"Living isn't just about survival" is a careless thought. The range of what counts as survival differs for each of us, but at the very least, this is a thought only those with survival guaranteed can afford to have.
There are moments too heavy for anyone to dream of a well-lived life. The timing is different for each of us, but everyone has stretches where socially prescribed morality or personal conscience-based ethics are simply not the issue.
In those times, I sometimes have this thought. Actually, more accurately, once those times have passed and I have enough breath to say 'ah— I made it—,' belatedly, I try to think this:
"Even so, surviving and existing aren't the same thing, are they.."
The reason I suddenly ended up posting under the title "On Living":
it's the weekend.. and the wind is blowing too hard outside, so I'm stuck at home— and while organizing my bookshelf I suddenly thought about some things that crossed my mind watching 'All of Us Are Dead' a while ago, and in fact some things I had thought earlier but just brushed off as trivial. So I thought, why not try organizing them?
Back in the day, watching 'The Walking Dead,' I had thought: wow.. this is just the real world anthropomorphized? through zombies, isn't it? And recently, watching 'All of Us Are Dead,' I had similar thoughts. And if there's a case where this same kind of thriller is done as a noir instead, I think the film A Company Man is the one.
I think a zombie is just 'another me made other.'
Anxiety breeds hatred. Anxiety, which provokes a hostile attitude toward everything unfamiliar, shares the same root as aggressive terrorism and defensive nationalism. #The Expulsion of the Other (Byung-Chul Han, 2017, Sai)
But we haven't yet arrived at the third-generation individualism that dominates today. This third-generation individualism is defined by the destabilization of identity. It means that, in the process of society's pluralization, securing one's identity outwardly has been left to each individual subject. The destabilization and flexibilization of self-identity brings with it the destabilization of symbols. Every symbol — ethnic, religious, sexual — loses its clarity. #Me and the Others (Seung-Hee Lee, 2019, Minumsa)
