MuRatopia Institute

(This homepage is still under construction！）

What is MuRatopia?

The word MuRatopia is originally coined by Kaoru Yamaguchi in his book: Beyond Walras, Keynes and Marx - Synthesis in Economic Theory Toward a New Social Design, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 1988, as follows:

"We will call such a re-unified future economy MuRatopian economy, where co-workers work co-operatively in communes, communities, local organizations, and global organizations in harmony with nature. The Japanese word mura literally means village. I have envisioned the future society in the spirit and practice of a Japanese village where village people live in a self-sufficient community, help each other co-operatively at the busiest time of harvest, and respect nature's way. The one character word mura may also be considered as consisting of two different characters: Mu and Ra. Mu implies "nothingness" or "emptiness" - the most fundamental concept of Zen Buddhism, and Ra means "being naked" or "having no possession." Accordingly, I have associated the implications of Mu (nothingness) and Ra (no possession) with mura (village), because I have further envisioned the mind of future society in the combination of these concepts. -topia is from the Greek topos, which means place. Hence, the word MuRatopia is now coined to describe our new social design.
This is our future economy. (Chapter 8, pp .170-171.)"

Philosophy

Think Wholistically
個々の「部分」を分析し、理解するだけでは「全体」が理解できないので、マクロ的に全体的な見方をしなければならない。何をマクロととらえるかで、地球、国、地域、会社、グループ、家庭、身体、森林、海、等々いろいろなレベルでの複雑系対象が考えられる。"Think Globally" とは違うのでご注意を。

Act Partially
相互依存的な個々の部分のネットワーク的行動が、線形的に予測不可能な複雑系の全体を自己創造する。従って、より望ましい「全体」の方向に自己創造する「部分」の行動ルールの探求が必要不可欠となる。
現在の複雑系全体の秩序をもたらしている部分のネットワーク的行動ルールは何なのか、またその部分の行動ルールが変われば、全体がどのように変わるのか。こうした問題意識を持ちながら行動的にルールを創造してゆくことが肝要である。

Live Ecologically
自然と共生する生き方をする。ガイアとしての地球を生命体「全体」としてとらえた場合、その健康を保持するための「部分」の行動ルールを求めるとすれば、その第１条は、"Live Ecologically" である。

複雑系 (Complexity) による新しいものの見方、考え方について

Complex (Self-Organizing) Systems

"A complex system is one whose component parts interact
with sufficient intricacy that they cannot be predicted by
standard linear equations; so many variables are at work in
the system that its overall behavior can only be understood
as an emergent consequence of the holistic sum of all the
myriad behaviors embedded within. ... the whole is more than
the sum of its parts."
(Artificial Life by Steven Levy, 1993, p.8.)