Another book, another review. I found this book when I went to one of the more famous modern bookstores in Tokyo I’d imagine, a place called 本屋 B&B in Shimokitazawa. They serve beer, which I’ll get next time around… although where do people drink that beer when they purchase it, because there’s really no space except maybe the small balcony outside… but anyways…
It’s a book called “新百姓宣言”, which I guess directly translates to something like “The New Farmer Manifesto”. It’s a Japanese book, and hence I originally intended on writing this review in Japanese, but the more time I took away from it, the more the ideas in my head solidified in English, and so I guess I’m comfortable enough to write it in English, is what I’m guessing happened.
It was also disappointing that the book isn’t on Goodreads. Isn’t that the whole point of reading, to put it on your Read shelf on Goodreads so that people who you think give a shit know that you’re well read? But hopefully writing a blog about it will be as good of an alternative in getting my message across.
As the translated title insinuates, the book is basically a manifesto; a fresh take on the next step after capitalism. The idea is that capitalism comes with a known set of problems: the gap between the richest and poorest of people are exaggerated the longer the system is in place, despite there being enough in the world for no one to have to starve or live in poverty. People live in fear of not having enough money, therefore focusing their efforts and attention on making enough, which makes them more and more dependent on the system of capitalism. People in the system treat others, as well as themselves, more and more as pure machines that are measured on their output and efficiency. And this system of pure input and output had been built based on a more “simple” idea of how the world works; a world of pure supply and demand, mostly of material things, that need to be mass-manufactured and sold to the masses.
With the world becoming a more “complex” one, with a more complex economy (the rise of IT, AI), as well as us getting to the point of operating at a mass surplus, being more than able to provide even for the needy, the author argues that capitalism has served its purpose during a time when a more simple approach to life and wealth creation was needed: it’s time for a new mindset and a new system.
(At least, that’s what I think he said. I found myself being very skeptical of this part of the book. Could everything be explained this easily? Time to read more about social systems. I’m coming for you Karl Marx…)
So after setting the scene for the problem at hand, he talks about the solution, which he calls “Creationism”. So, from Capitalism to Creationism. I think the big idea, to summarize, is the mindset shift from “I can’t live without money” to “I want to spend the rest of my life enjoying creating things”. From the fear of not having money, to the joy of being able to create.
So, what specifically would that look like in real life? To be honest, I don’t know. They go into detail about the change they want to see in the world (something akin to, a shift in awareness of the general public), and how they would go about creating that change (publishing a magazine that features stories that can inspire others to see the world as what it could be). So the content of what exactly they wanted to do, and how they envisioned the world to look like, was a bit vague, but their action plan on how they would go about building on these ideas, and ultimately trying to have other people buy into their philosophy, seemed actionable and convincing. I was definitely curious in buying one of their magazines (which is called “新百姓”. I believe it’s only sold online?).
But so that was my basic review of the book. In terms of thoughts, the first thing that comes to mind is how eye-opening it was for me to read about “how to escape capitalism”. For some reason I thought the goal was to be an entrepreneur, own your own business. But actually that doesn’t change anything, and if anything it might be worse, because you’re still dealing with money, and this time you’re fighting harder for it. Real “freedom” would be to lose reliance on money, whatsoever. Make your own drinking water by filtering your own rain, grow your own crops, stuff like that. For some reason it never occurred to me that that’s what would equate to “true freedom”.
And this aha moment made me more interested in the “Off the grid” movement, which led me to this YouTube channel called Raspberry Rock, which is about a guy who had been working for 20 years in IT, and now successfully lives from a self-built cabin in the open outdoors, where I know at least that he doesn’t rely on municipal infrastructure for water and electricity; that is, he solely relies on rain and solar panels. And he hunts his own food sometimes.
But while it’s beautiful to see just how freely he lives, it’s also that much more baffling to see him eat grocery store rotisserie chicken, waffles with whipped cream from a can, with standard silverware. Like, even a guy like that still relies on money. For better or for (much) worse, this is the system you’ve unconsciously based your life off of, never even thought of questioning it.
Another thought I had while I was reading this book was when they talked about basing your life, instead of on the “fear of not having enough money”, now on the “joy of creating”. People creating every day, coming together in communities to help one another, working from abundance and joy. Wouldn’t that be amazing? And one of the thoughts I had was, “what if I don’t want that?”
Like, what if I don’t want to create? Or work as a community towards something? I mean I think I do, but I could see a lot of people not wanting to, pretty easily.
And I thought that was maybe the weirdly nice thing about money, is that there’s no need to define a purpose for doing anything, other than the fact that you just need to work for money to survive. Tim Dillon I think said a very similar thing in his office rant. There’s something nice about being able to roll your eyes at people who care about anything. I know how to have fun, but I don’t have to share it with people. I’m only here, working, so that I can go home and do what I really want to do.
Even if it’s not the most, positive attitude, I think we can all agree that it’s the easiest to manage. It’s easier to give people their own pieces of freedom, and tell them they can create their own meanings and purposes for life, rather than to have to get people to buy into a collective purpose or philosophy. So to me, it makes sense why people like me would like capitalism and find it hard to replace; because it feels like you’re getting true freedom.
Anyways, I could probably go on a bit longer, but it’s getting late and I want to wrap this up… I mean, for what it’s worth this book has been very eye-opening. I am definitely more interested in learning about earlier theories on how capitalism most likely plays out, and it’s very much changed my ideas on what I believe “freedom” looks like for me. Also got great practice reading in Japanese, as I hadn’t done that in a while.