Self-development or self-squeezing?

By Lee Nan-hee Recently, the number of industrial accidents and deaths in the delivery industry has noticeably increased. It is said that society has developed much, from agricultural to cutting-edge technologies and artificial intelligence. Nonetheless, it seems that people have not become that much happier.

Rather, technologies, methods and ways to make the most use of human beings, to utilize human beings in the most clever ways have been developed. Nowadays people pressure and squeeze even themselves. This results in deaths from overwork often reported in news.



The results of squeezing themselves, in turn, become the value of themselves. Now is the time when almost everything is evaluated in money. In particular, people are estimated in money most importantly in terms of ability, how many and what kind of achievements they can make.

How much is my life? When one dies from an industrial accident at work or when one gets divorced and receives a solatium — the person’s value, to be more exact — price is estimated. F. Toennies, the 18th-century German sociologist, divided human communities into two.

One is "gesellschaft" which means profit-based society and the other is "gemeinschaft" which is a love-based community. In Korea, since the foreign currency crisis of the late 1990s, our society has been impacted by neo-liberal globalization and has tended to put more stress on economic growth and profit maximization. This has filtered through not only corporations but also in politics, education, religion and even each individual.

Under these circumstances, family — about which we learned at school that it was based on love and caring — has been disrupted. Moreover, lifetime jobs are disappearing. Instead, corporate restructuring or overhaul and irregular jobs, once unknown to us, have become common.

In the name of individual freedom, now every individual is thrust into precarious survival and employment competition, which is "either it's a hit or it's a disaster" in the highly polarized society of 1:99. Extreme individualism that all these final results hinge on each individual’s ability and choice is prevalent. Thus, everyone is pressured to manage oneself just like a one-person corporation, and to develop oneself tirelessly in order to produce the best results and profits.

Such self-development or consulting discourses have been widespread in our society since 2000. This is just like self-squeezing. On top of this, it can be understood as governmentality proposed by M.

Foucault, the prominent French thinker. Self-development is a phenomenon in which people’s lives are governed by specific power, specific thoughts and behavior modes. However, that power and power relations are invisible and evasive.

When one loses one’s own job, they must feel that their own existence is disappearing. One cannot find meaning, reason or value for their existence. One’s value has always been estimated and evaluated according to academic ranks, amount of money and job levels.

However, what we have to always remember is that we are precious and dignified regardless of ranks, amounts and levels. We deserve it. And we should be grateful for our lives just as we are.

There have been times when I squeezed myself. I was not certain about whether I was doing good, enough, if I was not left out compared to others. Now I've decided not to do that, to stop squeezing myself.

Rather, to trust myself. I would rather trust my ability, consistency and sincerity and will be grateful for my life as well as people around me. Lee Nan-hee studied English in college and theology at Hanshin University.

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