First of two parts.
“We die in any case – why live?” asks President magazine (Aug 16).
The question stops you cold. Happy people, people in the prime of life, rarely pose it. It’s born of time and disappointment, pain and loss, maturity and depth – age, in short. Aging Japan can scarcely escape it.
“It hits you around 50,” writes biologist Takehiko Kobayashi. Death nudges us, gently at first – wrinkles, hair loss, fatigue, an occasional lapse of memory – gradually or maybe not so gradually raising the stakes until there we are, face to face with what youth can afford to (perhaps can’t afford not to) forget, namely: death and – worse, maybe – dying, with its vast potential for pain, debility and anguish, in the throes of which the question “What’s it all for?” inevitably arises, overwhelming any conceivable answer.
At one level, writes Kobayashi, life is mere chemistry. Chemical changes translate into an infinite number of states, two of which the human intellect terms “animate” and “inanimate.” To the nonhuman brain, that’s meaningless. “An animal sees a rock and thinks, ‘I can’t eat this.’ It sees a hare: ‘I can eat this.’” Animate? Inanimate? Alive? Dead? The animal shrugs. A thing is either food or it’s not. Other questions are superfluous. Only humans, with their intelligence so far beyond their survival needs, can beguile and torment themselves with abstract thought. Only humans can contemplate and anticipate death – a mixed blessing if ever there was one.
All life is mortal – or maybe not. Unicellular organisms don’t die, they divide. Maybe in a sense we’re immortal too, Kobayashi suggests. Our genes live on in our descendants. Our remains fertilize the earth. Not good enough? Is our appetite for life insatiable? How much of it do we know what to do with, how much can we cope with? Japan in 100 years has doubled the life span and is stretching it still – to the mid-80s now, past 100 soon, ultimately to 200? 300? Will that be enough? Biological immortality hovers within reach. Kobayashi injects a cautionary note: chimpanzees live 40 to 50 years on average. Their genome and ours are 99 percent identical. Moreover, he adds, if humans are nature’s most creative species they are also it’s most destructive. We shrink the world’s life span even as we expand our own.
If longevity meant happiness Japan would be the world’s happiest country, for it is the longest-living. Clearly there is no such equation. The U.N.’s 2024 World Happiness Report ranks Japan 51st among 143 countries. Psychiatrist Yasufumi Nakoshi mentions three seeds of unhappiness: stress, a feeling of “constriction” and a feeling of “powerlessness.”
All three seem encapsulated in one instance he cites: internet addiction. This astonishing triumph of the human mind – the “net,” the “web” – holds us in its grip. We turned it on and can’t turn it off. Historians of the future, with the gift of hindsight and scholarly detachment, will weigh its stimulating substance against its mind-numbing trivia, its truth against its “post-truth,” its genuine content against fake. With their insights we’ll know ourselves better, if we and the world are still around then.
Japan’s happiest people are the elderly, according to a 2023 Nomura Research report President cites. It rates as happy 49 percent of those in their 70s, and 34.9 percent of those in their 60s, versus 22.7 percent, 21 percent and 27 percent in their 20s, 30s and 40s respectively.
Is this surprising? Who is freer than the healthy and financially secure elderly? They’ve fulfilled their responsibilities, can live as they please, and are less prone, presumably, to the dark thoughts haunting many young people of society’s and the planet’s uncertain future.
But how many elderly are healthy and financially secure? However the terms are defined and however they’re quantified, health and financial security are precarious assets at best, increasingly so as we age. Here today, they may be gone tomorrow. For all too many, old age is lonely, poor and infirm. One measure is sufficiently indicative: 80 percent of people aged 95 and up are affected by dementia, writes gerontologist Haruyasu Yamaguchi.
But is dementia necessarily the horror we make of it? By no means, he argues in his contribution to President’s feature.
A fervent believer in the power of positive thinking, he prescribes it as preventive and retarding. In fact, he goes so far as to say, worrying about dementia can bring it on. “In Japan,” he writes, “negative thinking predominates” – cause and/ or effect, perhaps, of its unhappiness as a country.
What positive thoughts can one muster about dementia? Deep in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest lives a tribe known to outsiders as Piraha. They number some 800. They are hunter-gatherers. They have no word for time, no concept of number, no sense of a fixed personal identity or of a past beyond memory, no government, no social order, no agriculture, few needs, no wants beyond them, and in short, says Yamaguchi, live in a mental world not dissimilar from that of many of his patients.
And they are happy. At least they seem so. Might humanity’s salvation lie in this direction?
Part 2 will appear in this space on Aug 19.
Michael Hoffman is the author of “Arimasen.”
© Japan Today
24 Comments
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dagon
I am wary of anecdotes like this . It could be a case of a double lost in translation.
Echoes also of the Julian Jaynes bicameral mind theory.
The article also doesn't deal with the suggestions of experts we could be reaching life extension escape velocity.
TaiwanIsNotChina
I like to get the morning news!!!
Strangerland
As my kids get older and more independent, and may go back to Japan for university in a few years, I consider that my role as a father will be mostly over, and I often wonder what my purpose in life will be. I love running my businesses, but they are a means to an end, rather than the purpose.
Anyone else here gone through empty nesting? Have you found new purpose, and if so, what?
GBR48
Searching for a 'purpose' when you are old is like saying you are 'bored' when you are young. Life is too short to worry about all that. Just get on with living it.
wallace
Why eat when we will only get hungry again?
My children are middle-aged. The role of the father is never over until it is.
ShibuyaJay2
@Strangerland:
I totally understand and empathize with your predicament. My wife is Japanese and we have raised our children in the USA (I lived and worked in Japan for 10 years prior to moving back to the USA in 2005). We have two beautiful children, a son aged 21, and a daughter, aged 18. My son is a senior at the US Coast Guard Academy. So, he’s been away for 3 years. 6 weeks ago our daughter inducted into the US Naval Academy. In fact, we’re in Annapolis for Parents Weekend right now and just said goodbye, again, a few hours ago to our daughter prior to heading home tomorrow. So, the timing of me reading your post above is frighteningly appropriate. Intellectually, I (and you also, I’m sure) understand that our kids leaving the nest, growing into adulthood, and making their marks in society is “the natural order of things.” But, that doesn’t preclude us parents from questioning, “What’s my/our purpose from here on out?” I assume your kids are high performers, which 99% of the time, means that the parents were actively involved in their children’s lives and development (i.e. sacrificing their own pleasures and pursuits to invest that time into their children’s futures. Also, see “Helicopter Parent” definition LOL.) Finding a hobby, charity work, spending more time together with your spouse pursuing leisure activities, etc. to fill the gap has not been as satisfactory as I’d have liked (at least not in my case, yet). But, the Mrs. and I will endure to find something fulfilling. One hope is that your kids marry and produce grandchildren for you to love and dote upon. I apologize that I’m unable to provide any concrete definitive remedies to your/our dilemmas. But, don’t give up. You’ll/we’ll figure something out!
falseflagsteve
Life is precious to me from conception until death. Always try to keep that childhood feeling of wonder about things. New places, new experiences, making an interesting new chum or having a meal you’ve never tried that blows your mind.
'
GuruMick
Secrets of happy life ?
Someone to love
Someone/something to care for
Something to do
Something to look forward to.
Some sense of being part of the universe {a small part }
and a retirement free of a Mother in Law.
Anonymous
True.
餓死鬼
In my case, there's, at the very least, curiosity. Like watching a bad movie, even when life is at its least fun, I would like to see what happens next. It's the journey, not the destination, and if the journey ever becomes hopeless and excruciating, then maybe I will ask, "Why live?"
robert maes
I tried to give and share in my life. Not forgetting my wife, cocker spaniels, my wife to live comfortably.
but with every passing year i feel that the will for people to be part of something bigger or build something bigger gets smaller and personal greed bigger.
there was a time politicians really wanted to serve, now, all of them only want to grab.
that is the same for every country. Nowhere more than in Belgium. My own country.
i lived and enjoyed and owned all things at the right ages for them. Now at 65 i have close to nothing.
Ferraris and all other supercars, villa’s, luxury goods, best hotels and food, business class flts only… i regret nothing. There is no point.
what i have left to give is a great life exlerience and world expertise in sports marketing. I look back with satisfaction on my career. I have been cheated and cheated.
The importance remains the same. My beautiful wife, my current ( 5th) cocker spaniel of 1 year and to see them smile. A cocker can do that.
in my pocket is always a 100 USD note. That serves for the last snack for my cocker, flowers for my wife and a cigar and an average bottle of champagne. Then we go in style. Not the dog. He stays.
he has 14 gears to go and be happy
1glenn
"....why live?"
Ah, the wonders of sophistry.
If one truly wishes to engage in such a conversation, then by all means do so. Seems like a waste of my time. Life is beautiful, and very fragile. It can end at any moment. I choose to enjoy it until the end. I have wonderful memories of growing up with the kids, but they are adults and living their own lives now. We availed ourselves of the opportunity to travel, while we were healthy enough to do so. This world is an amazing place.
As for ending one's life, I can see how one might choose to do so. Not out of boredom, but because of terrible pain. When my grandmother was near the end with stomach cancer, they let her have all the morphine that she wanted. Seems like a reasonable and compassionate thing to do. Still, those of us who knew her miss her, and we're glad she lived her life.
piskian
@ robert maes
I think,as a European ,we think differently to the New World folks.
I tend to become more like Patrick Lefevre,the legendary cycling manager,every day
Honest to the point of offensiveness.
windspiel
Living independently also means being able to die independently, anything else would be tyranny.
What others think about it doesn't matter, you can only find meaning in your life for yourself, if at all.
Gene Hennigh
The desire to stay alive is a good thing: but not for me. My father died at 35 (I was six weeks old) and all my cousins on his side of the family were dead before I was 50. So I figured I'd die young, too.
Now I'm old and being old is getting pretty old for me. I live alone (have friends okay) but washing my face and combing my hair in the morning, as well as shaving makes me have to look at this old, ugly face in the mirror far, far too many times. I shoulda died young. Now, I'm ready to go any ole time.
Olive
Strangerland, as my children have become adults, I’ve started working with homeless people and refugees. To continue to be of service to others has helped me find a renewed purpose
timeon
Gene, it is never too late to pick up a hobby, and use that to meet people, find new purpose, and enjoy life. My tennis club has a few 80 year olds, and they play every week, including tournaments. My wife's parents are into golf, their friends regularly go hiking, etc.
Roger Gusain
As a Christian, I believe that death is not the end. NDEs provide some evidence of a life beyond this mortal coil. Surgeon Mary Neal's story is worth googling.
Tim Sullivan
As a Christian, I believe that death is not the end
After 80 or so years, most people have had enough of life and have done everything they wanted to do. The thought of eternity scares the crap out of me. If you are right and we never die, I would spend the first couple of million years studying Japanese.
Sven Asai
I would disagree, because for example my happiness mainly stems from pessimism and negative thinking. I am therefore almost always right and the results exactly meet the expectations in most cases. And if something should turn out more positive than I am even happier. That's probably not the case with permanently optimistic people or their positive thinking. They are mostly wrong or in most cases disappointed about the results or outcomes of what they had expected to be positive, which maybe decreases happiness or leads to depression.
Moonraker
But they are consumed by other organism and are killed by pollutants in their environments so they are not really immortal.
Nifty
You'll die in any case, so why NOT live?
Masahiro Sato
I live for rock and roll!
The heart of rock and roll is still beating.
It is 80's pop rocker Huey Lewis & The News.
smithinjapan
"Japan’s happiest people are the elderly"
Not for much longer. The current crop of people in their 80's and 90's are those that only pay 10% of health care costs and have all the savings. Even those in their 70's that managed to retire are not that badly off. But the people now in their 40s and 50s, and of course those younger, will never be able to retire, or at least not until 75, if they live that long. There's no growing workforce, no money, and Japan is mired in debt to the point where any baby born here is born into... what is it now... at least 10 million debt? The old guys I see holding batons and being shouted at for blocking people from exiting a parking lot, and all while in 40°C heat and full uniform, don't seem to be enjoying things so much.