#25:All of a Sudden

In Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s film “All of a Sudden,” Mari Morisaki (played by Tao Okamoto) explains the current state of capitalism and democracy to Marie-Lou Fontaine (played by Virginie Efira) at “The Garden of Freedom,” the nursing home in the Paris suburbs where Marie-Lou works. She says capitalism constantly requires external factors for it to perpetuate. That is, the “inside” prospers by exploiting the “outside.” The “outside” refers to the rural hinterland in relation to the city, and to developing nations and the Global South in relation to developed nations, above all, to the nature in relation to humankind. Moreover, democracy functions only in tandem with capitalism; that is, it does not stand on its own as a universal value. Acknowledging that she too has benefited from capitalism, Mari says, “I’m not criticizing it; I’m simply trying to comprehend our current situation.” This understanding of capitalism is not new. In “The End of Capitalism and the Crisis of History” (hereinafter referred to as “The End”), published twelve years ago, Kazuo Mizuno describes capitalism as a system composed of a “center” and a “periphery.” In this system, the “center” boosts profits and drives the self-expansion of capital by expanding the “periphery”—that is, the so-called frontier.

In the film, Mari, who works as a theater director, was diagnosed several years ago with breast cancer, which subsequently spread to her liver, and is currently undergoing treatment for stage-4 cancer. She appears cheerful and healthy; however, doctors have warned her that her condition could suddenly deteriorate, and if it does, the symptoms would progress rapidly. At the Garden of Freedom, Marie-Lou is striving to implement an ideal form of care—one that treats residents with advancing dementia as individuals with their own distinct personalities—despite facing severe financial constraints and a shortage of staff. However, sudden reforms at the nursing home are placing an additional burden on the staff, which has provoked fierce opposition from some of them. Since cancer cells form a heterogeneous population consisting of cells with different characteristics, even if treatment kills some cells, other cells survive, undergo repeated mutations, and proliferate. Even if proliferation is suppressed, the surviving cancer cells continue to multiply, and once their number crosses a threshold, the human host’s symptoms rapidly worsen. Even when a leader within an organization attempts to implement reform, their entire team almost never simply falls in line. This situation arises because even if the target of the reforms is beneficial for the organization, the benefits for individual team members are typically unclear. The burden of making the change is significant, and it is unclear whether the transition costs will be justified by the returns. In many cases, it is more advantageous to launch a new organization than to reform an existing one. What is “good”—whether for an organization or for the human body—is not self-evident.

The End argued that capitalism is coming to an end. The geographical “peripheries” of the world have been fully opened up, and the “peripheries” of the electronic and financial spaces—which had provided the subsequent “surplus”—are also vanishing. The book argues that since capitalism is a system under which capital is invested to generate further capital, a prolonged era of ultra-low interest rates—leaving no profitable avenues for investment—signifies the end of capitalism. However, capitalism survives to this day. It seems that The End underestimates the survival capabilities of capitalism. To begin with, the new “periphery” is in digital space. Capitalism has continued to grow, and that growth depends on data—often dubbed “the oil of the 21st century”—to serve as a “driver of differentiation.” American “Big Tech” companies have been able to amass enormous wealth by utilizing personal data and accumulated public information. Just as companies grew in the 1960s by extracting value from the natural environment, companies in the 21st century are generating revenue by creating value from public data. Moreover, in recent times, attempts are being made to extract value from human intellectual creation via AI and from physical space via physical AI. The voracity of capitalism to discover new frontiers is unlimited.

After a long, late-night conversation with Mari and a trip to a town near Kyoto, Marie-Lou revises her approach in the following twofold manner: first, slow down the implementation steps for “Humanitude”—a method grounded in human-centric communication with residents—to alleviate the burden on staff during the reforms and, second, incorporate support for residents’ families and locals living near the facility. This revised approach fosters the formation of diverse and expansive relationships in a manner that surpasses the binary dynamic of caregiving staff and the residents receiving care. Everyone is coming to realize that treating residents with dignity through the “Humanitude” approach also heals the hearts of the staff. It was the staff themselves who were being emotionally wounded by treating the residents like objects. Although her health was declining, Mari continued to work as a facilitator for the Garden of Freedom workshop, where she instructed residents on how to walk and provided guidance on massage. Watching the staff and residents move slowly while supporting one another—much like actors in a play—one eventually loses track of who is a resident and who is a staff member. The distinction between “center” and “periphery” disappears and gives way to a scene of seamless, intoxicating fusion.

In recent years, all of a sudden, the world has taken a turn for the worse. I’ve been wondering when it started. Was it when President Obama declared that the United States is “not the world’s police officer”? Was it the first (or second?) inauguration of President Trump? Was the COVID-19 pandemic the root cause? Was the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law the trigger? Did it all begin with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Was it because Hamas attacked Israel? Was it due to the explosive spread of generative AI? Since the end of The Second World War, the number of democratic nations worldwide has continued to rise, and in 2002, the number of democratic states surpassed that of authoritarian states. However, in 2024, the number of authoritarian states once again surpassed the number of democratic states. As a result, 72% of the world’s population now lives under an authoritarian state. And the top 1% of the world’s population (the “ultra-wealthy”) own nearly 40% of the world’s wealth, while the bottom 50% own less than 2%. Those statistics seem to indicate that the world is really in a bad condition. Meanwhile, capitalism shows no signs of coming to an end; on the contrary, it is flourishing: wealth is accumulating, technological innovation marches on, and the inequality gap keeps widening. North Korea, Cuba, and Eritrea are about the only countries that run their states without capitalism. As Mari explained, democracy has been able to progress only by riding on the back of capitalism; however, capitalism is now attempting to shake democracy off its back. With those circumstances in mind, I believe it is time to consider “Humanitude” that can save the world.