<This article has been translated using DeepL so there may be inconsistencies with the translation due to this.>
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How social networking has changed my values
I can say that my sense of values has changed because of social networking. In my 20s, I had an overwhelming sense of justice, and I think I clearly had my own kind of “rightness. I wondered why that person behaved the way he did, or why he fell into that kind of principle. I was on the “uncertain certainty” that I was on the right vector.
It was when I learned to let go that I began to think differently. Until then, I had been in the syndrome of not wanting to let go of everything I had acquired for sure. This may have spurred my tendency to hold on to things more and more. As a result, I think it created a vector of unsure and uncertain right thinking.
When I was in my twenties, I met as many people as I could, thanks in part to the tools of social networking. I think I met more than 300 people a year. Of course, I met a lot of good people, many of whom I wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for social networking. If it weren’t for social networking, I would probably be living a more mundane life than I am now. I can assure you of that. I might have wasted decades just going back and forth between work and home.
Maybe I’ve been spending a little too much time thinking lately, but I’ve been wondering what happiness is. You work, you have a child, and you raise it. No one knows if that is a solid happiness or not. If frustration builds up in that life, it cannot be called happiness for that person.
What I noticed as I entered my 30s
When I entered my thirties, I realized that there is no vector that is necessarily right or that will make you happy. People tend to look for things that will always make them happy, or that will always increase their income, but those things are just a fog, a rainbow, and an illusion.
When I started to think about it, I realized that there was no answer. I started to think that my value vector was just a vector that I happened to have in that direction. That’s when I finally stopped forcing myself to connect with people who have different vectors on social media.
I was 25 years old and living alone for the first time. in a place I had no idea where I was going. There was an atmosphere there that I had to hold on to somehow. Then I felt like I had to hold on to everything I had acquired.
Of course, I didn’t have a solid trigger, but I remember feeling proportionately lighter as a result of letting go of various things. In that sense, it was clear that I had been pushing myself too hard.
If you think about it, the act of trying to change people who are heading in different vectors into the same vector requires extra effort than usual. In this way, the act itself is like calling out for contributions to a criminal who is holed up in a hostage situation, and it is hard on one’s own mental health.
Furthermore, what is called a sense of justice is nothing but a firm and straightforward intention that a person wants to keep in their beliefs and thoughts. If the position or situation changes, the way we think will change. People who say they will never change may not even realize that they are doing so.
Even if a certain person has always had a firm intention, he or she will be adjusted to the environment in which he or she is placed, because human beings are beings who are subject to their environment, combined with external pressure of synchronization. That is how it is. This is why it is more effective for you to change your environment than it is for you to change it.
Changing my environment definitely had some positive effects on me.
From my own experience, it is strange to think that when you change your environment so much, you may find something universal in yourself. However, what I also think is that by changing my environment, many new things have happened. New encounters and experiences have also increased. I also keenly felt that it is difficult to grow as a person if you stay in the same environment for a long time. Of course, I am getting older and older, but I have learned that building new values and relationships has a positive effect.
So, in that sense, social networking sites have been very important to me. From the time I was in my twenties, when I was rushing forward, to my thirties, I saw people on social networking sites who were pushing forward with delusional justice. I became convinced that there is no such thing as a univocal good and evil justice.
I’ve come to be able to sense many different aspects. Maybe that’s what diversity is all about.
Although I do interviews for this media now, I often feel similar nuances when I interview people, and this is something I am learning a lot about personally.
Of course, how much of this is conveyed to the viewers of the article depends on my own editing skills, so there is a possibility that it may not be conveyed to the extent intended.
That’s why I want people to feel the universal sensation that I want to convey through the accumulation of my work.
How social networking has changed my values / Daisaku Mochizuki[Japanese version]
Picture：Katsumi Hirabayashi
Plan：Daisaku Mochizuki