How Do You Live?

by Genzaburo Yoshino

In the world at large, people who are able to free themselves from this self-centered way of thinking are truly uncommon. Above all, when one stands to gain or lose, it is exceptionally difficult to step outside of oneself and make correct judgments, and thus one could say that people who are able to think Copernicus-style even about these things are exceptionally great people. Most people slip into a self-interested way of thinking, become unable to understand the facts of the matter, and end up seeing only that which betters their own circumstances.

So when I see that you hate that which is low minded, crude, and prejudiced, and that you show respect for an honest, brave spirit—how shall I put it? That comes as a tremendous relief.

For example, a person discovers the pleasures of painting, sculpture, and music only by experiencing them. You will never be able to make someone understand this if they have not encountered great art. And for this subject in particular, we need more than our ordinary eyes and ears. To appreciate art, you must use your inner eyes and ears. You must open your heart. And your heart, well, it opens only when you actually encounter a great work of art in person and it makes a deep impression on you. If it means anything at all to live in this world, it’s that you must live your life like a true human being and feel just what you feel. This is not something that anyone can teach from the sidelines, no matter how great a person they may be.

That is why I think the first, most basic step in these matters is to start with the moments of real feeling in your life, when your heart is truly moved, and to think about the meaning of those. The things that you feel most deeply, from the very bottom of your heart, will never deceive you in the slightest.

Like your father, your mother and I also want you to become a great person. We hope more than anything that you will think great thoughts about the world and what it means to be human, and also that you will actually lead a great life in accordance with those thoughts.

Although your mother and I do want you to become great with all our hearts, that doesn’t mean we only want you to study, behave yourself, and be a perfect student, faultless in the eyes of your teachers and friends. Nor am I saying that in the future you should become a perfect adult, a person free of all criticism or blame. That is to say, of course good grades are good, and bad behavior will cause you trouble, and once you’re out in the world, I want you to lead an unimpeachable life, but still, those alone are not the fundamental things.

When it comes to what people must do in their lives, you know there are things that must not be neglected. For instance, a person must be honest, diligent, self-sacrificing, dutiful, civic minded, kind, economical, and so on.

The most important thing—more than what other people think, more than anything—is that you should first know for yourself, truly and deeply, where human greatness lies. Then you may feel with all your heart that you wish to become a great man. As you judge good for good, and bad for bad, case by case—and also as you actually do the things you have judged to be good—at all times, let this feeling flow through you. Think of your friend Kitami’s words: “No matter what anyone says . . . !” You must have that kind of willpower in your heart.

There are lots of people in the world who act just for appearance’s sake—in order to seem great in the eyes of others. That type of person worries first about how they are reflected in other people’s eyes, and they inadvertently end up neglecting their true selves, as they really are. I hope you don’t become that sort of person. And that is why you absolutely must attend to the things you feel in your own heart, the things that move you deeply. That is what is most important, now and always.

“And then he calculated the distance between the earth and moon, as well as the gravity working on the moon, and the earth’s force of gravitation, and so on, and after a long time and much hard work, eventually he was able to prove his idea. And as a result, using a single physical principle, he was able to explain very neatly both the motion linking the web of stars spinning round and round through the enormous universe and the motion of a single dewdrop falling from the grass. “In other words, you see, with a single law of physics, he was able to explain both the things of heaven and the things of earth. From the point of view of academic history, this was, of course, an exceptionally great undertaking . . .”

“So you see, Copper, the things that we call obvious are tricky. When you think about a thing as if it were self-evident and follow it wherever it may lead, soon enough you run into a thing that you can no longer call self- evident. This is not only true when it comes to the science of physics . . .”

I call the discovery the Net Rule of Human Particle Relations. At first I was thinking of calling it the Powdered-Milk Secret, but it sounded too much like a detective story in one of my magazines, so I gave that up. If you could think of a better name, I would like that.

One time she told me that when I was a baby, she didn’t have enough milk for me, so I grew up drinking Lactogen every day. She said that now the Lactogen cans remind her of those days. When I heard that, I said, well, then cows in Australia are also my mothers, aren’t they? Because Lactogen comes from Australia, and there’s even a map of Australia on the can. While I was lying in bed, I remembered that. Then I imagined lots of things about Australia. I thought of ranches and cows and Aboriginal peoples and powdered-milk factories and ports and steamships and more, one thing after another.

I realized that to get from Australia to me when I was a baby, the powdered milk had to run a very, very long relay race. And I thought that if you added in all the thousands or tens of thousands of people who built the factories and steam trains and steamships, then there were lots and lots of people who were all connected to me. But among all those people, the only one I really knew was the pharmacist near our old house, and other than him, I didn’t know any of them. And looking at it the other way around, I was sure none of them knew me. I thought that was really strange.

On the way to school, and even after I went to school, I tried to think about everything I saw, no matter how random, but no matter what it was, they were all the same. And I could tell that all those countless people weren’t just connected to me. In my classroom I thought carefully in detail about my teacher’s wool clothes and his shoes, and I discovered that they were definitely the same. My teacher’s clothes started with Australian sheep! That’s why, because of my idea, I feel that human particles are all connected like strings in a net, with countless other people that they haven’t met or even seen, and without even knowing it. That’s why I decided to call this the Net Rule of Human Particle Relations.

Actually, Copper, the “human particle relations” that you have discovered are a thing that scholars call the “relations of production.” There are many things that people need to live. To do so, they take various materials from the natural world and make what they need. Some things they can take from the world to wear or eat just as they are, but even so, people end up having to do all sorts of work, such as hunting, fishing, excavating mountains, and so on. From primitive times, people have always worked. Along the way, they learned how to cooperate and to divide the work between themselves into specialties, because they had no other choice. It is this kind of cooperation and division of work between people that scholars call “relations of production.”

At first, people lived in very small clusters, scattered here and there on the earth, so this kind of cooperation and division of labor was practiced only within narrow areas. At that time, people could see clearly whose hard work had supplied the things that they ate and wore. In all likelihood, everyone knew each other by sight, and the goods they produced were all very simple things, and no doubt people all worked together, at first, at hunting and fishing. So they probably knew without thinking whom to thank for the things they ate and wore. But meanwhile, those small groups of people started to trade with each other and form alliances, and gradually a communal way of living began to spread among people. The groups grew larger and eventually became what we now call countries. By this time, cooperation and specialization had already shifted to a broader scale, and relationships had become more complicated. When you looked at the things you ate or wore, there was no way to know who had worked to produce what. The makers, too, for their part, had no idea who was eating or wearing the things that they made. They simply worked to produce different things and in return were given things that they or their families needed, or else they were given money to buy those things. And since that was the only goal, the people who were eating or wearing the things they made were of no concern to them.

In this way many people cooperated, not only on the production of goods but also on their transportation. They found ways to divide the work, and the many places of the world were gradually tied together, so that now the whole wide world has at last been bound up into a single network.

Thus, people have been working all this time just to get what we need to live, and somewhere along the line we all became tied together as tightly as if we were segments of a great net. And just as you discovered, it’s come to the point where people who have never seen or met each other have become connected in unbreakable ways. Not a soul can escape these relationships.

People are each limited to what a single individual can experience on their own. But people have language. We can transmit our experience to others, and we can listen to the experience of others and share in that knowledge. On top of that, since we invented the alphabet, we can share our experiences with each other in writing. Because of that, we can compare the experiences of many people in different circumstances and bring them together from all over into one place. When we unite those different points of view into the broadest possible thing, without creating contradictions, we call that a field of study. Thus, the various fields of study may be considered to be bundles of the human experience up to now. Experiences are handed down to us from prior times, and we in turn pile our new experiences on top of these, and in this way the human race has been able to advance from a primitive state to our present state.

So we must pursue our studies as far as we are able and learn from the experiences of the people who came before us. Otherwise, all their labor will have been in vain. And since they worked so hard, it would be a mistake not to apply our efforts to problems that they didn’t manage to solve. It’s only through that work, which builds on all that came before, that a discovery can be considered to belong to the human race. And what’s more, it’s only those discoveries that we can call great. For this reason alone, I think you will understand the need to study without any preaching from me. If you want to make great discoveries, you must now study fiercely, first and foremost, and ascend to the summit of today’s scholarship. Then work from that pinnacle. But, Copper, remember this well. To work from up there—no, even to be able to make the climb—you must not lose the spirit that woke you in the middle of the night, to follow your own questions wherever they lead!

You can honestly say that people have created a net that completely encircles the world and all of humanity, but you can’t say that those connections have led to relationships that are very human at all. While the human race has progressed, conflict between human beings has continued.

Now, regarding relationships that are truly human: What kind of relationships are they? Your mother would do anything for you, without any desire for reward or compensation. To devote herself to you is, itself, her pride and joy. And as for you, isn’t just doing something nice for your close friends already enough to make you happy? There is nothing more beautiful than people nurturing goodwill toward their fellow beings. And those are the human relations that humans truly deserve.