A:I. The decided future: The Future Learning

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1. The Apocalypse

Passing every decade, people think that the future imagined seriously in the past has arrived. They also did in 2000 and 2010. And now it is 2020. Is 2020 really the mad future that humankind drew?

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Every year, many artists evaluate the contemporary by ruminating on the works made with the current year as a backdrop. The comparison between imagination and reality, which has continued since Baek Nam-Joon's Good Morning, Mr Orwell (1984), is now a lame subject. However, we still are enthusiastic about the apocalypse and long for the coming of more mad futures. 

As a generation that has experienced such nihilism and optimism even before birth, I sometimes get confused whether my life is the past, future, fantasy, reality or not. Three years after I was born, the world said it would collapse. A few years later, religious murders occurred countless times, macro-overlapping was observed a few years later, and the world would collapse a year later. Automatically tightening sneakers came out, and humankind found water on Mars, found black holes, and said humans would perish. Following that, the whole human race shared a network and made telepathic reality. And then there were two plagues. Due to fine dust, oxygen was sold, and gas masks were added one by one, and integrated record forms for all humankind were completed, and e-cigarettes were invented. Then, in April 2020, the plague broke out, and people lined up to buy masks every morning. And Trot (the kind of Korean folk song) was famous, and there was a vogue for stirring coffee or eggs 400 times, and a massive mass sexual assault case was found, and all schools in Korea began video lectures.

2020, a little different from what we thought, opened the door with the “lunatic” way enough. The expectations and futility of this insane future that we have faced each year for 2n years are now not exciting but exhausting. 

Is the future originally exhausting? Let's compare it with the situation in 2010. Were we still tired of this repetitive novelty? At that time, I was a middle school student, not yet studying arts, and then I was worried about how can I prevent from destroying my life with my school. A year before that, the movie, Avatar (2009) was released and pretended to become a Neo-civilization. And around that time, spreading a rumour that the world would be destroyed in 2012, the movie, 2012 (2009) was released. Moreover, “Cyworld” dropped the curtain in Korea, and “The North Face”, an outdoor brand, conquered Korea. That is right. “The North Face” spread. “The North Face.” Humankind eagerly looks forward to the way we can meet the future like the future, every year. At the beginning of every new decade, wasn't that humankind struggled somehow to resolve the expectation inflated by “How can we live a life similar to the future we dreamed of?” We are making the future and living in the future. And we are tired of the novelty expectations about these stories constantly repeating themselves.

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2. The Electronic Cigarette

If asked what the most futuristic product in contemporary society is, I would say the electronic cigarette. It is certain that the electronic cigarette is what humankind would never have imagined in the past. The cigarette no fire, the cigarette needing electric power. The electronic cigarette can be seen as a flow like flying boards or sneakers that tie strings by themselves. Useless but amazing, furthermore, needing electricity, I think that is the futurism. The shapes of the E-cigarette being developed are being designed toward futurism, and the colours are being chosen that of electronic equipment, such as a smartphone or a laptop. The closest thing to the actual future is the E-cigarette, which has never been imagined in the past.

It is also essential to know who the main customer base is using the E-cigarette. Most of the futurist products that have been imagined in the past are still far from or unlikely to be distributed than we imagined. But, because the E-cigarette was never pictured, we all can have it. Imagine the situation office workers huddling in every alley during lunchtime in a financial district of Seoul wearing dust masks and holding E-cigarettes in their mouths. Who could have imagined this in the past? Is not this the crazy future dreamed to us?

The reason the E-cigarette feels the most futuristic is probably because only the undetermined future is the actual future.

3. The Office worker in the Apocalypse generation

Nobody can deny that the 21st century is the period to dream a new leap forward and a collapse. The fantasy about the 21st century built from the 19th century overflowed already before the beginning of the 21st century. And we who have been growing up in expectation and futility about the future became the leading creators of the 21st century. So in what direction are the people, who are huddling in every alley during lunchtime in a financial district of Seoul wearing dust masks and holding E-cigarettes in their mouths, trying to make the contemporary era flow?

How are today’s office workers, tired of failing, living? Are they living well? They live a life that does not require motivation. No longer do they need to struggle to carry out their lives. However, the embodied instinct that they need the motivation to survive in nature makes them fall into contradictions about their lives. Then it makes them more exhausted. The reason they live without the need of their desire is that they live in the future. Their future was decided and confirmed by a number of their forebears, and there is no more need to change it. They have learned constantly the decided future from childhood. Are they not tired of the decided future?

We are not unnaturally living in the future, and we ignore the coming future. Even we cannot feel an appearance of the actual future. Perhaps it can be said that there is no position separated from society as much as the office workers of the Apocalypse generation.

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4. The Conversation with Office worker A

A got a job at a public corporation at 20 years old and worked for two years. His goal in his life is to get married, finish educating his children well, and then go down to the countryside to farm when he gets old. He said he had a goal in his life but felt that he was currently lacking motivation for his life. He also has a plan to change jobs. For that, he has been gathering various licenses and studying languages steadily. However, doing something constantly, he still feels heaviness in his life.

A continues to try something to get rid of his lethargy. He sought new hobbies, played MapleStory, the online game, or read books. However, they could not help him. They do not give purpose to life. They are just activities that make him forget life for a while.

His purpose in life is actually the goal that can be achieved if he continues to work as he has. Maybe it can also be said that he has already earned his goal. So that, the motivation of life is not necessary for him. Nevertheless, the motivation to live in nature still remains an instinct for him. On the other hand, in reality, his motivation is not a necessary instinct in that he is already living a designed future. In the differential between instinct and reality, he calls himself an unmotivated person and is depressed.

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5. About the Apocalypse generation

It is defined as the generation living while experiencing the content of the apocalypse. Generations living in the future imagined by people in the past and feeling serene in disaster and suffering from insensitivity to the future in the confirmed future. (Here, Apocalypse refers not only to the real Apocalypse prophets and Revelation books but also to the imagination of all kinds of future in the past.)

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6. The Decided Future

We are living in the decided future. The decided future induces us to move automatically and produce automatically. And many humans of today are complying with this teaching. Getting tired of sharing the same culture with the public or saying that time flies without knowing how a year has passed is sometimes a moment to recognize that you are living in a decided future. The movements we can do are decided already. The same goes for me. Art movements are also the activities that produce works considered appropriate in the current flow. Since prenatal education, we have been educated about the future, and the future is about to automate more for a more definite future. In the meantime, only a really sudden evolution, like the E-cigarette or gimbap† flavoured jelly, makes us realize that we are conquered in the future.

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† Korean dish made from cooked rice and ingredients such as vegetables, fish and meats that are rolled in gim—dried sheets of seaweed—and served in bite-sized slices.

15th June. 2020

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A:II. The decided future: retirement

1. Believers

Professor Kim Gyun Sang infers the function of religion dealing with the apocalypse from the paper The Religion-Social Function of Eschatology published in Ethnicity and Culture in 1999 interestingly. He asserts that the doctrine dealing with the apocalypse is the result of a complex manifestation of resignation and despair toward the present world and a sense of ownership that is expressed through attachment to humankind. In other words, the function of the apocalypse is the belief that a new world will open if one can find and do the only thing one can do in despair and endure until the moment of judgment. With this belief, Jewish believers are enduring the 2000-years history of exploitation. Also, we can look at the history of support through religion in Korean modern and contemporary history, in the form of doing what is possible and waiting for the apocalypse. A typical example would be that the sects of Christianity or Chondoism† during the Japanese colonial period played the role of spiritual pillars of the civilian independence movement.

However, there are two major problems with religion dealing with the apocalypse. The first is that the believers are objects and subjects to be judged by the judges who practice the apocalypse. In other words, they are the main characters who spread the doctrine to humankind, but on the other hand, they are the people who will be judged. The believers constantly struggle between being the priest and being the accused. The second is that their endurance has an ending. There is a belief that when the creation of the new world comes, they will be dramatically compensated for all the adversity they have suffered. But that hope for the future makes them indifferent to the sorrows of the present.

† 20th-century Korean Pantheistic religion, based on the 19th-century Donghak religious movement.

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2. A Passing Seon-bi†

A, the office worker, said, “I have a goal in life, but I feel that I am lacking in motivation in my life.” His lack of motivation with goals stems from the conflict between the fact that he is living a life that has already achieved his goals and the fact that he has the will to survive embodied in nature, namely, that he has a purposiveness. It is wandering between a life living in a decided future and a will, aspired automatically, to pioneer the future.

In 2013, broadcaster Noh Hong-cheol interviewed an office worker in the “Physiognomy” episode of MBC’s variety show Infinite Challenge. At the time, he said to an office worker, “What is an office worker? ... In terms of rank, are you a commoner or an aristocrat?” and the office worker replied, “Slave.”

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The office worker A, who had been a job seeker, realized his self-actualization by becoming an office worker. But the result of A's self-actualization was to become a slave. Deprived of his ego as a result of his self-actualization, he is looking for another job to relieve his despair. He knows that this effort will result in the same sense of deprivation as before. Nevertheless, he tries to get a new job to recognize that his ego exists “now” and feel that he is alive. He believes that the only way to liberate his ego, which has no choice but to be subordinated to the bondage of the employment, is to be liberated from the bondage, that is, salvation through retirement at the age of 65. Therefore, he is enduring his best in the reincarnation of his job for liberation through retirement in his later years.

† (Scholar) A Confucian term referring to a person or class that embodies the Confucian ideology, especially as a title for a person with knowledge and character.

 [Source: Encyclopedia of Korean National Culture (Scholar)] 

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3. The Domination by the Future

Lee Jang-rim's Dami Mission incident in 1992, Harold Camping's Rapture Theory in 1994, Heaven's Gate Massive Suicide in 1997, Nostradamus' Prophecy in 1999, Millennium burg in 2000, Planet X in 2005, prophecy on the site, The Bizarre or Truth, in 2009, Harold Camping's rapture theory in 2011, Mayan calendar prophecy in 2012, etc.: we have been tired of the futile end of the eschatology. I hope that A's retirement, the office worker, will not be such a futile end.

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4. The Office Inventory

The first attempt to deal with the apocalypse generation is to record the environment where the apocalypse generation lives, namely an office. I hope to catch a glimpse of office workers through the office where they spend a third of their day.

However, the objects here, which are difficult to arouse interest in any way, only seem to have exhausted their lives as objects. Office objects such as staplers, 

A4 paper, monitors, laptops, tumblers, etc., have been used by thousands of office workers for futile reasons. But, then, have they lost their pioneering instinct to spread impressive senses to observers as objects?

It would be right to accuse the user, accumulating impressive senses of these objects, of the reason office objects display impressive senses of resignation. The insensitive life of the user and office worker was projected onto these objects, and I also feel insensitivity watching these objects. But if this sense of insensitivity and resignation is due to the use of office supplies by office workers, the impressive sense of these objects mixed with insensitivity and resignation is directly related to the sense of despair about their ego that the office worker feels in the decided future. In other words, the lack of interest that these products emit represents an office worker who is becoming insensitive in the wheel of the workplace.

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5. Seon-bi

Office workers remind me of many things. They are sometimes like a priest, sometimes like a slave, like a judge, or like an accused. Or they are like Seon-bi, the literati and scholar officers during the Goryeo and Joseon Dynasty.

Students preparing for administrative or bar exams are often compared to Confucian students preparing for the Gwageo, the highest-level state Confucian-based examination, to recruit ranking officials during the Goryeo and Joseon Dynasty. Likewise, people who passed the examination are often compared to passing the Gwageo. Until the early 2000s, it was common for community service centres to hang placards saying congratulations to those who passed the examination.

As the hiring crisis has worsened, such metaphors are not limited to administrative and bar exams but gradually expanded to include hiring large corporations, civil servants, and public corporations. So more and more workers are becoming Seon-bi. But it cannot be said that this metaphor has become lighter because the reality is that finding a job is becoming increasingly complex. The careers prepared by job seekers to become ordinary office workers are becoming vast enough to be second only to studying Confucian knowledge for the Gwageo. Therefore, employment can act as a true self-evaluation for workers and job seekers. However, it is questionable whether the conclusion of their evaluation is indeed Seon-bi. And the question “Am I the Seon-bi?” creates a sense of despair that arises from the contradiction between their self-actualization experienced by office workers and their position obtained as a result. Their result of passing the Gwageo is to enter the cycle of repeated failure of the apocalypse.

Even before they are born, while studying, preparing for a job, and working, they constantly experience failures in their attempts. In the struggle of “Am I a scholar or a slave?”, what will they conclude when they face retirement?

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6. Chronicles of the Apocalypse

Religions dealing with apocalypses in Korea's modern and contemporary history appear quite often. And if we look at the background of the times in which such religions arose, we can find the commonality that it was a period of social darkness. Beginning with the Donghak Peasant Revolution in the 19th century, Chondoist at the end of the Dae Han Empire, and Gil Seon-ju’s The Theory of Degenerate Age during the Japanese colonial period are examples of religion dealing with the apocalypse that can be observed in modern history. They all asserted that the time was near the end of the age, and they wished for national liberation, saying that the people would be saved from adversity through messianic reformism. In other words, they wanted the judges to judge a desperate society. Even after independence, religions dealing with the apocalypse continued to emerge. From Jeungsando in the 1970s, Shincheonji in the 1980s, Dami Mission in the 1990s, to the Millennium Bug (Y2K) after the IMF, they are proving that Korea’s modern and contemporary history has not been consistently smooth.

And such religions dealing with the apocalypse will be in line with the endless attempts to prove the self of the office worker A in the future. In history, the moments of the emergence of religions dealing with apocalypse will be the proof of A's personal self, and hope for the creation of the new heaven and world will become the hope for A's retirement.

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27th Dec. 2020