In an Age Without Choice, Where Does Humanity Go?

Soyo's Existence Ethics Essay

The last question of existence

On the Silence of the Self, the Abandonment of Ethics, and the Ultimate Question of Existence

Life is always a path of choices. Each day is a series of decisions: what to eat, whom to meet, and what to wear. Yet we remain astonishingly indifferent to the most essential choices: “Who am I? Why do I live? By what ethics or beliefs should I act?” Ignoring these, we drift through life, or rather, life drifts through us. Existence becomes hollow; a shell. Human corruption does not begin in institutions; it begins in ethical laziness; in the silence before one’s own questions.

In an age where bread precedes knowledge, comfort is prized over justice, and ease is valued over truth, we measure nations by GDP, not by the quiet joy of a single face. Ethics is abandoned, selfhood is muted, and silence replaces moral courage. Real recovery does not come from reform or revolution but from the deliberate, truthful choice of each individual to take responsibility for their existence.

The mindset of “as long as today is comfortable” is the bankruptcy of ethics. This often leads to the instinct to avoid suffering, and the weary surrender of not striving, because the outcome will be the same. This is the emotional reality of countless beings living today. Is that comfort true freedom? Is that surrender genuine wisdom? A life that avoids failure merely by attempting nothing, buries the most precious possibilities of existence in advance. The real crisis of our age is not politics, but the absence of philosophy; not ideology, but the silence of ethics. We speak of the dismantling of the self and the violence of the “only path,” claiming we live in an age of choice. Yet in truth, there is no choice.

In a world designed to follow one predetermined path, people live lies. They pretend to choose good jobs, speed, and win in competition. Any life outside that is labeled 'deviation'. “Be yourself” only exists on signs; the system’s “you must live this way” is the reality. Within this structure, when have we ever deeply and ethically expressed our true selves?

The real terror of corruption is the collapse of a being. I often hear that the world is corrupt. But I say this: scarier than the corruption of the world is a human being slowly sinking into silence, having abandoned their own ethics. More frightening than the corruption in the news is the face of someone in the subway, vacant-eyed and showing no emotion.

The face of a person standing vacant, eyes blank, showing no emotion, is far more frightening. That face speaks: “I abandoned myself long ago.” Where should recovery begin? This text does not provide an answer. Instead, it asks. And in asking, it reopens the door of reflection. Why have we abandoned our own humanity so completely? Why carry the self like an empty shell, never filling it with ethics? My philosophy of existence and ethics asserts this: ethics is not a law directed at others, but the most intimate covenant with oneself. Restoring this age is not a matter of reform or revolution, but of a single person’s authentic self-determination. The journey begins here. Taking responsibility for one’s own existence. That is where ethics begins.

True ethics is the private covenant one keeps with oneself, and in asking again and again, we hear existence cry, and from that cry, ethics is born. We must ask again.

I asked again and again, "Does this world treat human beings as human? Are we living within structures that permit us to exist fully as humans?" We attempt to answer these questions through politics, economics, and psychology. Yet none of these provides the answer. The answer lies in asking again. Within that very question, the cry of existence resounds, and from that, ethics is born.

Soyo (逍遙) – Founder of Soyo's Existence Ethics, Author of 'The Silence of Existence' and 'The Flame of Truth'

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