When we think of the development of language, emotion is worth being paid attention to. The relationship between the history of language and emotion has been one of the topics we should take into consideration. After language has been developed by humans who uses it for a long period of time, its forms such as grammar have been focused more in the later societies which was developed to convey difficult meanings in elaborated way.

In communities at the beginning of 21st century, political correctness is the main policy people share as a rule to use language for formal and respected way. This tendency emphasizes the current language that more focuses on its forms, what should be noted here is that people came to feel less important what’s behind the words.

As people are aware consciously or unconsciously, even if people use the same phrase, the phrase could be perceived in different sense depending on the situations that it was uttered. The appearance of language is the same, but the meaning is variably recognized. This explains that what matters is what’s behind the forms of language, and as time passes people put their importance in forms such as grammars.

Originally, language was more abundant in abstractness. The abstractness has to do with the relationship between language and singing. The singing is a topic which we should care about when diving deeper into the study of language. The early phase of language is, presumably, closer to singing. Over time, it transitioned to the later form of language which has established rules shared within people, that is grammar, in order to convey more complex meanings in sophistication. Development of language can be seen in its elaboration of appearance. In terms of incorporating complex meanings into a sentence or passage, grammar was a key aspect to evolve language. As its history advances, it came to have the beauty in its forms too. The beauty of elaboration in language became an art.

As described that what’s behind the forms of words is important, one need to think what is behind it. To respond to this matter, emotion is the one people puts in utterance. Music is an example that emotion is transmitted from one person to another.

Take a look at music and emotion, street piano demonstrates the relationship. It is put in corner of cities and towns such as station, airport, shopping mall where people gather. When someone, particularly experienced one, plays it, the melody attracts people wandering the streets and have them stopped by. Music fascinates people by stimulating their emotions. Especially classics such as Chopin, Beethoven, Liszt, Rafmaninov, Vitali, and Vivaldi, continuously are as vibrant over the past centuries. That is why they are continuously played and listened among people of different centuries. In the performance of pianists or violists, people are fascinated by it and they attract people’s attention. Stimulating audience’s emotion means that It resonates in people’s mind. Music has the characteristic of abstractness embracing emotions.

The abstractness of classic music and its abundance in expression is different from verbal language. Distinction between language and music is quite ambiguous. It isn’t what we can make a line inbetween clearly. Presuming that language was closer to music in its classical style, emotions were put in the form of language closer to music, while accentuating some parts in utterance. The words have the characteristics of excluding and specification. Picture, movie, dream, music without lyrics, art on the one hand of abstractness, and music with lyrics, literature, word on the other hand of specification.

Comparing music with grammatical language, people somewhat got not accustomed to its abstractness their forebears had. It is the effect of its surroundings different from previous ages, rather than degeneration of human species. People puts their importance in specifying in their communication. However, it is the tendency that people came to be careful of details, which led them to be not good at their imagination.

Emotion and language are slightly similar to the relationship between unconsciousness and consciousness. People tend to look at things more closely in minor details recently, but in the same time, they tend more not to be good at thinking more broader view. The latter capability means that even if they don’t look at the minor details, it can be basically supplemented by their capacity in abstraction.

Work is a type of activity that can represent wider meaning. Through work, for example music, one would be able to think over what kind of history it has. People would not get the clear picture of it, but even in abstract sense, one can get the sense of histories including the composer’s personality, its thoughts, contexts, and passions incorporated in it. Those abstract notions are integrated in works. In other words, chaos is skillfully filled in it and one can pull it out of it depending on their intelligence. How we keep chaos in society is represented in this type of activity.

Emotions was the shared commons which has to be developed to some degrees at least enough to communicate in language. What has been happening is that since people’s emotion is underdeveloped, people interpret the meanings by its appearance, not looking through via the genuine lenses. The genuine lenses are only shared with the people whose emotions are truly developed. If not, they are not able to reach out to the core of its words. This was a consensus in society that is based on their inner feelings grown over their life.

To get the developed emotions is related to the activities people experienced. The Internet-oriented society, some activities are decreased due to technological advancement, including opportunities to talk with people in person. However, this emotion referred to is something a little bit different from sociability. In a sense, being social in relationship with others doesn’t necessarily determine whether the person has its emotion developed or not. Activities vary from the Before-the-Internet era, in After-the-Internet even though the Internet intensified convenience, needless to say, the real face-to-face activities are at least somewhat replaced by the online. The Internet decreased opportunity to grow the aspect of emotion in people, instead of convenience. For instance, watching film by using online platforms, people easily stops and restarts at any point of it. It can be watched almost anywhere — barriers are removed, but keeping passion on it became more difficult. It is surroundings that people can develop their emotion.

To explain the importance of the core of language, the following case which language learners may have experienced is worth looking at. A user heard a word which is not familiar with from another. Since the user doesn’t know its meaning, the person come to proceed the conversation without understanding its meaning precisely. However, as he knows the context, with conversation went further, he managed to learn the meaning at the end. Among these two persons, the meaning or I would say the rule of its word is transferred from one to another and it has been established. This is a case that through dialogue people learn and establish the rule of language and come to understand it. Via communication between them, they ends up with sharing the usage and what kind of rule it will be between them. Moreover, even if we have the same form of a word, its meaning could differ as time passes by the rule changes.

By saying the importance of meaning behind its forms, the essential role of language is not to enable the users to remember the words, but to think over what’s behind them. Political correctness is what arose from the emphasis on form. So called deterioration of emotions in humans of 21st century cannot keep society having enough practicality of political correctness. Even if we try to be formal, without having enough capacity of emotion among the public, it is not possible to share the rule of political correctness. It is not a factor develops emotion, on the contrary, it backlashes from inner feelings.

Published 14 October 2021, Last updated 15 October 2021

As the liberal democracy proliferates, the rights which people have are claimed in a lot of situations. The rights have a variety of kinds. Fundamentally a person has the nature of self-preservation. It could be thought as a right and assumed that all other rights stem from it[1]. Thinking of whether it is a right or not, the conscription is a difficult issue to be determined. In a sense that people are willing to risk their life for the nation, they have their will over the nature of self-preservation, but if their will is weaker and just obeying their institution, whether their right is protected or not is subject to discussion. However, one could suppose that they could grow their pride over the years.

If we expand a little bit the topic of self-preservation based on the nature of creatures, the battle risking their life for pure prestige is the primitive point where freeing oneself from nature comes out[2]. That means that being free is not restricted by nature.

Talking about the human rights has to do with the history of liberal democracy, and idelogies.

Think of liberaism and socialism (or communism), socialism came after liberalism aiming at the inequalities that capitalism is likely to cause. If liberal democracy started in the idea that meets the aim of respecting equally masters and slaves, it has the awareness of having the political equality (or égalité) as one of the founding principles[3]. The motto in France has it as one of the principles — liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Particularly in American sense, the role of government is to protect the rights of citizens[4]. The number of rights one has been claiming over the history seems increasing. It has the influence of the American founding fathers who were having the conviction that not only the one’s right to “life” but also the rights to “liberty”, and “happiness” should be protected — with regard to this point we can date back, further, to John Locke who supposed the rights to life and property[5]. It went further by the later generation that the right to “privacy” was listed among them, to give a further example[6].

The rights people are supposed to have is widened over the centuries. After coming to 21st century, people tend to use more the word “human rights”. It is a counterargument which people use against offense regarding oneself. If we assume two types of human rights’ categories that one is essential and the other is extended, regardless of whether the essential human rights or the extended, their deeper understanding enables human beings to appreciate themselves.

In the beginning of 21st century, people came to care about the vulnerable in every bit of details. That is a great step and a progress but the way it cares has the room for improvement.

Before going into deeper, I need to say that the violation of human rights has many cases of serious issues that one cannot forgive, that is totally understandable, and what I focus on, here, is only the expanded usage of “human rights” which is located in the periphery of the word.

When finding someone who uttered the non-political-correct remarks over some people, for example, the society at once condemns and refuse the person. Every case is different, and it is not easy to distinguish which case is related to the fundamental human rights or not. However, cancel culture which caused by the intensity of calling for human rights doesn’t seem working better for society in fundamental level. What matters is that the refusal of cancel culture in society is not a framework for the fundamental progress though it is a sign of rising awareness provided the history of human beings. Because refusing the opinions or actions of others is not a solution but It is closer to oppression. In that case, the condemned idea goes into the underground and that would crawl until it would come up to the surface again.

When using the word “human rights”, it feels like the issues they refer to are fundamentally involved in human rights. However, it in the 2010s, it is used frequently, being connected to human rights as if those issues should be solved in the aspects of human rights while the concept has been expandedly. Because we are human beings, problems arise in our life can be connected to them. Expanded usage of the word lost its meaning and sphere over time and that is what’s been happening. Without taking a look at the root cause of problem, people tend to use the convenient word. This simplified situation leads to simply perceivable confrontation between one and another.

As an option to cope with this problem, not a person who may cause populism, but transcendence such as rules or principles could better work for avoiding it. Not fluctuating objects which can flexibly adapt to the environment and the era it goes through, it would be, rather I would say more stable, general concepts that are helpful to convey the wisdom of the former to the present. Transcendental concepts enable people to think over its deeper cause. Having such concepts differs from directly looking at those in power, or looking at the people on the Internet, in the perspective that looking at people often lead the society to the negative end as the social media demonstrated.

Place the concept of human rights at the surface layer or more fundamental layer, the former is, due to the simplicity and structure of just a counterargument for a violation in the same layer with the violator, not going to solve the problem fundamentally but is going to oppress it by the vast number of people in support. The latter needs the redefinition of human rights required because of the extended usage of rights.

Fundamentally thinking what human rights are. Intensively claiming one’s rights doesn’t necessarily lead to the better. It may be needed in case of urgency, but in the long run it ought to have the robustness and lastness in its idea. It should focus on the way people think, not insisting that their thought is the justice. Naming almost every aspect of possible action by human as a right respectively would lead to what kind of world it would be.

The cancel culture frequently seen on the Internet, particularly on social media, tries to delete the culture or the history of human beings. It is to delete the person who violated or the remarks or the things. People tend to criticize the others by finding the past remarks or deeds. It is often understandable that those condemned acts are the ones people cannot forgive.

However, excessively trying to find the past wrong doings of people who comes to the front and pushing them to the backward doesn’t seem working better for our civilization. This mechanism doesn’t bring the good to society in the long run. What should be noted here is that deletion caused by cancel culture is different from what humans reflect the past doings and progress themselves better.

[1] The end of history and the last man. Francis Fukuyama. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4. p.158.

[2] The end of history and the last man. Francis Fukuyama. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4. p.152.

[3] The idea comes from or influenced by p.152 of The end of history and the last man. Francis Fukuyama. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4.

[4] The end of history and the last man. Francis Fukuyama. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4. p.159.

[5] The end of history and the last man. Francis Fukuyama. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4. p.159.

[6] The end of history and the last man. Francis Fukuyama. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4. p.159.

The attitude of people towards nature is different in the occident and the orient. Particularly oriental thought could propose the idea of coexistence with nature. Human beings rules the nature, especially European countries pioneerly developed their civilizations progressing together with natural science[1]. Following the similar paths, oriental countries developed themselves.

Prior to diving into the deeper parts, we need to think about what the nature is. It could be the whole system of the earth (or could be extended to outer space) in which human beings is included. The nature cannot be controlled, even it could be thought that human beings is part of nature as well as virus is. The nature signifies the system in which everything is connected and self-adapts.

Regarding pandemic and the confusion caused by it, virus is not what we can eliminate from our society even after the vaccine is invented. Vaccine isn’t a perfect product to fight against virus, just because we took vaccines doesn’t mean that we will not be infected 100%, and the virus mutates as well. Though, I admit, it has the benefit of having people less harmed. Eventually herd immunity would be necesarry to go through pandemic, helped by the product called as vaccine.

Coexistence with virus is the essential way of life in original state, not to mention. It is uncontrable, not contrable, regarding pandemic in the first place. If human beings controls the pandemic, the thought and the realization of ruling the nature is more embodied. Since Decartes, the of human-central ideology have been influencing the world immensely[2].

Before Plate and Socrates, Ionian philosophy was focusing on nature[3]. For example, forest had been in the state of being natural before Socrates and Plate, but then it was deforested once which was one of the reasons that Greek civilization collapsed, it was recreated artificially later by human hands[4]. Especially, Decartes, Bacon, and Spinoza are those who strengthened the notion of controlling nature[5]. Contrarily, human’s rule on nature has been criticized since 18th century that involves, to some extent, the current environmentalism[6].

In terms of dominance over nature, nuclear issues including nuclear power plant fall into this topic. For instance, nuclear power plant has a thought of controlling nature and the realization of the thought should be in dispute whether we should move in that direction or not. There would be an opinion that human-central ideology is arrogant given the wide range of creatures living on the earth.

Take a look at the actual incidents happened, nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima need enormous time to be recovered. Often said that the half-life of plutonium 239 which is more than 20,000 years[7], it is difficult for human race to recover the environment affected by nuclear disaster. Implementing nuclear power plant for generation of electricity in policy of a country has the thought of governing the nature since they need to consider the case of dealing with the catastrophy. Its nuclear powering model looks controlling the nature. In the perspective of avoiding any accident, the system has to be controllable by human beings, in nuclear power generation human beings is required to comprehend how things work that is to say, trying to have the structure of nature in our hands. The ideology of ruling the nature is human’s trying to getting the perspective outside the whole and grasping the mechanism.

Science is based on human’s arbitrariness in a sense that human beings has been building our world on what we can see. Even we say the word scientific, it doesn’t connotate the complete ojbectiveness and should be taken into account that it has human bias and thought. Science is founded on top of them.

People cannot live in the world only based on scientific reasonableness. Scientifically or medically it would be correct to minimize the meetings of people in pandemic so as not to spread the virus, but even if it is correct, such scientific correctness cannot be implemented in society in a complete sense. Such discipline should not eliminate all other social values but persist in the preventing since we cannot live only based on scientific reasonability. The lifestyle of each person living in a nation is too different to put them into certain categories.

We cannot always prioritize the preventiveness of spreading disease in every dimension of our life. Even this pandemic isn’t the worst case in history. Every time when pandemic happens we cannot put our societies in hold which tricle down the downsides of lockdown. What we should do is to lessen the social negatives as much as possible caring the high risk people.

Putting lockdown or state of emergeny in place when the number of infecton surges, and when getting calmed lifting it up take place. Restrictions are in place depending on the statistics of each moment. Coexistence with nature isn’t to put distinction between nature and human beings. It is adjusting the balance between them considering the capacity of a society.

Social distance would be slightly integrated into our society as custom. Tiredness of staying at home in private and business life led to the situation that people gradually started to go out. Citizen’s reaction toward the number of people contract COVID-19 on weekly or monthly basis is different from the beginning of pandemic. They are more accustomed to the numbers which surprised them at first. Think of the beginning of this pandemic when coronavirus hit over not just Asia but a while later western countries, people were getting tense to stay home, take social distancing, to be in lockdown. But now, people’s attitude to the virus seems loosened. It is partly because we cannot constantly put lockdown in place to minimize the number of the infected. Drastic change on lifestyle of people impacts on businesses, especially not being adaptable to working at home. It puts people’s life at risk. Even if it is correct for infectious disease, it doen’t necessarily mean that it is correct for society, let alone in the perspective of social justice.

Of at maximum we should take preventive measures like wearing mask or care those who are vulnerable to this virus. However we cannot prioritize always preventing the spread of this virus by constantly locking down with strictest condtions. Even temporary lockdown we put, burdens are accumulated to society, or certain vulnerable group of people. People of color tends to be front-line workers[8]. The infection rate has to do with the life conditions of community. It turned out that workers packed in insuffient-hygiene accommodations were vulnerable[9].

Something we can rely on may help. It could be sort of principles that people believe in, or I can say that it could be a wisdom that comes from our ancestors. In some cases, people might as well compromise in certain degrees.

[1] Influenced by Takeshi Umehara. For a philosophy of mankind. ISBN978-4-7571-4282-4. p.7.

[2] Influenced by Takeshi Umehara. For a philosophy of mankind. ISBN978-4-7571-4282-4. p.11-12.

[3] Takeshi Umehara. For a philosophy of mankind. ISBN978-4-7571-4282-4. p.18.

[4] Takeshi Umehara. For a philosophy of mankind. ISBN978-4-7571-4282-4. p.20.

[5] Francis Fukuyama. The end of history and the last man. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4. p.72.

[6] Francis Fukuyama. The end of history and the last man. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4. p.83-84.

[7] Hiroki Azuma. On the Foolishness of Evil, or the Problem of Nuclear Accident and its Mediopassive Memory. Genron 11. ISBN978-4-907188-38-2. p.19.

[8] BBC. Why did the first wave of COVID 19 disproportionately affect people of colour? – BBC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2iB6UXFDlk Accessed 29 April 2021.

[9] Maybe Racism Caused the Covid-19 Crisis. Cathy O’Neil. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ATFPV0aLyJM/catherine-h-oneil Accessed 1 May 2021.

The world seems haunted by the fear of coronavirus, weeping out all other values but preventing the spread of the virus. The severity of COVID-19 pandemic perceived among us doesn’t come only from that of the virus itself, but also from the fear intensified by citizens. It ended up imposing strict restrictions on our life as the dimension of preventing the virus has been top of the list and dominating our life. From the beginning of this pandemic people are scared of the virus, reports and posts from major media and on the Internet, particularly social media, came up every day. As for the mainstream media such as TV and newspapers, coronavirus cluster was frequently reported, because of it, people felt sensitive to the virus. People had to be imposed limitation on business activity worrying the risk of infection.

Due to the limitation on economic activity, people had to close business when the number of cases surged, and people were increasingly got unemployed. Even the labouring necessary to make ends meet had to be on hold which led to the situation that the unemployed people were put in more difficult situation. People had concern when they can reopen their businesses or anything that gather people which might cause cluster. Even in case they are in the state of emergency which is being requested to be closed — not mandatory —, it is difficult courageously to reopen because of the the pressure or possibility to cause cluster. We’ve often heard this sort of phrase “if not neccessary”, in order to minimize the spread of the virus, “not necessary” actions outside house were frequestly told to be refrained. There’s a case that during lockdown even people in a park in London were called on to be back home[1]. Also, in terms of necessary activity in our life, what about those who work in the cultural fields as their profession? The question rises whether the cultural activities are not necessary? Whether or not they get assistance from government to some extent, their activities are too restricted to maintain their life or to maintain our civilization itself.

Not just for labouring, other activities in our life were limited. Hospital visits were banned, which meant even family members couldn’t visit. In some places, virtual visits were adopted using the Internet. Because of visit banning, family members couldn’t be staying with their beloved ones in the hospitals and it is reported that without their family’s reaching to the place, patient passed away on a basis that we should minimize the risk of infecting the elderly as the virus has more severe harms to the elderly.

Society becomes confused in pandemic. For example, a letter threatening to burn a house was received in the situation that the owner of the house was holding a religious gathering and the grandmother of a writer who often walks in front of the house was infected with coronavirus in which a causality is not clear[2]. In facility where the elderly live in, worker feels powerlessness, when the elderly meet their visitors, it has to be a meeting through plastic wall[3]. In such situation of this pandemic, an elderly woman said that “It wasn’t a life”[4].

Government officials as well as its citizens had the perception of fear as they put down strict measures to societies. Mortality rate is different in country. In cities which have heavy traffic, government may have had to impose lockdown and it worked to decrease the potential number of people infected. In such occasions, it cannot be denied to place lockdown as a temporary option to minimize the infected. Of course in this worldwide pandemic people should take preventive care themselves. And people should refrain from going out if it is not necessary. Bun in the mean time we should not weep out all values that our society has but preventing the pandemic. Even this coronavirus has been told that the mortality isn’t so much higher compared with the historically catastrophic infectious diseases.

As a factor that multiplied the fear among citizens, we should note the loss of the public sphere. Public space should be maintained or ameriorated so that our civilization or human beings can advance our history as the new ones are born to the world, not to repeat the same mistakes without learning history. Public space is the sphere that individuals whose life is limited can leave history for the future generations. Without having such sphere, people would spend time wastefully, and the wrong doings similar or identical to the past would be more likely to occur. Also, in the sphere, “rank”, “prestige”, “power”, “economic dependencies”, “Laws of the market”, and “laws of the state” didn’t have influence[5]. The existence of the sphere has to do with a question that whether history is directional, or cyclical or random[6]. In a sense that our civilization progresses, it would be more working if it is directional. However, not always our world can avoid delay as the limitation of our each life, for example, involves.

An example of representing the loss of the public sphere is that the 45th President of the United States made an decision to leave the Paris agreement, several years later 46th President decided to join again, this is sort of delaying international cooperation . In that sense, the election in which the former was elected needs a careful reconsideration on our history and its advancement. He used social media and got his influence around the world, not just himself but it echoed worldwide. The expectations one had in the earlier period when the Internet emerged ended up quite opposite as it shows the negative outcome. A question is whether the Internet could be a public space. This has to do with infodemic which led the world to be more chaotic, and people being feared by the virus. Infodemic is harmful to society in which people consumes huge amount of information everyday. It feels like the safetyness coming from vaccine that would lessen the tension in community and fear. If people behave like in this pandemic it would collapse society every time contagious virus appears.

[1] Guardian News. ‘It’s not a holiday’: police disperse sunbathers in London during coronavirus lockdown. Description section of the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9aCKX6awHg. Accessed 21 March 2021.

[2] Le 5 sur 5 ! – C à Vous – 14/05/2020. C à vous. Starts at 6:48 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6VWR6uKcnI. Accessed 11 February 2021.

[3] Le 5 sur 5 ! – C à Vous – 20/05/2020/. C à vous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHEN3t4pKG8. Accessed 11 February 2021.

[4] Le 5 sur 5 ! – C à Vous – 20/05/2020/. C à vous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHEN3t4pKG8. 4:20-. Accessed 11 February 2021.

[5] Jürgen Habermas. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. p.36. ISBN 978-0-7456-1077-1.

[6] Francis Fukuyama. The end of history and the last man. p.71. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4.

Posted on 28 February 2021, Updated on 3 January 2022

Enthusiasm doesn’t come if they obey rules. It is based on people’s autonomy. In their mind, something passionate arise and it motivates people. Occasionally, it leads people to their actions.

It isn’t obeying society’s rules but it is closer to citizens’ spontaneous motivation. To explain it in terms of rule, in an event which gathers people, for example, if one leaves the place because of train schedule or other reasons, it doesn’t have the enthusiasm. If having it, it has sort of power that can push back obstacles which hinders the vector.

Potentially it may be related to thymos in a sense that exists in people’s deeper part.