仁 — Socialism in My Head

20 March 2025

I am not a political person.

I do not follow parties. I do not argue about economic systems on the internet. I do not have a manifesto pinned to my wall.

But I have believed in something for a long time — something I could never quite name — about how people should treat each other. About resources and effort and generosity. About who deserves what, and why.

I found the word for it, eventually. Not in a political textbook. Not in a philosophy lecture. In Bushido.

仁 — Jin. Benevolence. And once I had the word, everything else started to make sense.

What I Mean When I Say Socialism

The word socialism carries a lot of weight. Most people hear it and immediately picture one of two things: either a government handing out free things to everyone, or a Soviet-era authoritarian state controlling every aspect of life.

I mean neither of those things.

When I say socialism — my version of it, the personal and internalized version — I mean something much simpler and much harder at the same time: you work hard, you build something real, someone else works hard and genuinely needs what you have, you share — not because you are forced to, not because you feel guilty, but because you chose to.

That is it. That is the whole model.

There are no free rides in this version. There is no entitlement. There is no state machinery enforcing redistribution. There is only effort meeting effort, and one person choosing to extend their strength toward another.

It is not capitalism, because the motive is not personal gain. It is not welfare, because the recipient must genuinely try. The closest word I have found for it is covenant — a mutual agreement built not on contract but on character.

The Formula

I think about it as a simple flow: you work hard → you genuinely have something → someone else genuinely needs it → you share, not from guilt but from 仁 → they use it well, they grow → the ecosystem lifts everyone.

That last step is important. This is not a transaction between two people. When knowledge flows freely between people who deserve it, the whole environment changes. Libraries understood this long before anyone called it socialism. The idea that a community's shared knowledge belongs to everyone in that community — that is one of the oldest human instincts we have.

I studied Library and Information Science. I work as a librarian and a developer at a university. Every day I see what happens when information is locked behind institutions that can afford it, and what happens when it is not. The difference is not small. It is the difference between a person who can grow and a person who cannot.

仁 — It Is Not Softness

A common misreading of benevolence is that it means being endlessly accommodating. Giving to anyone who asks. Tolerating anything from anyone. That is not 仁.

In Bushido, 仁 is the discipline of the strong. It is the samurai who has trained for years, who has real power, who chooses to use that power in service of others — but only of those who deserve it. It is not softness. It is strength with direction.

What I cannot stand — what genuinely exhausts and angers me — is laziness dressed as entitlement. People who take without trying. People who consume without contributing. People who receive generosity and waste it, and then go right back to doing nothing and expecting more.

There is a difference between struggling but trying — those are my people. Lazy but honest about it — I can at least respect that. Entitled and ungrateful — you violate 仁 itself.

仁 without self-respect becomes enabling. Self-respect without 仁 becomes elitism. You need both. You always need both.

I Saw It First in Onizuka

Before I had the word 仁, I had Eikichi Onizuka. Great Teacher Onizuka is, on the surface, a story about a delinquent who becomes a high school teacher. He is reckless and impulsive and barely qualified for the job on paper.

But he has something that none of the "proper" teachers in that show have. Every technically correct, rule-following, diligent teacher in GTO is working hard — for themselves. For their career. For their reputation. When it costs nothing, they are generous. When it costs something real, they disappear.

Onizuka fights for his students when no one else will. Not because it benefits him. Not because it looks good. Because they are his, and he refuses to let them fall. When he says "you're my friend", he means it completely. He does not say it to everyone — only to the people who have shown him their whole selves.

That is 仁. Untrained, unpolished, dressed in a tracksuit. But pure.

I Hate People

Let me be honest about something that seems to contradict everything I have just said.

I am introverted in a way that goes beyond preference. Social gatherings drain me. Public speaking makes me want to disappear. Crowds feel like noise I have not consented to. And sometimes — often — I feel like I simply hate people.

But I have also stayed awake through the night for the right project, with the right people, giving more than I thought I had left. I have felt that specific energy of being in a room where everyone is actually there, actually trying, actually building something that matters. And in those moments I am not introverted at all.

The difference was never introvert versus extrovert. The difference was authenticity. What I actually hate is inauthenticity. Presence without sincerity. Showing up without being there. Performing participation in things that no one actually cares about.

Selectivity is not antisocial. It is integrity.

Then There Is Shinji

I want to talk about a character I used to hate. Shinji Ikari, from Neon Genesis Evangelion, is one of the most frustrating protagonists in anime. He hesitates. He runs away. He cries when he should fight. For a long time I was impatient with him. Just get in the robot, I thought.

Then I hit my own lowest point.

There was a period when I was exhausted in a way that sleep could not fix. Invisible in a way that presence could not remedy. Unsure, in a genuine and frightening way, why I should keep going at all.

And I understood Shinji completely.

He is not a failed hero. He is an honest portrait of what a person looks like when they are carrying too much with no one to share the weight. What I missed, when I was impatient with him, was the thing that actually matters: he still got in the robot.

Not because he was brave. Not because someone gave him a great speech that fixed everything. He got in because something in him — small, exhausted, barely alive — refused to let the world continue without him in it.

I know that feeling now. I have lived it. And I think that is the most human kind of courage there is — not the dramatic kind, but the quiet, terrible, everyday courage of continuing when you have every reason not to.

I do not hate Shinji anymore. He was showing me something I was not ready to see.

Internalize, Then Externalize

Most political and social theory tries to fix human behavior through systems. Build the right structure, incentivize the right actions, and good behavior will follow. The system produces the character.

I think it works the other way. Fix the person first. The system follows.

Internalize benevolence — work on yourself, build real skill, build real integrity, have something genuine to give. Not performed virtue. Not strategic generosity. Real capacity, built through real effort.

Then externalize altruism — look outward with discernment, find the people who are genuinely trying, and share without condition but not without judgment.

The sequence matters. You cannot skip the first step. Generosity without capacity is just guilt. Altruism without self-respect is just performance. 仁 cannot be legislated. It can only be cultivated — person by person, choice by choice.

This Is What I Believe

Work hard. Share well. Choose your people carefully. Give everything when you find them.

That is enough. That is everything.

仁 is not a political position. It is a character you build inside yourself until it overflows outward — toward people who are trying, toward communities that are forgotten, toward the places where knowledge should be but is not.

I do not know if what I am building will last. I do not know if it will reach everyone it should reach. I do not know if I am doing it right.

But I know why I am doing it. And that, I think, is where 仁 begins.