THEORY OF THE END - Introduction: Why I Wrote All of This Stuff

Finally, a proper introduction.

“The phenomenon called “I”

is a blue illumination

of the hypothesized, organic alternating current lamp

(a compound of all transparent ghosts)

a blue illumination

of the karmic alternating current lamp

which flickers busily, busily

with landscapes, with everyone

yet remains lit with such assuredness

(the light persists, the lamp lost)”

-Kenji Miyazawa, from “Spring & Asura”

[Note: I plan to include this introduction with the eventual physical edition of “THEORY OF THE END,” which is why it refers to the essay series as a “book.” I will also publish the second draft as “THEORY OF THE END V2” in three volumes here on Substack some time in the near future. Further announcements regarding the physical edition will be made via Substack notes and on X.]

Having finished the first draft of this work, and currently hard at work hammering out the second, it has occurred to me that I should finally attempt to put into words my motivation for writing these many, many pages. This is not always an easy task, as the ideas and mental connections which give rise to works like this do not feel the need to explain themselves once they show up unannounced, like a flash of lightning from a grey-blue sky, but molding them into a coherent shape often necessitates a modicum of justification.

After finishing my previous full-length work, a book entitled “Devadatta, who was a good friend…” I went through a period where I explored various Materialist critiques of modernity. The product of this endeavor was a novella-length philosophical treatise called “The Mad Laughing God,” which I have appended to the end of this book. This was followed by my republication of several public domain English-language texts from the Nichirenist thinker Kishio Satomi, whose work was overtly political as well as religious.

It was through all of the above that I came to the conclusion that religious people in the modern technological world, especially Buddhists like myself, need a comprehensive critique of modernity if they are to make any strides towards real lasting civilizational change. This is not as much of an issue for Leftist Materialists, as their general dissatisfaction with modernity is basically a foregone conclusion, and is so ubiquitous that it requires little in the way of elaboration or justification.

The irony of this is that their criticism has also become utterly ineffectual and prone to being co-opted by the same system they supposedly hold in contempt. It has gotten to the point where many adherents now engage in the conspicuous consumption that engulfs our age while simultaneously disavowing Consumerism and Capitalism as supreme evils, entirely unaffected by the cognitive dissonance that one would expect to arise from such circumstances.

Of course, it is not only the Materialists that fall victim to this. Religious thinkers do as well, but they may be in an even more dire situation, as they often cannot even find the will to argue outside of the technical frame of modernity. This is true for Christians, particularly that contingent in the West which sees the Liberal Democratic system of governance as something divinely inspired, but even more so for Buddhists, as the Buddhist faith instantly dissolves upon meeting the modern technical milieu and is constantly being reformed into a kind of marketable pseudo-psychological self-help framework.

But this makes sense when we consider that religious people have never known anything outside the state of affairs which compartmentalizes religion as a mere personal interest or form of mental rehabilitation; a fanciful way to stave off the onslaught of atheistic nihilism and the emotional turmoil that comes along with it. Consideration primarily of religion’s outward technical function is, after all, the logical outcome of our modern mindset, the causes of which will be discussed at length later in the pages of this work.

Moreover, technological advancement and concepts like “self discovery” and “individualism” are universally considered virtuous in and of themselves, to the point where even the suggestion that anything else could be prioritized by human civilization is inevitably met with bafflement and/or heavy reflexive resistance. Thus taking a position like the one I have adopted in this book opens one up to accusations around the countless “isms” and “phobias,” which seem to be the go-to thought-stoppers of modern discourse.

Religion has made a comfortable niche for itself in this paradigm, one crafted from the bargain bins at bookstores and old formalities emptied of their substance. It has, in other words, been given a sort of societal playpen wherein it has a certain amount of free reign, but it also restricted from intervening in any other fields. If it ever finds itself opposing the more technical aspects of post-industrial society, it must lose every time out of necessity. Despite having been the guiding light of humanity for countless ages, religion and spirituality cannot be allowed to topple the far more recently developed realms of psychology, sociology, statistics, economics, or any of the other materially focused fields of study, as such a disturbance would threaten the very foundations of modernity.

And so, for the average believer, there is no alternative purpose for religious faith outside of the development of the individual which, while certainly worthwhile to a limited extent, still feeds back into the devastating atomization of our age. It acts as a palliative against the derangement and dysfunction wrought by the godless technical zeitgeist while also, either consciously or unconsciously, adopting and even reinforcing its premises. Hence the castrated compartmentalized version of religion outlined earlier only strengthens what can be considered its primary nemesis, whether believers understand it to be such or not. Without properly confronting the status quo, religion will only remain shackled at the behest of the technical world.

What really struck me about Kishio Satomi’s work was his willingness to call this situation out for what it is, and his understanding, even back in the 1920s, that this subjugation of religion would lead to far-reaching undesirable consequences for humanity. This is what inspired me to put more effort towards criticizing modernity as it now stands, essentially updating and implementing the core ideas outlined by Satomi in his Nichirenist texts for the benefit of Buddhists living in our more heavily technicized modern environment.

To accomplish this, I decided to first read through Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book “The End of History and the Last Man” and position it as essentially the champion of the prevailing American political mindset. While the vast majority of the population has not read this book, the narrative around the “end of history” Fukuyama presents is a close relative of the “march of progress” myth that most Liberal-minded Americans seem to profess a belief in (e.g. “we are on the right side of history”). In short, this narrative places the American Liberal Democratic system as an end-state of human civilizational development, one which will supposedly end the practice of war and bring humanity to new levels of prosperity and satisfaction.

Immediately after finishing Fukuyama’s book, I got to work outlining the many post-publication developments which have eroded his central thesis, as I knew that first and foremost I would have to eliminate the dominance of the “end of history” narrative that still seems to have an iron grasp on the political consciousness of much of the general public (but certainly not all of the public, as we will explore in this work). Still, I knew that I would have to eventually tie all of this into Buddhism and the death of religion if I were to fully prove out my own thesis, and how exactly I was going to get there was still unclear to me.

Thankfully, around the time I was still formulating my critique of “The End of History,” an acquaintance of mine recommended the book “The Technological Society” by the French philosopher Jacques Ellul which, entirely by coincidence, seemed to thoroughly explain reality’s many divergences from Fukuyama’s narrative. Not only that, but it also occurred to me that much of what Ellul discusses overlaps with the concepts expounded in Rene Guenon’s “The Reign of Quantity and Signs of the Times,” another text I wanted to discuss. This meant that it acted as a very effective, although perhaps somewhat unorthodox, bridge between Fukuyama and Guenon.

These developments resulted in this work having three distinct sections, which I have deemed “volumes.” The first is entirely focused on refuting Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis, which meant that, much to my dismay, I had to reach into my memory banks and cover the events of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, something that I’m sure most readers are also hesitant to relitigate yet another time. However, I consider 2020 to be a major turning point in the death of American Liberal Democracy, so I had to dedicate at least one chapter to addressing it. The rest of this section simply lists and describes “problems” with the “end of history” narrative that are either already quite advanced or may balloon into more pressing issues in the near future. There was, as you may have already guessed, plenty to talk about here.

The second volume introduces Jacques Ellul’s “The Technological Society,” elaborating his theories in the form of a historical narrative, beginning in the remote past and ending with the advent of artificial intelligence and the domination of society by the algorithm. I personally found this volume more satisfying and interesting to write compared to the first, but I decided that I needed to get the first part out of the way in order for the second to have its proper impact. I’m fairly certain that readers who finish this book will concur with this decision, but if that is not the case then… well, I guess you have my apology.

The final volume introduces the ideas of Rene Guenon and finally leads into Buddhism. While Guenon himself preferred Hindu doctrine and did not seem to think very highly of Buddhism, outside of a modest appreciation for what he considered to be the “traditional” aspects of the Mahayana (i.e. “greater vehicle”), I felt that his ideas around “quantity vs quality” and cyclical time were well worth borrowing for my own purposes. I also took the liberty of integrating not only the ancient Buddhist understanding of time (which received its own dedicated chapter), but plenty of my own original ideas as well.

In the very last chapter, I attempt a very fuzzy and abbreviated outline of the direction that I believe human civilization should take in the future. While this is not integral to proving the book’s central thesis, which is first and foremost diagnostic in outlook, I felt that I should end on a more optimistic and prescriptive note in order to counteract any of the pessimism I may have instilled into readers (which is not my intention). This also entails outlining the basics of the Lotus Sutra and explaining why exactly it is so important not only in East Asian Mahayana Buddhism, but in the realm of religious scripture as a whole. It is, after all, through this text that I believe humanity can be saved.

In a sense, this book’s format can almost be pictured as a snake, moving from the tail to the head while taking many turns along the way. This made it very fun to write, and I hope that it is even more fun to read. In fact, I’ve tried to prevent myself from covering too much in this introductory section so as to avoid spoiling the gradual unfolding of the work’s main body.

One last important point before me move on: For the final chapter, I employed very liberal use of Kishio Satomi’s writings, to the point where this book can itself potentially be considered a “Nichirenist” treatise, perhaps the first in English since the original publication of Satomi’s back in the early 20th century. Indeed, as a lay Lotus Sutra Buddhist and avid reader of Nichiren myself, I find it very easy to sympathize with the Nichirenist view.

This is further evidenced by my frequent references to the Japanese WWII-era general Ishiwara Kanji, himself a fervent Nichirenist. Kanji is a fascinating and complex figure in his own right, and his controversial legacy has been given something of a reassessment in recent years, however since that is outside the scope of this work, I have not allocated page space to addressing it. If you find the topic interesting, there are several biographical texts available, but also keep in mind that Kanji’s views weren’t necessarily ubiquitous among Nichirenists or Nichiren Buddhists, and were infused with his own personal understanding of Buddhist doctrine, history, and warfare.

Regardless of whether or not you share my particular Nichirenist or Buddhist sympathies, I sincerely hope that this text gives you a more thorough understanding of the flaws of modernity and equips you with a proper framework through which to argue against its premises.

I understand that it is very unlikely that this book will be the catalyst for profound societal change. I am, after all, just a regular guy with very little money and meager (although not negligible) influence on public discourse. However, I want to do whatever I can to improve human civilization, whether that happens on a time scale that far exceeds my own lifespan or not. I feel that I have some responsibility in this, and I’m sure that some of my readers feel the same.

With all of that said, please enjoy “THEORY OF THE END.” Thank you all very much for giving my work a chance.

-JIGOKUREN