ZOOMER DIARIES Something beautiful is going to happen

I am not free from my own criticisms of the modern human condition. Consider my writing to be contaminated, but I tried my best regardless.

It feels at times that we are all trapped in a cycle of mundanity, like a hamster on a wheel, running with all its strength to go nowhere, tricked into thinking stagnation is progress. It feels like there is nothing new to look forward to in my generation, or indeed in any generation after this, that will rival the scale of the previous generations.

In this stagnation, I am reminded of the 2019 video game Disco Elysium. In this cult classic, we follow a police detective who has lost all hope and joy in life, tasked with investigating a murder mystery in the port city of Martinaise.

The people of Martinaise, from corrupt union officials to unapologetic racists and even snobbish venture capitalists, all speak with a voice tinged with despair — at peace with an oppressive and miserable life, or keen to take advantage of others to get a leg up. The game paints a harsh, yet tragically accurate depiction of life under oppression and a society where people cannot afford to be saints.

Are we any different? People don’t look forward to a better future anymore. News headlines hop from one atrocity to the next without a moment's rest. We beg for a survivable present, our voices increasingly strained with desperation.

All the while, a voice whispers in people's minds of great progress made by those who came before, of discovery of new continents and miraculous economic growth, of moon landings and fated love — legends of an era where the world was still full of wonder. Now, our neoliberal world order seems so absolute that it is impossible to imagine that anything will change — as some say, the end of history.

This growing inability to imagine anything is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It becomes easier to brush past every moment where, as one Disco Elysium character puts it, "the mask of humanity slips from capital." We make a habit of noticing it killing the little hope and tenderness that remains in this world. We criticize it or spin it into a dark punchline to stay sane, but we never stop to consider why it is so readily accepted as an unavoidable aspect of life — millions of people sentenced to a lifetime of suffering, for the unforgivable sin of being born in a different part of the world.

And all the while, a clock is ticking, one that does not quite display the time we have left, but only a blood-drenched future — climate collapse, supply chain disruptions, resource wars with clouds of drones that scour the land like locust swarms. Perhaps it is the only way this madness could have ended: an end to history, its last words written in blood, serving as a warning to any survivor to make it out the other side.

Backlit by this red future, I see my fellow Koreans line up at a pop-up to buy merch branded with Palantir — a firm well-criticized for its invasive data aggregation practices utilizing artificial intelligence — in hopes of improving their stock portfolio. I see how we constantly invent new divisions to hate each other with, or follow a commercialized shell of Buddhism to join in a trend. Once-pivotal cultural touchstones are repurposed into kitsch merchandise for Koreans and foreigners alike to buy and pretend to feel a sense of belonging in a dehumanizing environment.

Perhaps we Koreans have lost faith in ourselves. Perhaps, having known only the dominance and decadence of neoliberal capitalism, billionaires of unreachable power treated like gods walking upon the earth, and a crushing education system that tells us we are worthless for not having made it into an in-Seoul university, we forget to imagine a world where we humans have inherent value.

It's improbable to convince us all, myself included, to give up our luxurious existence for something smaller and more sustainable, or even to get across the idea that happiness is not a luxury steak served on a golden plate.

But history has not ended yet. Midway through Disco Elysium, the player character — still haunted by years of despair and agony and self-destructive habits — can choose to paint an old, blank wall.

"Something beautiful is going to happen," he writes.

Protesters still march against corrupt governments. Authoritarian leaders give up their decades-long regimes, accepting the inevitable wave of morality and freedom. In the ruins of the Gaza Strip, survivors dress up as clowns to put on a show for children. In the aftermath of a tragic accident, passersby attempt CPR on unconscious victims, no matter if it is too late.

And there is Korea. Korea is not a perfect society, far from it. But last week, on my way home from work, four children zipped past me on their scooters. One of them, no more than 4 years old, started whimpering as she found that she couldn’t keep up with the others. The three, despite their excitement, stopped immediately and turned around for her, with one child offering to scoot with the 4-year-old hand-in-hand so that both of them could find a comfortable pace.

That is something worth waking up and fighting for, in whichever ways we can — as long as we dare to hope that there is more to life than our thousand mundane miseries. We have existed on this peninsula, through seasons of laughter and blood and love and death, for over 4,000 years.

We may forget what it means to hope for a long time. But eventually, after years of winter rain, the sun will shine and leaves will blossom.

Then, something beautiful is going to happen.

Kim Young-moo is a Korea Times intern.