In the days before the internet and telephones, people met and talked, wrote letters, and read books. Then, when the telephone was invented, people began to make calls. It was good that they could share news even when far apart, but with the thought that they could call anytime and the pressure of call charges, deep conversations decreased, and short conversations focused on greetings and news increased. A significant portion of letters was replaced by telephones and telegrams. The thick, multi-page letters written carefully by hand over a long period drastically decreased, and short exchanges focused on a few sentences of news increased.
When the internet was invented, letters were rapidly replaced by email. Mail became a means of exchanging only necessary official documents or checks, and communication between people changed to the form of email, which could be exchanged for free several times a day. Emails exceeding the length of a single sheet of paper became rare. Because they could be sent again at any time. Most cases involve writing and sending a thought that just came to mind on the spot, or writing a reply to someone’s email that just arrived.
In the age of smartphones, email began to be replaced by instant messages. People began to communicate with one or two sentences through messengers or Twitter. No one thinks for a day or two to answer when someone asks something on social media. After a day or two, that post has already flowed into the past, or it is even thought to be impolite to respond after a day or two.
Thus, modern people have almost no experience of reading or writing articles longer than a sheet of paper, which deeply discuss several important points. The understanding of events happening in society has also become unable to exceed the level of a few lines of comments. They no longer understand an event from various angles and derive its meaning, and a culture has become established in which they briefly vomit out immediate feelings and simply pass by. Thus, “I extremely hate long posts” became a spirit of the times, and modern people began to boast about their own ignorance to each other.
The only thing that modern people are superior to people of the past is the skill of cleverly making excuses. It is an ability they acquired because they react to everything immediately and demand immediate reactions from each other. They even created all sorts of abbreviations to make immediate reactions even more immediate. In that way, nothing in the world can be “understood.” They simply react instinctively by gathering fragmentary background knowledge they have heard. To say that you have understood something, you must be able to interpret and explain it from a three-dimensional perspective. Giving your own reaction to it should be after such understanding precedes it. That is how it becomes “knowledge.” Modern people have lost such true knowledge, and as a result, they have become worse than a Google search bar. The results are better when asking the search bar than asking a person.
For most modern people, the world has become a vulgar and soulless materialistic something that is divided into whether it is “jjonmattaeng” (extremely delicious) or not, whether it is “cider” (refreshing) or “sweet potato” (stuffy), whether they are “jjonjal” (very handsome) or “jjonmot” (very ugly), whether it is “healing” or “extremely disgusting,” whether it is “daekkol” (arousing) or “nojaem” (no fun), whether they are “inssa” (popular) or “motsoljjinda” (forever alone and a true loner), whether they are “gold spoon” (born wealthy) or “dirt spoon” (born poor), whether they are from Gangnam or Gangbuk, whether they are from a university in Seoul or a local university, whether they are successful or a dropout. They have no worries or even curiosity about why they were born, why they live, where they came from, and where they are going. Because they don’t have time for that if they want to become an “inssa”.
Have you ever pondered the answer to a single problem for days, weeks, or even months? If so, when was it? Jordan Peterson, who is called one of the best intellectuals alive, spent 12 years writing his first book, Maps of Meaning. He thought about one topic, “the meaning of life,” for 12 years, doing an incredible amount of reading and research.
Finally, when was the last time you read more than 100 pages of a book at once? Most modern people cannot read more than two pages at once or write more than two paragraphs. If they write long, the content loses consistency and goes off track. This is because they have no experience of thinking deeply about one problem for a long time. Given this situation, it is natural for modern people to look at their smartphones after exchanging two words when two or three or more of them sit together. If thoughts are not deep, conversations cannot be deep either. It is only a delusion that the internet and smartphones are making people smarter. Who is smart when they cannot understand anything three-dimensionally?
Leave a Reply