It Is Not Pain That Kills a Human Being, but a World That Has Lost Its Conscience – A Final Reflection on Dazai, Death, and Human Existence— Chapter 81

Soyo Existence Ethics (Existence itself is Ethics)

Soyo, who has stood at the edge of death five times, considers that "Death is not a terror. It is the final shadow that comes when pain can no longer find a voice". People frequently oversimplify death as merely an individual's choice or a sign of psychological disorders. But before death, a human being is never a solitary individual. One collapses slowly within the structures of society, within relationships, within wounds, and within layers of silence and judgment. So death is never solely that individual's responsibility. Death is a tragedy produced collectively by an entire era, the most brutal crime committed by a society that has lost the ethics of conscience.

No Human Falls Alone, Death Is the Responsibility of a Society

Humans live within social structures. Thus, when a person collapses, the world surrounding him always shakes first. Dazai Osamu did not die because he was weak or sick. His death was the failure of the literary system that could not hold him, a collapse of conscience in a society incapable of carrying a single life. Modern society repeats the same mistake. It defines suicide as a personal vulnerability and interprets it as a psychological limitation, and places the burden on the individual. But Soyo states firmly, "The problems of human life are never generated by the individual alone." Society constantly provides causes. Communities judge, systems exclude, intellectuals avert their eyes, and institutions reduce human beings to numbers. Within this structure, an individual's final breath is always born from society's first silence.

The Numbed Conscience of the 21st Century: The Cruelest Diagnosis of Our Time

Today's world creates structures of human isolation as if it were natural. People say, "He was weak. He struggled too much. He was emotionally fragile." Yet no one asks: "What did we miss? What societal structure pushed him toward death?" Modern society expels those who fail, mocks the poor, ridicules those who try to live with conscience, and isolates those who speak truth. And when such a person falls, society responds, "It was his problem." This cruelty is the deepest disease of 21st-century humanity. It is the tragic numbness of a generation that has completely lost the sense of the sacredness of life.

Education and Status Cannot save a Life: True Intelligence Is Conscience

Prestigious universities, brilliant résumés, and high social status, none of these save human beings.

Society proclaims:

"If you lack credentials, you lack value."

"Whoever collapses must have caused it themselves."

But Soyo sees otherwise. Those who sell fish on a market floor, people with no name, often possess deeper intelligence than the elite of renowned universities. The problem is not ability. The problem is the flawed algorithm through which society evaluates human beings.

Society judges by appearance, class, and credentials. But the conscience given by God to every human being categorically rejects this cruelty.

The ethics of conscience is built upon purity, peace, gentleness, mercy, good fruit, impartiality, and the absence of falsehood. A person who lives out this ethic learns to examine himself before condemning anyone else.

And such self-examination becomes a hand that holds others back from the cliff of annihilation.

The Arrogance of Science: Killing the Conscience Twice

Science measures only the body's ending. Through blood pressure, the heartbeat, drug reactions and neural activity, it gathers its data and declares with confidence, "We have analyzed the cause of death." But science can never become God, and must never attempt to do so. For death is not merely the ending of the flesh; it is a divine event through which the soul and conscience pass. Science can record the stopping of a heart, but it cannot explain why that heart could no longer endure.

What science analyzes is merely the first death of the body. But the true death of a human being is the second death, the extinction of conscience. When science reduces death to a physical event, it often silences the inner world of the person, erasing the depth of existence. This is an act that kills the voice of the soul twice. Thus, the truth of death can only be understood within the depth of conscience and the breath of God.

Dazai Was Not a Failure; He Was a Prophet of His Time

Dazai Osamu's death was not the result of literary deficiency,

nor the eruption of mental illness. His death was the sacrifice produced by a generation in which the ethics of conscience had collapsed. He did not fail the literary world because the society surrounding him collapsed. He did not despair; it was the world that had lost the capacity to hold his soul. Soyo says, "Dazai was not declaring his disqualification; he was exposing the disqualification of human society itself, and the first prophet to do so." His words were not symptoms, but testimony. His despair was not defeat, but protest. He was a forsaken prophet of his age, and his cry continues to this day as an indictment of human existence itself.

Soyo's Confession: One Life Revived Another

Soyo says, "I survived because of Dazai's suffering." At the threshold of death, what revived Soyo was not philosophy, not academia, not ideology. It was the torn record of a soul that Dazai left behind—the tears embedded in the ink of his despair. This was not literary influence. It was the transfer of one soul to another, one life reviving the life of another. And from Dazai's place, Soyo now speaks the words Dazai could not: "The breath of God and the everlasting dignity of human existence."

What Kills Humankind Is Not Pain, but a Civilization That Has Lost Its Conscience

Humans do not die because philosophy is lacking or because the world changes too quickly. Humans die because society has lost the ethics of conscience.

Soyo Existence Ethics was born to restore the lost position of human existence, to lift life beyond the literature of suffering and despair, and to place it again upon the ground of eternity. On the cry of Dazai, Soyo Existence Ethics was born anew. And now it speaks to the world:

"A human being must never die at the hands of another human being."

"Existence itself is Ethics."

Soyo (逍遙) – Founder of Soyo Existence Ethics, author of The Silence of Existence, The Flame of Truth

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