[The World on the Page] A Good Time to Regret

All Human Actions Leave Traces
Regret Is Both Our Privilege and Our Key
The Future Belongs to Those Who Reflect
A Time to Embrace Regret as the Year Ends

The year is coming to an end. The bubbles of inflated hope burst, and a sense of emptiness clings stubbornly to people's hearts. Living a life where the excitement of the new year rises but fails to achieve fulfillment, collapsing into bitterness, is a sad thing. However, forcibly comforting and deceiving oneself by gathering the smallest fragments of happiness is not the path to a better life. How lonely is the road home alone after a year-end party filled with feigned joy, eating, and playing games like Gongginori. A life that cannot resolutely regret when it should is a life that cannot move forward.

As American futurist Daniel Pink says in "The Power of Regret (Korea Economic Daily)," regret is a human privilege. When starting work, we look ahead and predict; after finishing, we look back and regret. This act of reflection is the key by which humans have innovated themselves. Ancient Chinese sages, having recognized this early on, regarded regret as a core quality of leaders.

King Tang of the Shang dynasty engraved on his washbasin the phrase, "Renew yourself every day, and renew yourself again every day," as a warning to himself. Every morning when he washed his face, he reflected on his yesterday and resolved for today, making this self-discipline the essence of governance. This is likely why he remains a symbol of a sage king in history. Conversely, leaders who cannot apologize to their people often meet a miserable end. Those who cannot use the power of regret to correct themselves inevitably perish due to their arrogance.

The same applies to society. Societies that are dazzled only by the brilliant achievements of civilization weaken rapidly. In "Invisible Cities (Minumsa)," Italian author Italo Calvino warns through the fictional city of Leonia. The residents of Leonia devote their passion solely to enjoying new and diverse goods. Every morning, they wear new clothes, take unopened cans from the latest refrigerators, and listen intently to recent news from the newest model radios. They never look back at the past. To them, yesterday's items have no value, and yesterday's news is just old stories.

However, traces of life do not disappear just because they are ignored. Every day, yesterday's trash is wrapped in clean plastic bags waiting for garbage trucks, and as a result, walls of trash pile up around the city, growing higher and higher. Since no one ever reconsiders discarded items, the more they enjoy new goods, the more trash fortresses overwhelm the city like mountain ranges from all directions. No matter how many new windows are installed to seal gaps, when the stench can no longer be blocked, the residents of Leonia finally realize that their entire life has become trash and despair at their inability to get rid of it.

Yet, they do not regret. They refuse to accept the simple truth that if they corrected their life direction and gave up the habit of loving and craving only the new, those dreadful heaps of trash would not arise. They only hate the trash and struggle to remove it from sight. Leonia is an allegory of modern civilization that never looks back and is obsessed only with present pleasures.

According to Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman's "Wasted Lives (Saemulgyeol)," in Leonia's culture, the value of goods is determined by how quickly they are produced to maximize effect and then how fast they become obsolete. As Leonia shows, such a culture ultimately leaves us with only useless, unpleasant, and disgusting trash. Moreover, in societies that cannot look back at what past lives have left and imagine other possibilities, humans themselves are eventually discarded as trash. Bauman states:

"In Silicon Valley, the birthplace of cutting-edge technology and the forward base of the modern Brave New World, the average employment duration is about eight months regardless of occupation. This is the extremely happy life that every global citizen envies and strives to imitate."

In that advanced life, everyone yearns for the newly emerging techno-heroes, but in reality, most are chased out and pushed aside, leaving behind only large numbers of discarded human trash. Just as a city surrounded by trash collapses, a society with increasing wasted lives disintegrates. Only societies that care for the weak, support the losers, and do not exclude minorities can continue to prosper.

Civilization also endures only when it reflects and repents. Next summer, the International Geological Congress will be held in Busan. The core agenda is the official recognition of the new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene concept starts from the recognition that human activities have permanently altered Earth's physical and chemical systems. Scientists analyzed sediment layers in Crawford Lake, Ontario, Canada, identifying the surge in plutonium from hydrogen bomb tests and radioactive fallout in the 1950s as the start of the Anthropocene. Other evidence includes spherical carbon particles (SCP) from fossil fuel power plants, high concentrations of lead, and microplastics.

All human activities leave dangerous traces on Earth?trash. We must not only consider what we have achieved using nuclear power but also reflect on the consequences when humans cease to use these things and when what we produce returns to objects. Only then can we truly contemplate the future of our civilization. As Kyoto University professor Masatake Shinohara says in "Philosophy After Humans (Ebi)," human activities have already grown to rival all natural forces, to the extent of changing Earth's ecology itself. What is discarded and abandoned, drifting away from us, critically impacts our lives and makes the future uncertain. In the face of their power, we are astonishingly vulnerable.

The carbon waste we discard raises Earth's temperature, pushing life into crisis. The radioactive waste we leave contaminates land and sea, threatening life. The plastic we accumulate disperses as dust, disrupting our body's metabolic order. Earth is unique, the only home where we can live. Only by stepping back from anthropocentric thinking and prioritizing the entire Earth can we prevent civilization's collapse. To save ourselves from impending dangers, we must recall Earth as the fundamental condition of life and imagine a life order that coexists with nature. The future belongs to those who regret, reflect, and correct themselves. It is the year-end, a good time to regret.

Jang Eun-su, Publishing Culture Critic