The 'Hellbound' question

By Jason Lim

What happens when a true-to-God (pun intended), undeniable miracle occurs on live social media, witnessed by both those onsite and online? How do people react to the truly unexplainable? More interestingly, how does the whole society react when the supernatural becomes real? Those are the underlying questions that I found so fascinating in "Hellbound," South Korea's latest blockbuster series on Netflix.

Originally, I thought that "Hellbound" would be another CG-driven, action-packed drama with heroes fighting against demons in a good vs. evil narrative framework. Simple, nice, and satisfying. I soon realized that this was much deeper and more disturbing than that. The hell demons were tangential to the story. This was about how a society adapts to a fearsome, supernatural miracle simultaneously witnessed by everyone.

We all know that humans have a need to explain things within certain framework that we can come to terms with. Most religions and spiritual traditions rose out of this need. Whole sociocultural structures were created based on explaining and influencing the turning of the seasons, the frequency and timing of rain, the dangers of the seas for the fishermen, and all the other overpowering natural phenomena that affected our ancestors' lives with cruel capriciousness. Gods were created and assigned roles, leading to colorful pantheons that span ancient cultures throughout the world. Clergy became the overlords of early societies, interpreting the intentions of the gods and meting out decrees and punishments. But all of these religious trappings were not able to control natural phenomena. However, they did impart an illusion of autonomy, mastery, and purpose to the rulers and the ruled alike, providing a structure by which society could exist in an uneasy balance with the unpredictability of our world.

We would scoff at these superstitious ancestors today, safely ensconced in today's modern, technical world gleaming with stainless steel and unbreakable Gorilla glass, able to reach out and touch anyone at any time via our ever-present smartphone. We would also glibly recite Clarke's Third Law ― Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic ― and believe ourselves to be too sophisticated to fall prey to Dark Age superstition and allow scaremongering fanatics to lord over us.

"Hellbound" directly challenges this notion about ourselves and explores how a modern, technology-centered, secular society will act in order to make sense of the insensible when faced with a supernatural phenomenon that cannot be understood and explained by today's knowledge.

I always found Daniel Pink's intrinsic motivation framework useful in understanding the underlying psychological mechanism that drives our need to make sense of our world. Pink's framework is based on three key factors: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Autonomy is about having discrete control over one's own life and efforts: basically, what you do, how you do something, when you do something, and with whom you do something. Mastery is one's desire to improve one's skillset by striving; it reinforces the sense of autonomy by giving us the belief that we can make ourselves better by investing our discretionary energy into something that makes us better. Purpose is the sense that one is working toward something larger and more important than himself; this speaks to the social nature of our existence in which one's own place in a community is defined by what value that person brings to the larger community. All these intrinsic motivations come together to form meaning.

When faced with a supernatural death sentence 20 years from now, Jeong Jin-soo embarks on a journey that caters to these intrinsic motivational factors by weaving a whole religious canon around the phenomenon. What happened to him wasn't a random event. It wasn't just personally purposeful. It was divinely purposeful. Jeon was now the prophet who forces the eyes of the wayward people to be awed by God's miracles and live by His "intent" for us to become more just. By acting on the self-crafted purpose, he is able to escape being a helpless victim of an inexplicable phenomena to attain both mastery of God's will and autonomy to reshape the world according to his will.

Applying the same intrinsic motivational framework to a whole society is trickier, but what I found most terrifying in "Hellbound" was how readily and quickly our modern society turns to the supernatural to explain the supernatural. Wait, that's not quite true. The most disturbing thing was how readily people would turn to those who claimed to have the singular explanation for why such supernatural things were happening. We are so generous with our credibility in moments of ignorance and doubt. We gladly cede our political freedoms and mental clarity to grasp at straws when we feel overwhelmed by the waters of the unknown. Ironically, as with an individual, this is done in order to increase our sense of autonomy, master, and purpose since we need a mediator to explain why something's happening and intercede on our behalf.

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.