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.

Ode to the young

They are devoid of meaning. Their gods have been killed. Their tasks removed. And the capitalist system tells them, endlessly, buy, buy, buy. Be yourself. Be happy. Be YOU! That is the ultimate goal in life: to be an authentic product. A collector's item. A unique commodity. Irreplaceable. A constant state of becoming the next thing you are meant to be. It costs money. You will be alone. You will compete. But it is the path to success. The century of the self. The planet of one. The temple of my selfies.

Careless angels are in charge. They give us disease. A pain in our being, feeding off us. And if only we pay the cost, they will be gone. Shut your eyes, don't look. These are the times we are scared of. Fate haunts us. The winners and losers will be clear. We fake our smiles.

Our proverbs, collective wisdom, and religious texts all warned us of such folly. Seek not yourself. Do not pursue narcissism. Find beauty in the other. Pride comes before the fall. No man is an island. These ideas held on for so long because they not only matter, they point to a truth. A deep truth. Something that carries across the eons, transcending national borders and fleeting cultural changes. As humans, we are not of today. We are not of yesterday. Instead, we are of an immense age. Carrying tens of thousands of years of programing inside us. Just as a dog will always be a dog, and a fish will always be a fish, so we as humans will always be a human.

And there is an instruction manual to this life. More than one, in fact. And they all remind us that we are meant not to exist for ourselves. That, in the grand scheme of things, we do not matter. Zoom out and we become one in a great chain of existence. Only by becoming part of the chain do we become great. But if we seek to become great, we break the chain.

The message of the apple blossom

Bernardo Kastrup is a philosopher gaining a lot of traction online for his views on Idealism. The basic proposition of this being that the world is Mind. One Mind. The reality of the world is not the material condition we see in front of us. This is just the physical manifestation of the reality which lies beneath. In the same way, we as humans are defined not by our bodies but a deeper reality. When we experience sadness, this manifests physically in tears. But the sadness is a reality within us. Our body is a reflection of something unique to us, something Schopenhauer called "will." Deep down, beyond the religion, the culture, the society and the ego, there is a unique thing of me. Something not necessarily called David

The world, for Bernardo, operates in a similar way. Just as our body is a reflection of internal world, so is the external reality a manifestation of a singular internal world. We are all part of this world but dissociated. We have forgotten our connection to the singular existence.

The forgetfulness is, in a sense, necessary. The world is a difficult place and we need to survive. It's no good telling ourselves that time isn't real and nation-states are social constructs. Race is just an ideology and progressive and conservative politics are born from the same seed. That might be the truth but we need to navigate reality otherwise we will stumble and fall. Everywhere and anywhere.

So what meaning do we have? What, amidst all of these words, do we take away from our role in life? Bernardo taught me a very important lesson during our recent conversation. Instead of happiness, we should seek service. We should be like an apple on a tree. Our existence is dependent not only on the tree from which we were born, but it is also our duty to grow, ripen, fall, and then make way for the next apple. If we try to break this chain, if we seek to make the world about us, we face only disappointment, despair, and a death we cannot bear. Only through service can we dance with the incredible lightness of being required from us. We should be a violin and allow ourselves to be played by nature. To be open, receptive, and in tune with the world and people around us. Listen, learn, and let go. It is only through such behavior that we truly gain something worthwhile.

A mantra

I approach all of this with a mantra I have tried to instill in my hundreds of students recently: No fear, no anger, no envy. The last one is probably the hardest. We are encouraged to compete, to judge, to post, to compare, to score, and evaluate. But when I tell them their lives are about more than them and their own happiness, they look at me strange. Like they know that's true. They know that's what their grandparents would tell them. Or the person at the church, temple, or mosque if they still went. They know that the old wisdom would be beneficial to their lives. And so they sit in silence. Taking it in. Absorbing. Realizing. Until they move. They come to me. They speak, without fear, without anger, and without envy. They wake up. They see what life is. And slowly, so very slowly, everything becomes a little bit easier. Everything starts to make sense. There is meaning.

Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social-cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the "Korea Deconstructed" podcast, which can be found online.