Debate and volunteering shaped by Japanese culture

Do you have a debate class as part of school subjects? In Japan, no, never, at least when I was a student, though it’s about 30 years ago. To top it all off, even after entering the real world, we are likely to avoid to put it in black and white. I don’t mean it’s always wrong. It must have been an ancestor wisdom not to make enemies in the insular communities of Japan, but as you can imagine, it leads to a big problem: A consensus is vaguely formed, and even meeting attendees sometimes miss it. Accordingly, we are always required to improve skills to read between the lines rather than beat someone else in discussion.

Fortunately, I had received a lot of debate training when I worked for the government. In the debate training, we again and again debated some popular debate topics like death penalty, daytime saving time, etc., and one of which was about volunteering. In some countries, volunteering is mandatory at school and even at work, but not in Japan. Speaking of volunteering, have you ever heard of the World Giving Index by the Charity Aid Foundation? It’s a kind of ranking to show the contribution to charity work like volunteering, donation, etc., and embarrassingly Japan was ranked second worst in the ranking of 2022.

Volunteering dilemma: Mandatory or voluntary

As I wrote above, after learning the basics in the debate training, we debated the same topics over and over again. Consequently, the exchange of blows was standardized. For example, when the topic “Volunteering should be mandatory” was debated, the main disadvantage the negative advocators always argued was “Volunteering harms competition in the free market.” Probably most of us were sick of such repetitive drills. One day, someone from the negative side attacked the contradiction in the definition of volunteering, saying “How can something based on free will become mandatory?”

The attack was not a fatal blow in the debate, but an interesting point was made. I feel like this strict way of thinking would be one of the reasons why many people hesitate to do charity work. I imagine they would ask themselves if it’s not for self-satisfaction. Indeed, as it was depicted in the movie “POVERTY, INC.,” there’s nothing more troublesome than unsolicited charity for self-satisfaction. My idea to solve this problem is we all should have common sense that charity is basically for self-satisfaction. This way of thinking may make it easier to start charity and also to refuse charity offers.

Breaking free from Capitalism: The joy of giving

Some people may be still concerned about if it’s based on free will or not, but as I wrote long time ago, there’s no free will in the first place according to some neuroscience research. Let me remind you of the harsh reality: 95% of our daily actions are unconscious biological reactions. In addition, do you know what the other 5% is? I guess it’d be a rational decision based on a cost-benefit analysis. In the capitalism world, we are driven by profit and guided by market forces. If that is the case, our lives seem futile. There’s no free will, and we’re just under the control of market forces. Let’s take the red pill, get out of capitalism, and do something irrational sometimes!

Last month, we donated our furniture to a local children’s home. I myself was there for delivery and felt really happy to see kids clustering around our sofas with big smiles on their faces. I’m sure their smiles motivated us much more than a small pay raise. In that sense, charity work may be rational even in the market mechanism.

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