Thinking About Our Existence Through Making, 1

Introduction

Note for the series

This series follows thought in motion. Because I am tracing ideas as they develop, some concepts and definitions may shift over time. I do not see this as a flaw, but as part of the work of thinking itself. In this first essay, I use “Natural Universality” and “Constructed Universality” in an early sense that may later change.

Why Do We Keep Making?

Every day, we make something.

We make meals.

We write notes.

We arrange our hair.

We plan a day.

We choose what to wear.

We clean a room.

We eat.

We exercise.

We sleep.

We become friends with someone.

We build houses.

We make vessels.

We make laws.

We design cities.

We run companies.

We establish schools.

We build bridges.

We play music.

We sow seeds in the soil.

We speak words to children.

We form relationships with other people, with other living beings.

We imagine the future.

Some of these things are visible.

Some are invisible.

But in one way or another, we are always making our world.

Making is not an activity reserved for special people. It is not something that belongs only to artists, craftspeople, or engineers. Everyone is always making something.

I have come to think that being human is itself a kind of making.

But this immediately raises a question.

We live in nature. So why do we keep making so much?

Where does nature end, and where does the artificial begin?

When we carve wood, what are we facing?

When we cook, what are we facing?

When we listen to music, what are we facing?

When we raise a child, what are we facing?

What is it, exactly, that we are in relation with?

This is not a scientific argument. It is a more abstract question than that. But if we move slowly enough, I think it becomes easier to see.

Through making and through thought, I have gradually come to feel that there are two large forces at work in the world.

One is the overwhelming force that seems to exist outside us. The laws of the universe. The force that is simply there, regardless of our will.

For now, I call this Natural Universality.

The other is the force we bring forth ourselves. Language, tools, institutions, art, science, economy, and many other things. The force that assembles the world, gives it meaning, and gives it form. Perhaps it is everything human beings think and build.

For now, I call this Constructed Universality.

This is not a matter of deciding which one is right. It is not a matter of choosing one against the other.

We are because both are there.

If we obey nature too completely, perhaps we can make nothing. If we believe in construction too completely, we forget nature.

Making emerges in the tension between these two forces.

Without denying nature, without abandoning construction, we continue to move back and forth between them, and in doing so, we keep making the world.

In this series, I want to think about human existence through making. Not only through craft or art, but also through science, technology, politics, and the ordinary acts of daily life.

I do not want to impose a difficult theory.

I want to begin with concrete things, to look closely at the structures within them, and then to return again to concrete things.

Like climbing a staircase one step at a time, I want to move forward slowly, and with some joy.

We are not outside nature. We are part of it.

And yet, while remaining within nature, we also construct our own world inside it.

Making may be one of the acts through which the invisible tension between nature and the human comes into view. And perhaps it is one of the acts that supports our existence.

In the next essay, I will begin with the wooden plates I make and reflect on what it means to make things, and on how things come into being.

I look forward to continuing this thought with you in the next essay.

Thanks for reading Takashi Tomii’s article!

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