according to the study. What study!? It had only been 3 weeks since the protests broke out and already on May 31^st, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, held a public press conference cautioning while not dissuading, “there is still a pandemic in America that’s killing black and brown people at higher numbers.” Almost after a week since Mayor Bottoms quietly warned the protesters, Dr. Fauci also voiced a concern, saying “It’s a difficult situation… but it’s a delicate balance, because the reasons for demonstrating are valid. And yet, the demonstration itself puts one at an additional risk,” adding that “it is a perfect setup for the spread of the virus.” Dr. Fauci carefully chose his words – he said the reasons for demonstrating is valid, he did not say it was sound. In this same article that was published on June 6^th, other health experts disagreed and continued to say, “[i]n addition to the COVID-19 crisis hitting black communities especially hard, police violence disproportionately affecting communities of color is, in and of itself, a public health crisis.” Sure, argue away however you can just so long as it remains to be the problem within the United States of America. The public health of one country does not justify a possible cause for the countless deaths in other parts of the world. The people who argued for the BLM protests were all exclusively thinking about and talking about the issues as domestic. It had never occurred to them that the pandemic affects us all in every corner of the world. It probably did not occur to them who supported the protests, because they had just realized the existence of black people. Just as Christopher Columbus is said to have “discovered” the indigenous people.

            This performative activism and sophistry have long histories in various shapes and forms. Simone de Beauvoir reminds us and anachronistically illustrates the current situations of the activists in the United States vividly.

“At once the oppressor raises an objection: under the pretext of freedom, he says, there you go oppressing me in return; you deprive me of my freedom. It is the argument which the Southern slaveholders opposed to the abolitionists, and we know that the Yankees were so imbued with the principles of an abstract democracy that they did not grant that they had the right to deny the Southern planters the freedom to own slaves; the Civil War broke out with a completely formal pretext. We smile at such scruples; yet today, America still recognizes more or less implicitly that Southern whites have the freedom to lynch negroes… A claim of this kind does not outrage us in the name of abstract justice; but a contradiction is dishonestly concealed there. For a freedom wills itself genuinely only by willing itself as an indefinite movement through the freedom of others… we know well enough what sort of freedom Parti Républicain de la liberté demands: it is property, the feeling of possession, capital, comfort, moral security. We have to respect freedom only when it is intended for freedom, not when it strays, flees itself, and resigns itself. A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied.”

            The similarity is striking – the oppressor being the (medical) authority, restricting the freedom of the Americans, while in return the Americans claim how dare you deprive us of our freedom to protest and hang out. The medical authority, or the Yankee, could not stop them from acting selfishly. The protest broke out with a completely formal pretext. Now in power, the privileged minority, allied with the privileged whites, wants the feeling of possession, capital, comfort and moral security as well as the authority to be an arbiter of morality so that they can decide what can be said and what needs to be ostracized. In fact, just as it is sung in a song written about conflicts,

“There is a fence that cannot easily be crossed over between the ones who throw stones at people and the ones who are thrown stones at. Once the circumstance changes, justice peels its fangs. One cannot help but wonder which ones are in fact howling in the iron cage.

There is an incompatible wall between the ones who oppose the will and the ones whose will is denied. If you seek for the truth, the world will collapse, is that really the freedom that I saw, looking up the sky from the iron cell?”

As one smart black person I know has expressed that the white people must first recognize that there are black communities not in abstract forms but in reality. They need to understand the white people cannot put the ‘black people’ into one unified group, since there are so many issues that need to be resolved before the black communities could even start to claim “we are One Unified Black Community and we want equal treatment,” just as the white people cannot say “we are One Unified White People and we want to accept the black communities.” This person I know personally told me his own childhood story, growing up in the south, and how he decided to leave the country because he and his family were ostracized by the territorial black communities. Even if he could escape the swamp and mingle with the white people in the upper-states, he knew he would not get the same respect and treatment, so he fled to Europe. I asked him how he feels seeing the then-current protests conducted by the privileged white people, he replied without hesitation, “if the white people want to help us out, stay the fuck out of us.”   

II: The Shortage of Medical Equipment, Vaccine Privilege, and the Influenza Season

            Japan has a relatively lower number of Covid-19 patients, compared to the other developed countries. This, however, does not translate into us having an easier access to the hospitals. Unlike the European countries, Japanese government does not have the constitutional power to impose a lockdown. This resulted in semi-quasi form of a lockdown – the state of emergency. What it does is that the government can strongly encourage people to stay at home with no legal authority. Hence, those who do not stay home – either for business or for leisure – do not get any penalties. At first, when we saw what happened in Italy in February of 2020, we feared Covid-19 so much so that once the first state of emergency was declared in April of 2020, many people voluntarily stayed at home and tried as much as possible not to travel. This has caused Japanese tourist industries and food industries (like anywhere else in the world) insurmountable damage. In order to encourage people to travel and help economy, the government decided to give discounts for tourists and financial assistance for food industries on condition that they keep the safety measures set by the government, such as constant sanitization of the things touched in the restaurants, having a well ventilating system, putting shields between the seats as well as urging customers to wear masks and travel with fewer number of people and keep social distancing etc.… This obviously did not work and the infection rate has been increasing ever since, and the toll got particularly worsened since the new year started. On top of this, the holding of the delayed Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics gathered many people around the stadium, even though no spectators were allowed in. Most public viewings were cancelled, yet at the opening ceremony and closing ceremony, people crowded around the stadium to see the fireworks. Even though they were wearing masks and were careful not to speak to one another as much as possible, wherever a crowd is, there is a virus. Since people go to work and schools across the prefectures into Tokyo prefecture, the numbers of infected cases and death rate due to Covid-19, particularly of Delta variant, increased drastically starting from Tokyo, now expanding into other large cities. The government of Japan has asked the people of Japan to stay at home, cancel all events, and not to eat out unless it is a group of two. On the one hand, they insisted on holding the Olympics and despite many of the related personnel have been infected with the virus, the government claimed it was absolutely safe. On the other hand, people have been told not to go out except for work or when absolutely necessary because when people gather or go out, they necessarily infect one another. The government says there is no link between the surge in Covid-19 and the Olympics, but this is the same rhetoric as saying there is no link between BLM protests and the Covid-19 surge. Of course, there is a link between the Olympics and the surge in Covid-19 cases, just as there is a link between people going to work and travelling elsewhere. This mixed message and repetitious issuing of the state of emergency without any sense of emergency exhausted people and the government has now lost any credibility when it comes to its Covid-19 responses. The financial assistance to the food industries have also significantly slowed down and as of July, 2021, the executive chef and the representative chef of Japan in the World Gourmet Summit spoke for all the food industries in Japan that restaurants in Japan would continue to go bankrupt for years to come even if the Covid-19 were to suddenly disappear to-day, unless the restaurants must keep 200% capacity of the customers every day. This is largely due to the failure of the governmental response and aids to those who needed the assistance, Japan’s inability to take more radical measures, people still having to go out to work, and the slowness of the vaccine roll-out. I myself was only able to finally get the first vaccine shot on August 25^th, 2021. The government relies on the importation of the foreign vaccines for now. Although it received a large quantity of vaccines from the U.S. in February, the poor emergency management and communications between the government and municipalities caused a tremendous delay in delivering the vaccines to the people in the country. The holding of the Olympics and the Paralympics, at least optically, in the meantime, made it easier for Japanese people to travel and go out freely without seriously feeling responsible about spreading the Covid-19 as much. Being accustomed to the state of emergency, while still being cautious, the summer vacation without vaccination drastically increased the patients. Most hospitals cannot afford to accept patients due to the lack of space, nurses and beds, even though they work 80-100 hours a week on occasion.

            Such is the case in Japan, whose population is known to wear masks even when it is not in the flu season. The new Delta variant is hitting hard even the countries whose vaccination rate is high. The feature of this variant has definitely a lot to do with the Covid-19 surge, but more than that, I cannot help wondering if this is also because the irresponsible behaviours of the vaccinated. Especially the privileged vaccinated, by which I mean the privileged Americans, ignorantly believed that their having been vaccinated means they are (at least more) immune to the virus infection than the others, when the others are not yet vaccinated. No vaccination is a 100% proof, just as no commercial masks are a 100% proof. Yet, those who have received the vaccinations started to travel across the countries, let alone domestically! Surely, the vaccinated may be protected more than the unvaccinated, but do they know that they are most likely spreading the virus in the countries or cities they are visiting? Do they not realize the person you are talking to may not have received vaccination because, like Japan, the countries have slow responses or less resources than the U.S.? Even if, say, the vaccinated cannot transmit the virus, the optics of them going to places and freely drinking indoors or outdoors and holding public events lessens the impression that this virus is not to be messed with. Once again, I cannot emphasize this enough, we do not know anything about this virus yet. So far, the Americans have acted most irresponsibly and inconsistently since the Covid-19 began. The number well attests to that. Many Americans were recalled from Europe in March, where the Covid-19 was most rampant at the time without any plans. This caused a chaotic crowd in the International Airports, forcing many to wait in the crowd for 8 hours or longer. Without any PCR, they let the citizens travel back to their own home. This of course led to the mass spread and the huge surge in the Covid-19 cases within the U.S. – as anyone who remembers the number of people infected with the virus at the beginning of March and at the beginning of April can easily recall. In an attempt to rebut the surge, the states issued stay-at-home orders, which many defied, further contributing to the increase in the cases. While some were patient enough to stay at home for a month or two, virtually Americans on both sides of the political parties went out in June onwards, while the number steadily increased. Then they discovered mask wearing. The outside being cold in winter, it made it easier for them to stay at home. The mask wearing and social distancing were finally implemented, albeit reluctantly. The number of cold and seasonal flu patients drastically decreased, most thankfully to these rational practices. Although the Covid-19 patients still suffered, the make-shift vaccines were rolled out in mid-December. In combination of CDC guidelines with the vaccination roll-out, I believe, not only the Covid-19 patients but also the seasonal flu patients substantially decreased in the states. The more people got vaccinated, the more immunized people became. Even if people get infected with Covid-19, the symptoms and conditions were far subdued that, among the vaccinated people, it helped the patients reduce the risk of getting severely ill as well as the hospital workers ease their workload, compared to the pre-vaccine period. Or so it seemed. The appearance of Delta variant, however, changed the directionality of the path to recovery. Since its first appearance in December of 2020, it has spread all over the world and both the U.S. and Japan were no exception. By spring, Delta variant was virtually unstoppable. As the vaccination rate went up, the severely sick were seen less often. Yet it was a huge blow to the existing vaccines against the Covid-19, even though the vaccines are hoisted as the miraculous cure that prevents you from suffering. It is this public optics, the cognitive dissonance, that 1) the vaccines are working (i.e. reducing the risks) and 2) the fact that the patients are on the increase that people both in Japan and in the states, as elsewhere, are facing with right now. First of all, even though the vaccines do reduce the risk of transmission and suffering, people under 12 years of age are not allowed to get it. Second, the schools are opening and have opened up in many parts of the world. Third, people especially in the West are less enthusiastic about masks or social distancing as opposed to the autumn last year. This could very well mean that the seasonal flu is back, while more people are still reluctant to take the flu vaccines. What would happen if you get the flu instead of Covid, as the vaccine efficacy against Covid is deteriorating into the winter? I remember last year, 2020 that is, people in America feared the flu & Covid-19 double attack, which luckily did not happen presumably thanks to the mindset that people felt the need to wear masks. This mindset includes not only mask wearing, but social distancing and constant sanitizing. People who wear masks tend to be either consciously or subconsciously careful about contacts and sensitive about sanitization. It is this combination that prevented the outbreak of the flu last year. However, the people in America are not interested in wearing masks anymore, nor are they likely to get the flu vaccine shots. On top of that, the utterly unprotected – the children under 12 – are fully exposed to the otherwise pre-Covid like normalcy, where adults behave as if there is nothing to worry about. The flu and Covid-19 double attack would happen this year, since the mindset of the people are completely different now. This inconsistency and the cognitive dissonance that exist in America will, I firmly believe, determine the course of the future post-Winter. After all, America is, as it is now, still the world’s hegemonic country and everything it does causes ripple effects in the world. I once admired this aspect of the influence America has to the world and put faith in the goodwill of the American people: the will to accept plurality of thoughts and debate and speak freely without any repercussions. This is hardly seen anymore. There is no safe space, except in the fascist sense of the term, in the institutional learning facilities and children are utterly unprotected by the irresponsible, uninformed citizens. Education lies in its foundation of the healthy societal structure, yet it has been antagonized and many books have been banned arbitrarily by the sole discretion of the modern scholastics, hijacked by the liberal fundamentalists. America lost something invaluable when they stopped hearing and talking to the people in question. In any case, we all need to be more aware and conscious about what matters. There will be social issues and problems and economic devastations along the way, but they all are on the same ship that is called Covid-19. The winter of 2021 is going to be the key. With more variants found, with problems with vaccine roll-out and with people taking it so much less seriously, more people who did not have to die would necessarily die. Unless we internationally coordinate and cooperate without pretence to take this virus seriously and tackle the issue as if to eliminate the virus in its entirety, our future will always be like on the ship that is steering afloat under the storm. Just as the young invalid in The Ethics of Ambiguity was right, everything becomes futile if we keep pretending that the foundation is secure.

III: Concluding Paragraph

I don’t judge and categorize people

or why I went into and exiting the institutionalized philosophy

“Whoever saves one life saves the entire world.”

            A little bit of background is necessary for my life choices to make sense and why I finally decided to formally exit the much-admired academic institution. As I always began talking about one of my first memories, I begin by saying that I wanted to be a duck. This was after reading the Ugly Duckling when I was 3. For some reason, the fact that the duck in the story turned out to be a swan was blocked in my memory for a while, but what left me a great impression was that just because the duck was different, it was ostracized. When it became a swan, it accepted the bullies without penalizing them. For a long time, I believed this duck to be Aylesbury Duck for some reason – adding an extra admiration that it is a duck that cannot fly but lives courageously. This duck-veneration turned into a fascination with zoology by the time I was 7 or so. So, ultimately, after finding out that I could not ever be a duck, I wanted to be a zoologist. Through it, I became interested in many living creatures. But my aspirations remained to be an aspiration, as I did not know how to study or plan my life to get into that kind of line of work. [Little did I know then that this passion for animals or “anima” kept its root and later it resurged in the form of history of philosophy]

            I lived in Hiroshima for most of my childhood and I was taught and ingrained how wars are unequivocally bad. At the same time, I began seeing differences in how men view women – this was in the 90’s – a long story short, I was exposed to the idea that men take women for granted and abuse them whenever they like with force and sexualize when they want to. I was happy to grow up surrounded by girls who were nice to me – probably because I was generally shy and silly and not an alpha-male type – and it was usually the girls who gave me helping hands, whereas guys would dismiss me as soon as they deemed me as not serving for them to look cool better. As the readers must know, especially in the 90’s, poster advertisement of PlayBoy magazines was everywhere on the train and this, I thought, was influencing the growth of kids in establishing the stereotypes in the society. I had a general distrust in men. This was the same when I moved to Chiba prefecture in the 4^th grade and to Osaka at the end of the 5^th grade. Japan was tainted by the general attitude of sexism everywhere. While I had not personally known girls being sexually harassed, it became obvious in Junior High School (7^th grade to 9^th grade) that kids as young as 13 years old are capable of committing crimes that could haunt the girls’ lives forever. When I witnessed the scene, I could not say anything – as I was being bullied myself by 6-8 boys in the classroom and this guy who groped my friend’s breasts during the exam was one of the physically strongest guy that there was no way I could say anything to him – let alone he was cautiously pressing and intimidating me not to cheat on him (i.e. look at his direction) during the exam. What I can only fathom from this is that it was habitually done. [This is beginning of my life-long fight – a cause – against the greater sexual crimes I was to face with in the future, which I cannot talk about here] The first time I saw this, I thought of dropping a pencil towards that person so as to attract the teacher’s intent, but had I done so, there was a greater chance I may have committed suicide back then. I do not know how much of it the school knew, but they at least knew that I was being bullied by multiple delinquents – I was even treated as a sandbag during the class and even the teacher was afraid to say anything! I almost lost the eye sight. It was only later I was informed that the teachers in school knew all about it but did not try to stop it (because possibly I did not give an explicit consent for the teachers to intervene, which had I done so, I would have been even more targeted and again I may not have survived the first year. Those who are really in need of help cannot voice – adults understood nothing of that. They only passively rearranged the classrooms when we went up the 2^nd grade in Junior High School, taking care that no one who had bullied me were anywhere near my class. At first, I was happy that I was finally liberated from those thugs and I did not fear going to school. But my wound remained deep – not to mention I had no idea I had a mental illness back then. In any case, I was deeply hurt and deprived of the studying time because of the illness as well as the fear of running into the bullies on the school corridor. I was not a good student, grade-wise. It was then when I saw, what was to become, a blink of hope. The release of the movie Titanic [‘97] at the end of December. I learned from it the love that was not fulfilled and how strong women are. I began to consume movies almost every week to learn about the cultures I had previously not been properly exposed to. I began reading the Western classics, such as Les Misérables and War and Peace, as well as the Lord of the Rings, Aleksandra Dumas, etc… They all included parallel views of societies and even one small action could change the entire course of the future. Japanese TV shows also helped me form different perspectives, in particular, Odoru Daisousasen (nowadays translated into English as “Bayside Shake Down”), each character having a strong sense of convictions, including ‘justice’ – this was never generalized but depicted as the ‘sense of duty’ the protagonist believed – if you are in a position to be able to help others, however the bureaucracy tries to stop you either to conceal a crime or to sacrifice a “small incident” over a “big fish,” you will not listen and help the one you can. This was the justice as conviction depicted in the show. I began to develop an interest in sending out messages Internationally – by then, I was fairly fluent in English and my dream job somewhat solidified with wanting to be a script writer. I also knew how students struggle at studying, so I worked at a cram school saving money, particularly paying attention to those students who were quiet and ignored by the other teachers just to tell them: that you are not alone. This whole experience gave me the perspectives that there are people who exploit the systems at their own convenience (i.e. populist, left or right) and those who are exploited, entirely powerless. Even though I had a choice to side with either one of them, even this choice was restricted by one’s own ability and “social credibility” that, having clearly belonging to the latter, I had little hope but I never lost that hope to become the party of the good – that makes sense (consistent) and is fair and helps people who are in similar situations without anything for return. [This is roughly when my convictions and principles as a person became solidified, and this is why I went into philosophy, which eventually intersected the path I had always been passionate about – zoology, the study of animals and living creatures and the existence of the souls]

            I came upon Sophie’s World as I was preparing to apply for creative writing at the university. This book greatly changed my perspective. The reason why I took interest in reading this book at first was an obnoxious one. I had a Japanese friend who was a Christian and I was invited to her church – not knowing anything about Christianity, I spent a whole day with them. Whatever I said or asked was answered in terms of omniscient God and not a shred of personal opinion was found. Further, I felt a strong pressure that they comprehended me – with all the medical struggles that had not yet been known to me – but my arguments were groundless and they had the Bible to quote. They were completely inundated in the Christian view of the world. I picked up Sophie’s World to see if all the smart people in the past really believed in God as those Japanese Christians spoke of. The answer was negative. Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Aristotle, Hume, Locke, Kant, all of them had a completely different definition and a rationalized view of what God is. I was so excited that I devoured the book and I changed my major to philosophy. My initial reasons for going into philosophy were two: 1) so that I can spread the message I wanted to convey to alleviate as much suffering as possible that people are feeling, and 2) on a more personal note, I wanted to be sensitive to the flaws in the argument enough so that I could defend my own position with credibility. Philosophy made a natural sense for me. By then, I self-diagnosed that the underlining medical condition that I must have had was Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I probably would not have reached this diagnosis had I not seen A Beautiful Mind. There were just so many relatable elements in the film and that’s when I began wondering what I had was perhaps medical and not just me being weird. [This also gave me the perspectives what actual people with mental disorders experience at firsthand knowledge, unlike the armchair philosophers who decide what those who suffer from mental illness must and should feel be feeling, day I say, according to the study]

            Having experienced a variety of what leftists now call micro-aggressions and racism a countless time because I am an Asian ever since I arrived in Canada – although, I never cared unintended stereotypes about the Asians – but a particularly hurtful event was a comment made by a white dude giving flyers to ask people aware of the Free Tibetan movement in 2007 or so in front of the metro station Guy-Concordia. He was always giving out flyers, just like the uninformed white privileged people chanting and antagonizing those who do not fit into their narratives. I met him throughout the semester and some days he was giving flyers to others, while some days he was explaining what was happening and yet on some other days the snow storm was so severe that I could not even see in front nor take out my hands off my coat. He had approached me several times, and I took the flyers out of courtesy but it was all written in Chinese. So I had to throw it away every time. One day, I decided not to receive the flyer because it would be just a waste of paper. He then approached me, “No, no, take it! It’s very important,” he followed me, as I kept refusing to take the flyers which I saw were the exact same things he was always giving out in Chinese. He would not stop, and lectured me how important to be aware of this issue, not knowing I had been fundraising for Free Tibetan Movement with my friends, but he judged me that I was anti-Free Tibetan by not receiving the flyers. I said to him, “It’s okay” to which he responded, “why not?” I stated the fact, “I can’t read Chinese.” It did not seem to register to him what I meant, and he asked me again “You can’t read Chinese?” to which I said “No, I can’t.” He followed up by asking me, “Are you not Chinese?” and I said “No, I am not.” The next phrase that came out of his mouse was, if I use the radical leftists’ trendy term, racism per excellence. “Then, what are you?” I was a little surprised at his comment, seeing he was advocating a cause for Asian origin for at least 2 years standing on the same spot, and he did not realize there were other countries in Asia? “I responded hastily, “I’m… Japanese.” Not knowing how to react or answer his question, the word flew out. He then stood aghast as if he had seen a ghost or newly discovered species in Asia, who are not Chinese and said nothing and stared at the air for a while. Now that is racism – judging someone by one action or a word of refusal, without knowing what this person has done for the very cause he was fighting for – I even stayed up 24 hours in the Concordia Library, amongst other things, for fundraising event for Free Tibetan, for 3 days, whose turnout was only three people. Now, which one is being a racist in the sense that “actively trying to dismantle” the structural racism? Me who have attended several protests and fundraising events or the guy who only gave out flyers thinking all Asian looking people must be Chinese? The similar events happened with black people being discriminated; I was the only one who stood up for him and argued against the landlord who would not take a black person in as a tenant for 2 hours on the phone. Sexism is the same. No matter what I did, when it was not popular, no one cared. What mattered is what I said out of context when a certain cause was being popularized. I was called “jap” so many times, by veterans, I was being a target for a prey by the thieves to steal because I was Asian and they assumed I must have had expensive things carrying with me. I cannot remember exactly how many times I got my things stolen, but at least once or twice a year, I would say, in my Canadian life. Every time I went to the police, their assessment was that I was an easy prey being an Asian and small – adumbrating a racial profiling on the thieves’ part. If you go into a micro-aggression, I cannot tell you how many times I was being subjected to unwanted comments about Asia or Japan in most casual situations in Canada as well as in America. So, people who judge the others as racists, especially when there is a good reason to raise a concern (Covid-19) without knowing or trying to understand what this person has done for the community, shut the fuck up. You are the one propagating the division and systemic racism, without understanding the term – or maybe perhaps just enough that you can quote the racism entry on Wikipedia. Word policing must stop as well. You philosophers did not learn anything from Kant? A goodwill? Did you not read Nichomacien Ethics? Even those who minored in philosophy should know the difference between sophistry and real argument.

            I have a conviction and I never deviate from my principles. I also know what to prioritize when unwanted events occur simultaneously. I will never abandon a life that could be saved, especially if it is happening in front of me. I will never succumb to the toxic work environment seen both in Japan and in North America. In the case of Japan, harassments overwhelm and whenever I have witnessed them being practiced in the workplace, whether or not I am the direct victim, I will listen to the stories from the victims and I compile the complaints with anonymity and speak with the bosses. This is why I got fired from Kansai International Airport. The abuse of power and sexual harassments were rampant that it took me 2 years to gather information and understand the personal relationship within the companies, but I spoke up and I am proudly fired in 2019. [As I was later informed, my comments reached to the top and the abusive boss was sent away to do an insignificant job in the suburbs] This was not restricted to the Airport, I have worked in various jobs and a few of them had an extremely toxic environment – in some places, the boss would kick and humiliate the employees in front of the customers. I spoke up again – this was in 2003 before I went to Canada in 2005. I will not allow or tolerate the “weak” to be used and exploited by the socially higher standing people just so the privileged could look nice, while doing nothing substantial. Especially in the last 2 years, the North American white privileged academics as well as their degenerates fit this category.

At the core, sexism is what I cannot bear and related sexual violence. This is my conviction and the cause. I am not every single day actively searching for the case and spend all my time and energy, without working, to dismantle the systemic sexism in Japan, but it is something that is always (in the sense that I am looking out for any reported events or private conversations) in my mind. Next comes the discrimination against anything, really. I would vocalize and say what is wrong is wrong. These then form my core principles and convictions. Having been oppressed and bullied, deprived of any social credibility for not scoring well on the exams, I cannot ever pretend that I do not see them because I know their pain. It is truly unfortunate that BLM protesters could not even say one single concrete thing they would want to change and they were going to be the one to change it. When I realized how hypocritical they were being, I lost all my confidence in academia, since their behaviours are a direct reflection of what is happening in academia, just as in any other period. The commoners blindly obey what the academics say – this is why they like to quote “according to the study” or “studies have found that,” not knowing what the heck they are talking about. They need to know two things by the time they graduate the elementary school: 1) statistics only reflect what has been reported and variable to change at any point – so better not to cite any statistics unless there is a good reason and wide enough credibility on that statistic, 2) what is scientifically true is only true insofar as it is proven otherwise by science – so again, better not definitely say, as Catholics did, the Earth is the center of the universe according to the study and science at the time, or the theory of Einstein is the single truth, as there are super string theory and others coming up that contradict some of the statement. Statistics and science are, in a way, the least reliable sources. But you should have your own thoughts on the issues – you have lived for a while, didn’t you? Or have you lived without thinking at all? Stop hiding behind the “meme” somebody else made to speak for you. It is truly pathetic. Use your own words and take responsibility for them, or else you are just as harmful as the guy who groped my friends’ breasts during the exam and who bullied me.

            The reason why I wanted to settle in as a professor and debate, discuss and inspire people is to open up the goodness of people’s will. As of 2014, I was rather pessimistic and in 2019, what had appeared in Academia were spreading among the commoners. Everyone is word policing and whoever says a certain word is forever damned without any context or intentions behind it. Luckily, I am able to teach online courses one-to-one on a friendly atmosphere and the students come back to take my lessons, and for sure I would like to show them around Japan when they come to Japan or see them when I visit their countries post-Covid-19. This interactive teaching style I very much longed for – the heuristic way of teaching – I realized, cannot be actualized in a foreseeable future in any institutional academic facilities. And this is why I am out. I of course continue to work intellectually and plan to produce intellectual work, but I did not choose to enter into philosophy to fit into the social norm, nor did I go into philosophy to stifle or constantly change my own opinions as wind blows and succumb to the populist rhetoric. I sincerely thank my professors who have helped me and showed me different perspectives. I learned a lot from them. Having the private conversations with them was what kept me sane and away from the singularity of ideas, which is antithetical to philosophy. I had thought that the only way to repay my gratitude was to stand on the podium, offering pluralities of ideas, but that ship seems to have sailed a long time ago. I will make my contribution in other ways I can. After all, the fire of practical idealism still burns and the virtue theory of Aristotle thrives in my heart, consistent with my convictions. Happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with virtues relative to the individuals. I first promised myself to promote and spread happiness through my existence at the age of 9. 28 years have passed since then, cementing, revising and polishing the meaning of each term through experience and philosophy. I dreamt of interactive-teaching and learning with the students and colleagues, only to find out that there is no such place to exercise and convey my reasond’être in the current Academia that has now been mobilized. The higher up they go in the institution, the more normalized and accepted this mentality becomes so much so that PhDs and post-docs can no longer tell the difference between intentions and end-results. Worse yet, many of them think they are the same. They conflate actions with achievements (when they have not achieved anything). In such worlds, people can say they have read a book when they only have read the preface of the book. In fact, they already do. They eternally live in, what de Beauvoir calls, festivities or the present. The academia now is a children’s playground where one does not know or care if a person is a good person who happened to do a bad thing, or if he is a bad person who happened to do a good thing. One event that happened most recently defines you. Just as I left Hollywood when I saw there was no way I could convey my messages on screen, I must leave academia since there is no place in academia where a healthy relationship can be maintained for the goodness of the world.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechman (NY: Kenshington Publishing Corp, 106.

Immanuel Kant. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, tans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbot (Mineola, NY: Dover Publishing, 2005), 9.

For instance, this https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/24/us/coronavirus-cases-protests-black-lives-matter-trnd/index.html published on June 24^th. (Accessed on Aug. 25^th, 2021)

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/24/us/coronavirus-cases-protests-black-lives-matter-trnd/index.html (accessed on Aug. 25^th, 2021)

https://www.businessinsider.com/dr-fauci-protests-perfect-set-up-for-spreading-covid-19-2020-6 (accessed on Aug. 25^th, 2021) See how carefully worded Dr. Fauci was in the interview? He did not say the protesters had ‘sound’ reasons but only “valid” reasons.

Ibid.

De Beauvoir, 90-91.

Linked Horizen, “Akatsuki no Chinkon ka [or Requiem der Morgenröte],” 2018, Linked Horizen: Rakuen e no Shingeki [the attack on the paradise] (Pony Canyon, 2018) – translation and bolding mine. Note: normally on YouTube, etc… the part I translated as “Once circumstance changes, justice peels its fangs” as “When your position/status changes” but from the context of the story and since the lyrics are made specifically for this anime in accordance with the amine’s theme, it is proper to translate this part in the way I did. This is so because the alternative translation does not capture the irrationality and the frustration one feels towards the society that are the core message of this anime. Also, it is natural that once your “position” changes, justice of course peels its fangs because you changed your “just” position to “unjust” position. This alternative translation is only possible if you take the lyrics out of the context of the anime/story, and it directly contradicts the message, particularly because for the season episodes this song was made for, the protagonist realizes rightly or not that he had been wrong and the society around him had always been right, which left all the characters we related to as ourselves being exploited by the society from the very first season to the very last season “the enemy” all of the sudden. This particular season explains how unstable and arbitrary the concept of “justice” is and how what is just is decided by to which side the protagonist of the show leans forward. So it is not talking about the personal status or position/view point, but it is talking about the society and “revealed” facts, which for some are reasonable, while for others are oppressive. Hence, the following question in the lyrics ensues – “One cannot help but wonder which ones (sides) are in fact howling in the iron cage (i.e. manipulated)” and which sides are really oppressed and which are the oppressors, as they are depicted by emotional states and personal experiences each character faces. In other word, each character starts to deviate from the common goal and start having doubts about the outside worlds, which implants on them the different “views” of what justice is. Since even if one’s position still remains, if the focal point changes by circumstantial evidence, the same person can act completely in the contrary way. And whoever does not follow the suit and focuses on the new focal point, ignoring the underlining, foundational conviction, becomes the enemy and contrary to what is called “justice”.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/07/30/1022867219/cdc-study-provincetown-delta-vaccinated-breakthrough-mask-guidance (accessed on Aug. 25^th, 202)

https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-administer-1st-doses-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine/story?id=74703018 (accessed on Aug. 25^th)

Oscar Schindler in Schindler’s List. For the background of this quotation, see below.  https://www.sparknotes.com/film/schindlerslist/quotes/page/5/ (accessed on Sep.2^nd, 2021)