Japanese and East Asian values as alternative world views with an orientation to plurality of meanings of life in the informatized era
Abstract
In spite of the general belief that the informatization of our world would make our life better and more meaningful than that of the industrialized society, it is clear that we are now facing serious problems. These are such as loss of face-to-face communication as a result of penetration of exclusive SNS communication format, abnormal concentration of capital in some high-tech companies due to the artificialization of the investment environment through the use of the Internet and artificial intelligence and so on. In the author’s view, this kind of crisis is reflecting the confusion of ‘Being itself’ and ‘beings’ as suggested by Rafael Capurro or the loss of plurality of meanings of life in the informatization era due to the so-called techno-determinism. In this paper, the author will try to search for alternative world views to overcome the loss of plurality of meanings by examining Japanese existential-ethical views reflecting their latent value-orientation to oneness of meanings suggested by Kitaro Nishida and others. It seems that Japan is an interesting country in the sense that it has been facing various serious problems in the informatized environments and at the same time it has a potential power to overcome this situation.
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