Cultural Rationality
As artificial intelligence begins to move the world, economic rationality is gradually losing its necessity for human beings. Productivity, efficiency, optimization—these are domains in which AI excels completely. Humanity no longer needs to compete there. Yet the more the world becomes rationalized, the more people seek meaning and belief. What disappears in perfect convenience is the texture of life that once resided in inconvenience. No matter how organized society becomes, we still need to feel that we matter to someone—that our existence has weight within another’s world.
In the modern age, labor is no longer merely a means of survival. It functions as a social mechanism for redefining one’s existence within others. Through work, we touch society and confirm who we are in the eyes of others. But as automation advances, this mechanism begins to collapse. Opportunities to be “useful” diminish, and the sense of being part of the social fabric fades. When that happens, people inevitably search for a new mechanism—a new kind of community through which they can rediscover themselves.
The recent surge of online salons in Japan was an early sign of this shift. Within those small, membership-based communities, people shared values, learned together, and affirmed one another’s significance. They served as both a substitute for labor and, in a sense, for religion. Religion, too, once offered humanity meaning and belonging. In an age where AI provides logic and optimal answers, humans paradoxically require non-rational systems of faith and emotion. Thus, the need arises again for places where people can believe together—whether in the form of online communities or cultural circles whose purpose is to sustain meaning beyond utility.
The future will demand not economic rationality, but cultural rationality—a form of order guided not by efficiency, but by meaning. Cultural rationality values what cannot be measured: the patience to understand slowly, the courage to continue seemingly pointless dialogue, the act of sharing faith that defies calculation. To AI, these are inefficiencies; to humans, they are the very essence of fulfillment. The more perfect reason becomes, the more deeply we must dwell within the realm of the irrational to remain human.
In an era where AI operates the world with flawless precision, what humanity must preserve is the very slowness of the world itself. We grow through hesitation, misunderstanding, and regret—never through perfect optimization. Within that slowness lie trust, story, and culture. Numbers can be moved by AI; but time, trust, beauty, and meaning can only be moved by human hands. If AI rationalizes the world, then humanity must re-interpret it emotionally. That is how living itself will be redefined.
When economic rationality reaches its limit, a new age of culture begins. Humanity will remain within the irrational, yet continue to believe, to speak, to imagine, and to resonate with one another. That enduring resonance—the choice to live meaningfully rather than efficiently—is what defines the new logic of our age: Cultural Rationality.