Courtesy of Mohamed Nohassi

David Tizzard

Human existence is a funny thing. We are smart. We are stupid. We are capable of breathtaking feats of beauty, heart wrenching moments of cruelty, and pure nihilism as we sit, glued to a rectangular square, watching video after video play, showing everything but teaching nothing. Some believe we are driven by power, some by pleasure. Viktor Frankl, however, explored our need for meaning. His was the suggestion that if we have a why, we can endure any what. Make us taskless, jobless animals and we expire. Provide our lives with a purpose, and we flourish.

When we experience meaningless, we become more prone to addiction and depression. The likelihood of us falling into ennui increases. And from that position, we then seek to fill the void in our lives with hedonistic pleasure, porn, materialism, greed and all sorts of neurotic obsessions. We aim our existence at happiness and find only the opposite. Instead of revolution, we get depression. This is modernity. This is Korea — a country far safer, freer and developed than it has been at any time in its history. And yet the media tells us everyone is unhappy.

Perhaps people are not unhappy. Maybe they are struggling for meaning. The great goals of the country have been achieved. The military has been overthrown. The fields have been turned into shopping malls. The women released from their cultural straightjackets. But now what? Where is the "why" of all of this? For what purpose has all this been achieved? To kick dirt in Japan’s face? To show Pyongyang they chose the wrong path? Most young people care about neither of those.

They are devoid of meaning. Their gods have been killed. Their tasks removed. And the capitalist........

© The Korea Times