Extract from
Winfried Weber, Die Purpose-Wirtschaft, 2024, eBook (Amazon Kindle, http://tiny.cc/9eznzz ) (Translation by the author)
For some years now, a phenomenon has been observed internationally that has been circulating among students, start-up teams and young managers under the term ikigai. Four questions are discussed: What do I really want to do after my studies? What am I good at (in terms of my talents)? What advice do my parents/aunts/uncles etc. give me for my career (often in this version, what am I being paid for)? What could the world/society need from me? (Wilson 2018).
A lot of empirical data on the future aspirations and purpose orientation of the younger generations indicates that these questions are playing an increasingly relevant role. The Shell Youth Study shows that the more meaningful value orientations have gained in importance among young people. The opposite trend is seen in materialistic orientations aimed at increasing personal power and assertiveness (Albert/Hurrelmann/Quenzel 2019). A recent McKinsey study in the USA found that 70 percent of employees' sense of purpose is determined by their work (Dhingra et al. 2021).
The term ikigai is based on a Japanese concept. It means in direct translation "that which is worth living for" or the raison d'être of life. It is about the question, why do I exist? For many Japanese, their own existence in relation to nature, time and fellow human beings plays an important role, partly based on the fundamental values of Shintoism, and the everyday philosophical concept of ikigai is about finding harmony in individual lives.
Similar ideas are also present in Confucianism, which sees all modes of being within the universe as interconnected. Confucians also see themselves as beings who follow the path of heaven and are called to be guardians of nature and co-creators of the cosmos (see Weiming 1997, see also his speech at the 24th World Congress of Philosophy, Weiming 2018).
In Japanese organizations, the term is also discussed in relation to the phenomenon of "shōwa-hitoketa" men, who link their ikigai too strongly to their employee role (Mathews 1996), find their ikigai only at work and tend to become depressed when they retire. The risk as an individual of not being in tune with one's ikigai was also confirmed in the Ohsaki study, a long-term study in which researchers defined the term as "believing that one's life is worth living". (see Sone et.al. 2008)
In social media and coaching workshops, however, the buzzword ikigai has moved far away from the original Japanese term, especially when it comes to the third question, 'What you can be paid for'. Tokie Anme from Tsukuba University comments on this, “many Japanese think every person has a unique role in nature, so he/she has ikigai. Everyone‘s existence has meaning, and he/she is kept alive by and in relationship to nature. ‘What you can be paid for’ should be replaced with ‘how you are kept alive by nature.’ Or ‘how I can be in relationship to nature.” (Anme 2021)
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