Why We Need Present-Day Coordinates
Our critique of outdated developmental theories and our demand for new standards are not meant to argue that the way the majority lives today is unconditionally "correct" or a "moral absolute." Nor are we trying to claim that because remaining unmarried and childfree is the trend, it represents a flawless definition of justice toward which humanity must march.
Rather, it means that even to analyze, comfort, and diagnose potential developmental errors or exceptions in human life, we must first establish a "baseline that reflects the raw reality of this current era." Seeking our way by staring solely at the signposts planted by scholars a century ago, while having no idea where we currently stand, is an equation that cannot be solved to begin with.
Whether this new standard will truly lead humanity in the right direction, or whether it will breed another set of side effects, is a matter for history to strictly judge after the fact. What is urgent for us right now is not that judgment, but "present-day coordinates" themselves—a solid ground upon which we can immediately plant our feet.
A Flexible Skeleton Handed Out under the Name of a Standard
Erecting a new standard is not an act of arrogance that traps humans in yet another mold. On the contrary, it is the academic courage to face head-on the immense complexity confronting humanity today. Only when we craft a new ruler for 2026, rather than relying on a ruler from the 1920s, can we properly explain the unique pain and wandering experienced by modern people, as well as the segments of growth where they struggle amidst the debris of a new addiction called dopamine.
Through this new ruler, we can finally identify the "current standard," locate those experiencing genuinely exceptional pain that veers off from it, and reach out to hold their hands. A flexible skeleton that reflects living, contemporary lives—rather than a standard that has crawled out of a graveyard of the past—is the bare minimum tool required to fully understand a human being.
The New Anthropology We Will Write Together
In the end, at the close of this long journey of thought—where we debated the continuity and discontinuity of development, searched for the value of blank space, and navigated the jungle of dopamine—we come to a profound realization: We are not lost; we are simply writing the first page of a brand-new map that no one has ever drawn before.
Let us boldly lay down the broken ruler lazily neglected by scholars. Instead, let us stare straight into the trajectory of our own lives, filling in our share of the derivative day by day at our own unique pace at this very moment.
The anxiety and wandering you experience right now are not errors written in a stale textbook. They are the most vivid evidence that you are evolving, throwing your entire body into the jungle of 2026 civilization to forge a new baseline for humanity. On the day those magnificent steps gather to be integrated, history will finally look back and call the path we walked the "new standard of human development."
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