Prologue. The Standards Were Not Born in the Future

— Why, in the Age of AI, We Are Called Back to the Past

We often say things like this:

“This is a completely new era.”

“AI is a change humanity has never experienced before.”

But if we take a step back,

this statement is only half true.

The technology is new.

But the experience of losing our standards is not.

Whenever standards collapse, humanity asks the same question

Looking back at history,

moments when standards fell apart

always looked strangely similar.

Each time, people began to ask:

“Then what should we live by now?”

The anxiety of the AI era

is simply the latest version

of this ancient question.

AI is not the beginning of standards — it is their accelerator

AI may feel like the first force

to threaten human judgment.

But what AI actually did was simpler:

We didn’t lose our standards.

We handed them over.

Why we return to the past

This is why this series

calls back saints, philosophers, and artists.

Not because they “had the right answers,”

but because they all lived through eras

where standards had collapsed.

They had to set their own standards.

It looks remarkably like our time.

So similar that it deserves to be reread.

What they left behind

The figures we will examine in this series

share one common trait.

They did not leave answers.

They left standards.

That is why their names

are called back

whenever an era changes.

What it means to read the past in the age of AI

This series is not an attempt

to romanticize the past.

Nor is it a rejection of AI.

It is an attempt to revisit

the original ways humans created standards,

in order to live through the AI era.

The more technology tries to become the standard,

the more we must look back

at moments when humans themselves created one.

How this series hopes to be read

Not like this:

“That person was amazing.” ❌

“So what am I supposed to do now?” ❌

But instead, leaving this question behind:

“If I were in that situation,
what would I have chosen as my standard?”

If that question remains,

this series has already done its job.

Where the connections meet

The AI series asked

how future standards are created.

This series looks back

at how standards were created in the past.

And the two questions meet at one conclusion:

Standards have never begun with technology,
but with human attitude.

History moves in cycles.

And the way standards are created

repeats itself with surprising consistency.

Now,

let’s step into

the original pattern of that repetition.

Episode 1. Why Do Some Ideas Remain Standards Even After 2,000 Years?

Every era produces countless ideas.

Most disappear.

Some survive in textbooks.

And only a very small few become standards.

We often say:

“That’s an old way of thinking.”

And yet, something feels strange.

Philosophy from 2,000 years ago is still quoted.

Art created centuries ago is still called “classic.”

The ways of thinking of people long dead

are still used to explain judgments today.

Why?

What long-lasting ideas have in common

Ideas that remain as standards

share one clear trait.

They did not try to explain their era.

Instead,

they touched the way humans judge.

They did not leave answers to

“What is right,”

but to

“How do we decide what is right?”

That is why,

even when eras change,

they can be taken out and used again.

A standard is not an answer.

It is a framework for thinking.

The difference between trends and standards

Trends respond to the problems of their time.

Current anxieties.

Current technologies.

Current conflicts.

That is why they are consumed quickly

and disappear just as fast.

Standards are different.

They are reused when anxiety repeats.

They are recalled when conflict arises.

They are summoned when judgment wavers.

A standard is an idea

that remains usable

even when the problem changes.

When are standards created?

Here is something interesting.

People who created standards

were rarely figures of stable times.

In those moments,

standards were born.

Standards are not products of calm eras,

but the result of attitudes

that endured confusion.

What standard-makers refused to do

The figures covered in this series

share another common choice.

They did not:

Instead,

they left uncomfortable questions.

And those questions

survived across eras.

A standard is not a “correct answer,” but a center

To create a standard

is not to give everyone the same answer.

In fact, it is the opposite.

That is why standards

do not look like commands.

They do not say, “Follow me.”

They simply say, “Return here.”

Why reread these people now?

In the age of AI,

we are losing standards again.

Judgment is automated.

Choice is replaced by recommendation.

Thinking begins on top of defaults.

That is why we return to the past.

Every time standards disappeared,

humans recreated them

in remarkably similar ways.

We return

to see that original pattern.

What this series sets out to do

This series does not praise great figures.

Instead, in every episode,

it holds onto one question:

“What did this person choose as their standard,
and what did they refuse to abandon to the end?”

Through their answers,

we will inevitably ask:

“If it were me,
what kind of standard would I have created?”

Episode 2. Socrates — The Man Who Rejected the Standard of the Majority

Socrates

left behind no books.

He organized no theories.

And yet, he became a standard.

This was no accident.

What Socrates left behind

was not answers,

but a way of creating standards.

Why did he say, “I know that I know nothing”?

Socrates’ most famous statement is this:

“I know that I know nothing.”

This was not an expression of humility.

It was a deliberate act of emptying the standard.

In Athens at the time,

there were already countless standards.

Socrates asked the same question of all of them:

“Why is that right?”

Socrates’ standard was not the “correct answer”

He did not present correct answers.

Instead,

he led others to collapse on their own.

Through this process,

people became uncomfortable.

Because they realized

that what they had called “their standard”

was something they had borrowed.

Why did he become a dangerous man?

Socrates did not threaten political power.

He did not overthrow institutions.

And yet, he was executed.

The reason is simple.

He continuously destabilized

the standards of the majority.

Statements like:

did not work on him.

He always demanded

a question one level deeper.

The core of the standard Socrates created

The standard Socrates left behind

can be summarized in one sentence:

“What you have examined yourself
must matter more than what the majority believes.”

For him, a standard was not

something given from the outside,

but something inspected from within.

Why he left no writings

Socrates leaving no writings

was not accidental.

Writing turns thought

into a fixed standard.

He wanted moving questions,

not frozen answers.

The moment a standard is written down,

it risks becoming dogma.

Left as a question,

it remains alive.

Socrates’ standard is still uncomfortable today

In the age of AI,

Socrates remains dangerous.

When we say:

Socrates asks the same questions:

“Why do you think that?”
“Whose standard is this judgment based on?”

That is why

he is still summoned today.

The question Socrates left behind

From the perspective of this series,

the standard Socrates left us is this:

Before following a standard,
become the one who questions it.

With this single attitude,

he endured for 2,000 years.

Episode 3. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0} — A Standard That Created Order in Chaos

If Socrates was the one

who taught people to doubt existing standards,

Confucius was the one

who rebuilt standards

that could still be used

after the world had collapsed.

They may seem like opposites,

but their attitude toward standards

is strikingly similar.

Why didn’t Confucius create a “new philosophy”?

The era Confucius lived in

was a time of broken order.

In this moment,

Confucius did not call for revolution.

He did not invent a radically new theory.

What he did instead

was re-align standards that already existed.

Confucius did not ask:

“What must be new?”

He asked:

“What must remain to the very end?”

His standard was not emotion, but structure

Confucius is often misunderstood

as a moralist.

But his core was not a call

to simply “be good.”

Ritual (Li) was not emotion,

but a structure for behavior.

Humaneness (Ren) was not sentiment,

but a standard for relationships.

Confucius understood something crucial.

Emotions change.

Structures can be repeated.

So his standards did not aim

at individual virtue,

but at the minimum conditions

for society to function again.

Why were his standards conservative — and enduring?

Confucius is often labeled conservative.

And yet,

his standards survived

for more than 2,000 years.

The reason is simple.

Confucius did not design his standards

for ideal humans,

but for real ones.

He assumed imperfection,

and created standards

that imperfect humans

could repeatedly uphold.

Why did Confucius choose repetition over questioning?

Socrates questioned endlessly.

Confucius was different.

He:

This was not a difference in intelligence,

but a difference in historical need.

Some eras require questioning.

Others require fixing standards in place.

Confucius lived in a time

when stability mattered more than doubt.

Confucius’ standard was not about “choosing what’s right”

One important point.

Confucius’ standard

does not ask us to choose

what is right.

Instead, it asks:

“Does this action
destroy relationships,
or sustain them?”

His standard focused not on outcomes,

but on sustainability.

That is why his thought

is repeatedly recalled

in politics,

organizations,

and education.

Why read Confucius again in the age of AI?

The age of AI

is entering another era of disorder.

In this context,

Confucius seems to say:

“No matter how efficient,
a standard that destroys relationships
will not last.”

The faster technology becomes,

the more important order grows.

The standard Confucius left behind

Framed in this series’ question,

Confucius left us this standard:

A standard is not a blade that cuts right from wrong,
but a structure that allows people to endure together.

That is why Confucius

appeared in an age of chaos,

and is summoned again

whenever order is needed.

Episode 4. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0} — A Standard That Guarded Against Extremes

If Socrates

shook standards through questions,

and Confucius

reconstructed order,

Aristotle stands between them and asks:

“Then how far should we go?”

His answer is famous,

yet often misunderstood.

The Mean (Mesotes).

Many interpret it as compromise

or bland moderation.

But Aristotle’s mean

means something entirely different.

The mean is not the middle — it is the precise point

For Aristotle,

the mean is not half.

Courage is:

Generosity is:

He believed this:

A standard always exists as a single point,

and that point shifts with context.

The mean, then,

is not a lazy choice,

but the one that demands

the greatest amount of judgment.

Why did Aristotle emphasize situation?

Earlier standards tended to rely on:

Aristotle did not simply follow these.

He asked:

“Is this right, here and now?”

As a result, his philosophy

resembles a skill of judgment

more than a set of abstract commands.

A standard is not something to memorize.

It is something to calculate again, every time.

Why did he build systems?

Aristotle did not stop at asking questions.

He built frameworks:

He systematized standards

so they could be reused.

Because a standard that relies only

on individual intuition

will eventually collapse again.

To survive, a standard must be:

In this sense,

Aristotle was not only a philosopher,

but also a designer.

Why did his standard endure?

Aristotle’s standard was:

It assumed:

Humans are rational,

yet also imperfect.

Rules are necessary,

but rules alone are insufficient.

This balance

is what allowed his standard

to be used for centuries.

Extremes are easy.

The mean is difficult.

That is why

the mean becomes a standard.

Why read Aristotle again in the age of AI?

AI favors extremes.

But life

is rarely that simple.

Aristotle seems to remind us:

“The most efficient choice
is not always the best one.”

In front of AI’s “optimal solution,”

we must ask again:

“Does this fit the situation right now?”

This question

is Aristotle’s standard.

The standard Aristotle left behind

Framed by this series’ question,

the standard he left is this:

A standard is not a fixed answer decided once,
but a judgment recalculated for every situation.

That is why his thought

continues to be used

in policy,

organizations,

ethics,

and education

even today.

Episode 5. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0} — The Man Who Became a Standard by Erasing Boundaries

Socrates left questions.

Confucius rebuilt order.

Aristotle designed balance.

Leonardo da Vinci

became a standard

in a completely different way.

He did not create a standard.

He erased the boundaries

that divided standards in the first place.

Why didn’t he stay in a single field?

We remember Leonardo

as a painter.

Or we call him

an inventor,

a scientist,

an anatomist.

But these labels

were applied by later generations.

For Leonardo,

art and science were not separated.

Sensation and reason were not divided.

Observation and imagination did not live apart.

What mattered to him

was not the discipline,

but the phenomenon itself.

He did not ask:

“Is this an artistic problem or a scientific one?”

He asked:

“How does this work?”

Leonardo’s standard was observation

Leonardo’s countless notebooks

share a single attitude.

He did not accept authority as truth.

He did not rely on existing theory.

He dissected bodies

to understand human anatomy firsthand.

He drew the flow of water

to grasp the structure of nature.

For Leonardo,

a standard was not found in books,

but in reality itself.

Why he left processes instead of finished answers

One fascinating fact:

Leonardo left behind

far more unfinished sketches

than completed works.

This was not negligence.

It was intentional.

He valued

the trace of thinking in motion

more than the final result.

Instinctively, he understood:

A standard is not

a completed answer,

but the way thought moves.

Why Leonardo became a standard

Leonardo never founded a theory.

He never created a school.

And yet,

he became the standard

of the “Renaissance human.”

The reason is clear.

His way of thinking

was not bound

to the problems of a single era.

Observation → Connection → Reinterpretation

This structure works

regardless of time.

That is why Leonardo

is a standard for:

Why read Leonardo again in the age of AI?

AI loves boundaries.

Everything is classified.

Everything is separated.

Leonardo stands at the opposite end.

“Question the boundary first.”

In front of AI-generated categories,

Leonardo seems to ask:

“Why must these two things
be separated at all?”

This question

is becoming more important today.

The standard Leonardo left behind

Framed by this series’ central question,

Leonardo left us this standard:

Standards are not created by following classifications,
but by connecting phenomena.

That is why Leonardo

remains not the standard of specialists,

but the standard

of a thinking human being.

Episode 6. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0} — The Exception Who Broke the Rules and Became the Standard

If Leonardo da Vinci

became a standard by erasing boundaries,

Beethoven became a standard

by breaking rules.

But there is one crucial difference.

Beethoven did not break

just any rule.

He broke only the rules

that could no longer serve as standards.

Why did help start as a rebel?

Before Beethoven,

music followed a clear order.

Beethoven was not ignorant of this system.

He understood it better than most.

That is why he did not ask:

“Should we abolish the rules?”

Instead, he asked:

“Are these rules still alive?”

Beethoven’s destruction was not chaos

To his contemporaries,

Beethoven’s music felt excessive.

But his destruction always moved in one direction.

Forms were broken,

but meaning grew stronger.

He did not destroy order.

He elevated the level

at which order could exist.

Why did Beethoven become “classical”?

Many artists break rules.

Most end as deviations.

Beethoven became a standard

for three reasons.

Beethoven did not flee

after breaking the rules.

He stayed

and built new ones in their place.

That is why he was

both a revolutionary

and a classic.

Why did he refuse to hide his pain?

The strongest force in Beethoven’s music

is not technique.

Not structure.

It is suffering.

As he lost his hearing,

he did not aestheticize pain.

He left discomfort inside the music itself.

This attitude was dangerous at the time.

But it is precisely this

that made him a standard.

A standard is not built

from perfection,

but from traces of endurance.

Why read Beethoven again in the age of AI?

AI creates

Beethoven seems to answer:

“The more perfect the form becomes,
the more meaning can drain away.”

In front of AI-generated plausibility,

Beethoven’s standard becomes sharper.

The standard Beethoven left behind

Framed by this series’ question,

Beethoven left us this standard:

Destruction worthy of becoming a standard
does not tear down order,
but creates an order that can endure more.

That is why Beethoven

did not remain an exception,

but became

a new classic.

Episode 7. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0} — The Thinker Who Moved the Standard from Outside to Within

If Beethoven

broke existing order

and left new rules behind,

Nietzsche asked

a more dangerous question.

“Who decided those rules in the first place?”

Nietzsche did not try to fix standards.

He relocated them.

Why did Nietzsche doubt every standard?

Nietzsche lived in an age

overflowing with standards.

Before all of this,

Nietzsche asked one thing.

“Whose life does this standard serve?”

He was less concerned with

whether a standard was right or wrong,

and more with

whether it made humans stronger

or weaker.

The real meaning of “God is dead”

Nietzsche’s most misunderstood line is:

“God is dead.”

This was not a declaration

against religion.

His real question was this:

“When external standards disappear,
what will we live by?”

Nietzsche understood something crucial.

When external standards collapse,

people become free—

and directionless at the same time.

Nietzsche’s standard: inner order

Nietzsche did not say,

“Live however you want.”

He demanded something far harder.

The “Übermensch” he spoke of

was not a superior human,

but a human capable of

bearing their own standards.

Moving standards inward

is not freedom.

It is accepting

total responsibility.

Why Nietzsche remains dangerous

Nietzsche’s philosophy

was never meant to be copied.

In unprepared hands,

it can slide into nihilism

or become an excuse

to reject all standards.

That is why

Nietzsche is always dangerous.

And yet,

he is always summoned

when standards collapse.

When external rules stop working,

Nietzsche cannot be avoided.

Why Nietzsche returns in the age of AI

AI represents

the ultimate external standard.

In this era,

Nietzsche seems to ask:

“Can you truly bear
the standard you’ve handed over?”

The moment we surrender standards to AI,

Nietzsche’s question

cuts deeper.

The standard Nietzsche left behind

Framed by this series’ question,

Nietzsche left us this standard:

A standard loses power
the moment it is imposed from outside,
and gains meaning only when
it is fully borne from within.

That is why Nietzsche remains

dangerous,

and why he never disappears.

Episode 8 (Final). Standards Transcend Time, but the Way We Bear Them Evolves

This series was not written

to line up great figures.

From the beginning,

we kept asking the same question.

“What did this person take as their standard,
and what did they refuse to give up?”

Now it is time

to gather that question

into a single flow.

Standards survive not as content, but as mechanisms

The figures in this series

lived in completely different eras,

spoke different languages,

and faced different problems.

Yet they share one thing.

Their standards did not tell people

what to believe.

Instead, they left behind

how to judge.

That is why,

when judgment wavers,

they are always called back.

The flow of those who made standards

They may seem to contradict one another.

In reality,

they are repeating the same question

in the language of different eras.

Standards are always born in crisis

These figures share the same backdrop.

Strikingly,

we stand in a similar place today.

Judgment is automated.

Choice is replaced by recommendation.

Standards disappear into systems.

This is why the question of standards

is not about the past.

It is a question of now.

Why standards return to humans in the age of AI

AI excels at

applying standards.

But AI does not choose them.

These decisions

remain human.

Technology can execute standards,

but it cannot justify them.

Standards move closer to the individual

Seen as a whole,

standards have moved like this:

External authority →
Social order →
Judgment as skill →
Connected thinking →
Creative destruction →
Internal responsibility

In other words,

standards have steadily moved inward.

The age of AI

pushes this trajectory to its limit.

Now the question is no longer,

“Who said this?”

It is:

“Can you take responsibility for it?”

How this series ends

Those Who Made Standards

is not a tribute to the past.

It exists to remind us of one thing.

Standards have always existed.

What is rare

is the courage to take them back up.

In the age of AI,

what we may need most

is not a new philosophy,

but the restoration of

a stance toward standards.

Final sentence

Standards transcend time.
What changes is how we carry them.

The final question now belongs to the reader.

“Which standard will I choose,
and how much responsibility can I bear?”

The moment you hold on to that question,

you are no longer

a consumer of standards.

You are standing

on the side that makes them.