What is the ideal life?

Yuichiro Noguchi
Aug 25
3 min read

Updated: Aug 26

John Ruskin, a 19th-century British social thinker and art critic who influenced William Morris and became the spiritual pillar of the Arts and Crafts Movement and subsequent activists.

In relation to medieval Gothic architecture and social background, "the Middle Ages was an ideal era when a good spirit was nurtured in society itself, and workers were free to work on ingenuity and creation." He compared workers at the time when mechanization and efficiency were progressing due to the Industrial Revolution, "As a result of continuing to do work that only nail heads and pin tips continue to be made, people of the joy of labor was taken away, and poor things began to spread in the world. I've done it," he admonished.

Ruskin's ideas were passed down to William Morris, and the idea that "handmade things that are created while enjoying what you need are beautiful" and "life surrounded only by beautiful things" are ideals, and "quality by skilled craftsmen in the good old days The Arts & Crafts movement takes place to return to the "high crafts".

Even in modern society, under the cause of the name of the economy, high-quality manufacturing and craftsmen continue to decrease, and looking at the way they are willing to buy things that they don't even know where and who made them simply because they are cheap, for more than 100 years I just feel that the same world that Raskin and Morris feared before is still being repeated.

Due to the evolution of technology, the world has become more convenient than in the past, but the logic of creating and making things has not changed in the past.

With the spread of personal computers, anyone can easily copy and paste designs, and anyone can easily become a publisher using a printer or web. Also, I feel that the hurdle of starting a business is lower than before.

However, not everyone can easily create great things such as high-quality designs, publishers, and businesses. The background to the creation of good quality things is that various issues, difficulties, people and things are involved, and it often takes a lot of time, effort and money. And the most necessary thing to overcome them and reach realization is "passion".

However, I don't have any of them for easy copying and pasting. It is only an easy way for those who want to make money quickly. In a society where such things are rampant, high-quality goods and the places of the people who support them are increasingly lost. Also, such a society and environment cannot be a good future for children.

We are entering a turning point to break away from an unhealthy society where money worship is rampant and lack of morality and ethics, and create a sustainable future. The development of technology has made the world very convenient, but isn't it the same "function priority" for housing, workplace, and hospital?

There is a famous saying by French architect Le Corbusier that "the house is a machine for living". I don't know if Corbusier's goal was this kind of life and society, but what we originally wanted was not just a comfortable and convenient life, but a symbiotic society where people could live comfortably as people. Is it?

In today's society, convenience is too prioritized, so I feel that it lacks mechanical, uniformity, and kindness to people. No matter where you look at the house, you will live the same house, work will prioritize profit, and the same cityscape wherever you go. Such an efficient society does not produce anything truly valuable even if it brings temporary benefits.

The reaction to excessive urbanization has created trends of natural regression such as camping and biophilia in recent years, and the stress on the digital society and the corona disaster are leading to a movement to reconsider the relationship between people and what society should be. I think so.

Originally, people should be able to choose a freer way of life, live with the same joys and sorrows as people as they like wherever they want, and grow up with a sense of rewarding and pride in their work by helping others and society.

Excessive capitalism and a competitive society have created an unbalanced disparity society in which 1% of people dominate most of the world's wealth.

Because it is a modern society where technology has developed and evolved like never before, I feel that things such as homes, lives, and ideal social images that people have been essentially looking for are beginning to be seen.