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| 2019/04/08 |
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Ⅸ Shinseikai is a Community that Puts Primary Emphasis on Man’s Happiness and Growth
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Life, Love, and Work: Three Sources of Creative Social Work --- This is the title of the book I published from Domes Publishing Company in 2010. I chose this title because I thought that, spiritually (internally) considered, our existence is best summed up by these three words. In other words, we cannot go on without considering how to live, how to care for others, and how to choose our jobs.
We have been living on the face of the earth as homo sapiens for five or six hundred million years, during which time we have always been developing our systems of production, till in the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in the last phase of capitalism, which we might call neo-liberalism. Now everything is evaluated by the monetary value it produces. Medical treatment, social care, and education should primarily be evaluated on the basis of their contribution to life, but even these are considered as business opportunities. Most people today, with the exception of a small minority, accept this as a matter of course, paying little attention to internal things such as “truth, goodness, and beauty”, or “knowledge, emotion, and will”. Our primary consideration in our choice of work is how much money we can make. In the choosing of our partner, we sometimes seem to think in a similar way.
As a result, we close our ears to the voices of our soul, putting money before everything else. We are now at the butt end of the age of Heisei, which has lasted for thirty years (begun in1989), during which time our Government has tried to strengthen neo-liberalism [in the name of Abenomics, sometimes called Ahonomics (fool’s economics) by those who oppose it]. The result of all this is the grievous impoverishment of our society. Crimes now seem to happen every day. People have forgotten to think seriously about “life, love, and work”. They have fallen into the pit of self-centered egoism, and stopped looking at the course of their life and work from the viewpoint of enriching other people’s lives and increasing their happiness.
Human souls have intrinsic powers to love and seek “truth, goodness, and beauty”. In my view, the highest expression of the human soul is art. Medical treatment, social welfare (nursing and mental care), and education follow in its wake. It has been my own personal challenge to uplift these works to the level of art. “Art into social welfare” has been my motto. Unfortunately, however, I feel the number of young people interested in this sort of work is diminishing. It is true that the decline of the birthrate may have something to do with this trend, but more important than that is the influence of monetarism that has been polluting people’s minds of people. Especially, young people seem to have little respect for such concepts as “man, mind, and life”.
Nevertheless, I believe that there are many people who think that “truth, goodness, and beauty” are eternally important. Shinseikai puts these values at the foundation of its activity as an institution. We have been working for “truth, goodness, and beauty”, and trying to increase “love, harmony, and hope”. Our experience of many years has made it possible for us to send out our messages to the rest of the word as an institution that first emphasis on individual happiness and growth.
I am waiting for noble–minded young people who will work with us in the fields of medical treatment, social welfare (nursing and mental care), cooking and dietetics to promote their own personal growth, and also to help create a society filled with love, peace, and hope. Young people with such an ambition are more than welcome to join Shinseikai.
April,2019
（Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa）
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