On culture, self-discipline, Cayman, Japan, and the person I love.

There are moments in life when a seemingly insignificant experience reveals something that has been developing within us for years.

Recently, I found myself reflecting on the meaning of civilisation, personal freedom, and the values that make a society worth belonging to.

The reflection began with something rather ordinary. Two men, entertaining themselves by spitting at one another in a shared sauna, appeared to find considerable amusement in their behaviour.

I was not offended by their happiness. People are entitled to enjoy themselves. What troubled me was the nature of that enjoyment, and how little attention seemed to be given to the people sharing the space.

Perhaps what one finds entertaining reveals something about the depth of one’s interests. But more importantly, how one chooses to behave around others can reveal how one understands one’s place within society.

I left feeling unexpectedly hurt.

Not because I believed two individuals represented an entire nation. They clearly do not. But because the experience reminded me of a growing distance between the environment in which I live and the values I have gradually developed.

It made me question something more fundamental.

What does it mean to live in a free society? And is freedom alone sufficient to create a society in which one feels at home?

Freedom requires more than the absence of restrictions

I have always valued personal freedom. My education, professional ambitions, and approach to life have largely been shaped by the desire to think independently and take responsibility for my own decisions.

Yet I increasingly believe that freedom is incomplete without self-discipline.

In On Liberty (1859), John Stuart Mill argued that preventing harm to others is the central justification for restricting individual liberty. (1)

This distinction is important. Not everything unpleasant should be prohibited, and not every disagreement about acceptable behaviour should become a matter for the law.

I would not want to live in a society where every minor offence resulted in punishment.

But the limits of legal intervention are not the same as the limits of personal responsibility.

The law can establish what people must not do. It cannot, by itself, establish the consideration, judgement, and restraint that allow people to live well together.

Consider a public space shared by strangers. Each individual arrives with different preferences, expectations, and purposes. No one can reasonably expect everyone else to behave exactly as they would wish.

A functioning society therefore requires some willingness to consider the interests of others.

That willingness is not necessarily imposed from outside. It can come from understanding that one’s own freedom has value partly because other people respect it.

To me, this is one of the most important expressions of civilisation.

The ability to exercise freedom is valuable. The ability to exercise it responsibly requires something further: maturity of judgement.

And maturity, unlike legal compliance, cannot be measured simply by whether someone has broken a rule.

Culture shapes how freedom is exercised

Culture matters because it influences behaviour long before the law becomes relevant.

In a 2011 study published in Science, Michele Gelfand and her colleagues examined social norms across 33 nations. (2)

The researchers distinguished between cultures with stronger social norms and lower tolerance for deviations from those norms, and cultures in which norms were relatively less restrictive. (2)

Japan ranked eighth on their measure of cultural tightness, while the United Kingdom ranked thirteenth. (3)

This does not establish that Japanese society is more civilised, kinder, or morally superior. Stronger social norms can encourage consideration and predictability, but they can also create pressure to conform.

The distinction is nevertheless useful.

It suggests that the expectations governing everyday behaviour can differ meaningfully between societies, even when those societies are economically developed and politically stable.

Other evidence complicates the picture further. An analysis of World Values Survey data published by King’s College London found that 52% of British respondents said they trusted people they met for the first time, placing the UK third among 24 countries studied. (4)

That is hardly evidence of a society without social trust.

For me, the important question is therefore not whether Britain is objectively better or worse than Japan.

It is whether the social values I encounter in my daily life are compatible with the person I want to become.

I have benefited greatly from living in Britain. I remain grateful for the education, opportunities, and stability it has provided.

But gratitude does not require me to remain somewhere indefinitely.

A country can offer many opportunities and still cease to feel like the right cultural environment for a particular individual.

I am increasingly comfortable accepting that distinction.

Cayman: independence and responsibility

My next chapter will begin in the Cayman Islands.

I intend to make Cayman my primary home and develop my hedge fund there.

The decision is partly economic, but the economic reasons are closely connected to my philosophy of life.

I believe that independence is built through knowledge, disciplined judgement, and the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s decisions.

Investment appeals to me because it demands all three.

The markets do not reward an argument simply because it sounds persuasive. Nor does reality adjust itself to accommodate my expectations.

A hypothesis must be examined. Assumptions must be tested. Uncertainty must be acknowledged. And when a decision produces an unfavourable outcome, the responsibility remains mine.

There is something intellectually satisfying about this process.

It encourages me to distinguish what I know from what I merely believe, and to continue learning without assuming that experience has made further learning unnecessary.

Cayman offers an environment in which I hope to develop this work while gaining greater control over the structure of my life.

I also feel a personal connection to its climate and natural environment.

The warmth, tropical vegetation, sunshine, and abundance of fruits remind me of the climate in which I grew up.

These things are not insignificant luxuries to me. They contribute to how I experience everyday life.

I want to live among trees, enjoy the tropical climate, and have the space and privacy necessary to think, work, and live peacefully.

Cayman offers the prospect of combining professional ambition with a way of life that feels natural to me.

But I am also beginning to understand something about the limits of economic independence.

Financial freedom allows us to choose where and how we live. It does not necessarily tell us where we belong.

Nor can it tell us whom we should share that life with.

Japan: the philosophy of becoming

My connection with Japan is different.

It began not with an economic calculation, but with an appreciation of the cultural and philosophical attitudes I encountered there.

During my travels, I became increasingly interested in how seemingly ordinary activities could reflect deeper principles.

The attention given to a simple task. The care taken to maintain something rather than replace it. The importance of gratitude, restraint, and consideration. The understanding that improvement often comes from patient repetition rather than dramatic change.

I wrote about these observations in an earlier article, Embracing Japanese Life Philosophies.

What continues to interest me is the relationship between these everyday practices and personal development.

The Japanese concept of kaizen, commonly understood as continuous improvement, reflects an idea I have valued throughout my life.

Progress does not always require an extraordinary breakthrough.

More often, it requires the willingness to examine what we do, identify what could be better, and make deliberate improvements.

A person who approaches ordinary tasks carefully develops habits that can extend into more demanding activities.

The same underlying discipline can be applied to study, professional work, physical training, and personal relationships.

I find this philosophy profoundly encouraging.

There is also an important distinction between external discipline and self-discipline.

External discipline is imposed through rules, expectations, or authority. Self-discipline comes from an internal decision to maintain certain standards.

The latter interests me far more.

I do not want to become better merely because society expects it. I want to improve because the process of improvement gives meaning to my life.

Of course, Japan has its own social pressures, inequalities, and contradictions. I do not mistake cultural ideals for universal behaviour.

The expectations that make public life orderly can sometimes restrict individuality. A society that values harmony may also make disagreement more difficult.

These are genuine trade-offs, and I would not dismiss them.

Nevertheless, the philosophical ideals I have encountered in Japan encourage something I value deeply: the desire to go further, climb higher, and become stronger in both mind and character.

I do not seek perfection in a country.

I seek an environment that encourages the qualities I want to cultivate within myself.

Giving an old house a new life

I intend to establish a second home in Japan, somewhere in the countryside within reach of Tokyo.

I am happy to live somewhere very rural, provided there is a reliable railway connection to the city.

The appeal is not simply the landscape.

I want a life in which nature, tranquillity, and intellectual activity can coexist. A place where the pace of daily life allows room for thought, while the city remains accessible when needed.

My intention is to purchase an abandoned Japanese house, commonly called an akiya, and rebuild the property around the life I hope to share.

This is not an entirely romantic idea detached from reality.

Japan’s 2023 Housing and Land Survey recorded approximately 9 million vacant dwellings, representing 13.8% of the country’s housing stock. (5)

Not all are abandoned, and certainly not all are suitable for purchase or reconstruction. Structural condition, land rights, building regulations, and access to infrastructure will matter enormously.

But the scale of vacant housing makes the possibility worth exploring carefully.

What interests me philosophically is the opportunity to give something neglected a new purpose.

I have never believed that value is determined solely by what is new or expensive.

Sometimes the more meaningful achievement is recognising the potential of something overlooked, then applying knowledge and effort to realise that potential.

An old house may have little practical value in its present condition. But the land, setting, and possibility of thoughtful reconstruction may offer something that a finished property cannot.

I want the design to be guided by how the home will actually be used.

It should be practical, comfortable, private, and connected to its natural surroundings.

Most importantly, it should not be a house designed around my preferences alone.

It should reflect the lives of two people.

Because someone I love has become an essential part of how I imagine my future.

G: love as a deeper form of belonging

There is someone in my life whom I will call G.

I love him deeply.

For much of my adult life, I have been accustomed to thinking independently, organising my affairs, and building a future through my own decisions.

I have learned to enjoy solitude. I am comfortable making decisions alone, and I do not need constant companionship to give my life purpose.

Yet loving G has made me think differently about what it means to build a meaningful life.

I still want to develop my knowledge, manage capital responsibly, and achieve financial independence.

Those ambitions remain important.

But I increasingly find myself thinking about something much simpler.

What would it mean to share an ordinary day with the person I love?

Not an extraordinary holiday or an expensive experience. Just the quiet continuity of everyday life.

Cooking together, spending time at home, enjoying the countryside, and having the freedom to pursue our own interests while remaining close to one another.

The thought of such a life means more to me than many achievements I once considered especially important.

When I imagine rebuilding the Japanese house, one of the first things I think about is a proper home gym.

G is exceptionally dedicated to training. Physical development and maintaining his fitness are fundamental parts of his life.

I admire this quality in him.

His commitment reflects something I value beyond physical appearance: consistency, effort, and the ability to maintain a demanding personal standard.

I want him to contribute his knowledge to the design of the gym.

The space should be genuinely functional, with a layout and equipment suited to his training. It should be somewhere he enjoys using every day, not an attractive room designed by someone who does not understand what serious training requires.

This may seem like an unusually specific consideration when thinking about a home in another country.

But to me, it reveals something important about love.

When we care deeply for someone, their daily needs and habits begin to matter to us.

We do not simply imagine that person participating in the life we have already designed.

We begin to consider how the life itself might be shaped by both people.

I want the house to reflect G’s preferences as well as mine, because the meaning of a shared home comes partly from the contribution each person makes to it.

His happiness matters to me independently of my own convenience.

And I find that a beautiful thing to recognise within myself.

Perhaps one of the deepest changes brought about by love is that our understanding of the future becomes less individual.

The question is no longer only what I want to achieve.

It also becomes what kind of life I want us to experience.

Wealth, belonging, and the purpose of freedom

There is a philosophical connection between these different parts of my future.

Cayman offers the foundation for economic independence.

Japan offers a cultural and intellectual environment that encourages the kind of personal development I value.

And G represents something neither wealth nor geography can provide on its own: a deeply personal reason for wanting to share the life I am building.

These are not competing ambitions.

They are different elements of what I increasingly understand to be a meaningful life.

In the past, I tended to think of freedom primarily in terms of independence.

The freedom to make decisions. The freedom to pursue knowledge. The freedom to organise my time and take responsibility for my own future.

I still believe those freedoms are essential.

But I now see that independence is not necessarily the final destination.

A person can be financially independent and still long for belonging.

They can possess considerable freedom without having someone with whom they wish to share it.

They can achieve professional success while remaining culturally disconnected from the environment around them.

This does not make their achievements meaningless. It reveals that human fulfilment has more than one dimension.

In my investment work, I spend considerable time thinking about how to allocate limited resources under uncertainty.

Life presents a similar problem, although its most important outcomes cannot always be expressed numerically.

Time is limited. Attention is limited. Our opportunities are not infinite.

And unlike financial capital, time cannot be recovered once it has been spent.

This makes the question of how we choose to live especially important.

I do not want to spend my life accumulating wealth without understanding what I want that wealth to make possible.

I want it to give me the independence to pursue intellectually demanding work, live in environments that reflect my values, and create a home that can accommodate the person I love.

I want to continue studying, improving, and becoming more capable.

But I also want to appreciate the ordinary experiences that make those efforts worthwhile.

Perhaps this is what I have been trying to understand.

Freedom is important because it gives us the ability to choose.

Culture matters because it influences the values and habits through which we exercise those choices.

Love matters because it can change what we choose to build.

And belonging emerges when the life we lead begins to feel consistent with the person we are, the values we hold, and the people who matter to us.

I still have much to learn, and many things I want to accomplish.

My ambitions have not become smaller.

If anything, they have become more demanding, because I am no longer thinking only about professional success.

I am thinking about the quality of the life that success should support.

Cayman is going to be my home. Japan will be a second home, connected to a philosophy that inspires me.

And in the future I am working towards, I want G beside me.

Not because I need another person to complete my achievements, but because I love him, and because some experiences become more meaningful when they are shared.

I have spent years learning how to become independent.

I am now learning something equally important.

The purpose of independence is not necessarily to live alone. It is to have the freedom to build a life worth sharing.

References

  1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “John Stuart Mill”. Academic discussion of Mill’s arguments in On Liberty (1859).
  2. Gelfand, M. J., et al., “Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study”, Science (2011).
  3. University of Tokyo, “日本文化はやはり窮屈” (“Japanese culture is indeed tight”) (2011). Research announcement documenting the country rankings.
  4. King’s College London, “UK public among most trusting in world, study finds” (2023). Based on World Values Survey data collected from 2017 to 2022.
  5. Statistics Bureau of Japan, “Results of the 2023 Housing and Land Survey” (2024).