Escape from Serfdom

"Whenever I see my high school friends, we always reach a consensus that what our parents told us was right."

When I heard a close friend of mine, a Japanese man in his early 30s say this, I felt utterly appalled.

Their parents should be around 60 now. When they were in their 40s in the mid 1980s, Japan was at the peak of the post-war economic success. But its success had been built on corporate serfdom and young Japanese hated their likely future as corporate livestock (shachiku in Japanese) but they did virtually nothing to change their fate. It was a time of prosperity but that prosperity had been built on the escape from the self...

So my friend's words sounded just like his surrender to a state of learned helplessness. Maybe it would lighten the pain of struggle of finding his own Self but I feel it would leave a big hole in his soul. Because being a good serf requires him to dissociate himself from reality and himself.

That's what I have fought. That's why I left the country twice to find a place I can be myself. I love my parents but I cannot think they were right. I want to continue my search for what is right for us now and for our future generations. I may look foolish but I believe I can be more content when my body is cremated some decades later.