Courtesy of Brian Wertheim

It's an understatement to say that times have changed. But this is not just to say that a passage of time has taken place or that certain things have disappeared. How we take photos, how we consume the news, how we contact our loved ones and how we measure our worth as humans have all undergone a fundamental shift. We have access to everything but own nothing. Our music, our houses, and our accounts are all temporary. But the internet is forever…at least until the bombs come.

Now everything is recorded, stored, and created. Because dead internet theory suggests that the amount of AI generated content will soon overtake human-created content, we are becoming weighed down by that which is behind us. There is simply too much to hear, to see, to consume and to understand. We have become a backward-looking people.

It's not anything new to talk about how people today are enraptured with 90s and early 2000s vibes. This doesn't just apply to clothing styles, music, and television dramas. It also shows how young people today have a largely backward-facing mindset. Psychologically, a lot of them choose to live in the past. It's safe. Warm. Inhabited by knowable results and doesn't contain any uncertainty. The future, meanwhile, is largely seen negatively. There's nothing there but likely destruction and worsening political and economic conditions.

The ideological future

Think about ten years in the future from a young person's perspective? Will it be easier to buy a house? Will it be cheaper to buy a cup of coffee? Will our political leaders be of a better class? Will companies have forgone greed and made genuine efforts to live with the planet? Not very likely. Things will get harder. This is why many have chosen to live in the past, psychologically as well as culturally. This is not memory itself but rather a reconstruction of the past. A collective imagining of what never was. Telling us more about the present from which it is written and the future which it abandons than the past which it purportedly describes.

The difficult political and ideological discussions required to create a new future, ones which previously turned Koreans from minjung (people) to sinmin (citizens), have been replaced by concerns over self-expression, leisure, and entertainment. Our most powerful creative forces are no longer devastating critiques of power nor visions of a political alternative but instead portrayals of individual people living their best lives, apolitically and in the moment. Those who look beautiful and say nothing, who eschew drugs and dangerous conversations, who never yuck the yum of the other. These are the idols of today, catapulted to stardom. Promoted by media and conglomerates alike as the safe face of youth for their billion dollar corporations.

To talk about politics and ideology is seen as dreadfully uncool. It carries with it a large weight and brands anyone who does as troublesome. "Don't make things worse when we're already struggling to pay rent and afford a can of Monster." Ideology not only ended, it was replaced by mass media and culture. Films and music with blissfully positive messages and happy endings everywhere. Instagram stories with selfies, coffees, clouds, concerts, and more coffee. But rarely an idea. Never a vision for a new society that moves beyond the hegemonic control of humans as homo economicus. You are either for the capitalist system that has raised our living standards to include health care so we can work more, 24-hour shopping so we can buy more, and 24-hour access to a phone so we can donate our attention more, or you are a communist. And communism doesn't work because -- North Korea, China, Cuba. Cultural revolutions, tens of millions dead. Authoritarian leaders and children killing their parents.

To be clear this is not about capitalism, nor communism. Those visions are the past. They are what has happened. They are the weight of our collective history as humans. But what comes next? What is a new vision of politics, society, and life that will take us away from our current predicament? Everywhere I look I see the past: whether it's in Korea, the United States, Western Europe, or Russia. People looking to visions of yesteryear because we are not creating anything new. Are we incapable of moving beyond Marx, Hayek, and Neoliberalism? Was that the best the human mind can conjure up?

Fear and sex

Perhaps the immense tragedies of the 20th century still weigh upon us. Perhaps we are afraid to create something new because what if we repeat the horrific chimneys of Auschwitz or the Killing Fields? Better instead to just mutter under our breath at the increasingly laughable quality of leaders being offered to us, the life-long debt forced upon us to read books and have a house, and the banal emptiness of conversation offered by those with influence.

It is perhaps no wonder that some people have turned to make one's sex and gender the most important thing of the age. BR Myers once remarked that academics are so focused on Korean pop music and culture because if they talked about the reality of Korean history or politics in a serious and nuanced manner, they'd be cancelled immediately. Contemporary culture's fixation on what genitals people have or where they like to put them is, in some way, another sign of this predicament. Who cares if we have a corrupt ruling class and no vision of the future to provide a better use of our resources than an increasingly small cohort of individuals collecting all the wealth while everyone acts for themselves? At least we celebrated different genders and sexuality for a while! I'm certainly not against any of the communities, I like a lot of the music, and count many of them as friends. Perhaps it's just the British inside me that prudishly wants everyone to simply shag and let shag but do so behind closed doors.

Whereas the past was previously shunned and the future was discussed immensely, so to was politics and ideology the focus of culture and conversation while things of a sexual nature were left to whispers. Both of those dynamics have reversed. And so we're left looking at the past and talking about sex instead of looking to the future and talking about life. This is not the end of history, nor the end of ideology. It's the end of believing there are solutions to our problems. It's the end of hope, in a way. It's time we reimagined time. Or perhaps we will become history.

David A. Tizzard has a doctorate 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. He can be reached at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.