Infinite Depression

I frequently contemplate that contemporary individuals find themselves situated within an environment uniquely predisposed to existential melancholy. This observation is unlikely to be mine alone. The demographic-intensive society that emerged through radical transformation following the Industrial Revolution imposes a pervasive exhaustion upon individual existence. Even when one desires solitary respite, such withdrawal proves impossible, and distancing oneself from the myriad inexorable forces that encircle us has became increasingly elusive. Admittedly, we do find solace in interpersonal relationships and experience mutual affection. This constitutes an undeniable good. Within the teeming masses of modernity, we can more readily discover friendship and love, enabling us to embrace greater challenges. Nevertheless, no individual can sustain perpetually passionate living. The repose essential to some remains unavailable to all. We have grown estranged from rest, solitude, tranquility, and liberty.

Consider the thoroughfares saturated with automobiles. When the motorcar was first conceived, it was believed to herald humanity’s liberation through mobility. This assertion contains partial validity. However, when we utilize vehicles, we are not subject merely to the automobile’s singular influence. Traffic signals, lane demarcations, pedestrian crossings, tunnels, driving licenses, traffic regulations, garages and parking facilities—countless constraints circumscribe my being. To articulate this precisely, the automobile’s advent resembles a series of transactions wherein we simultaneously acquire restrictions upon personal mobility in exchange for expanding the parameters of individual travel distance. Neither you nor I remain exempt from these limitations. I cannot traverse plains in my vehicle or manipulate the steering mechanism with unfettered autonomy. Certainly, regions such as Texas or Utah permit unrestricted off-road navigation. Freedom has been granted to them. Yet for the majority, including myself, we navigate not through the liberty of autonomous movement, but in accordance with regulatory prescriptions.

Human beings lack familiarity with such large-scale disciplinary mechanisms. Through early education during infantile and juvenile phases of ego development, we have achieved partial success in preventing the problems inherent to mass population societies. However, environmental disparities remain so fundamentally existential and essential, independent of educational intervention, that the deleterious effects humanity must bear persist until the foundational structure itself undergoes transformation. This leads precisely to what contemporary individuals experience extensively: hormonal dysregulation, chronic depressive recurrence, elevated obesity rates, and suicidal ideation. I, afflicted with bipolar disorder rather than unipolar depression, prove no exception, engaging in periodic excursions and solitary activities while combining moderate interpersonal relations with pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatment. My physician conveyed something truly extraordinary: the therapeutic objective of this condition is to live in a manner befitting human dignity. Is this not profoundly paradoxical? The very premise that we, already born as human beings, undergo treatment aimed at achieving human-like existence constitutes irony incarnate.

Should one inquire whether contemporary individuals lead lives of significantly greater happiness compared to primitive peoples, my response would be decidedly negative. Primitive peoples undoubtedly endured disease, infantile mortality, starvation, and dehydration. Because such physical suffering remains visible, modern humanity desperately sought to eliminate these afflictions. Indeed, numerous diseases and poverty have been eradicated. In the Republic of Korea where I reside, no individuals currently perish from starvation-induced death. Yet when we begin posing profound ontological questions regarding the nature of existence, we discern that these actions of contemporary society originated from fear. We constrain our lives for rather meaningless endeavors that deny inevitable mortality. If compelled to choose between a liberated yet abbreviated existence and a constrained yet prolonged one, selecting the latter—for what reason? What rationale justifies extended living? Due to thanatophobia? Because it is ostensibly proper? Unfreedom constitutes suffering, and prolonged experience of suffering might rather represent malediction.

I contemplate where such answers might be discovered. I do not believe they will be obtained within contemporary demographic-intensive society. For instance, extremist capitalists occasionally pursue monetary gain for its own sake, while extremist environmentalists amplify their voices through the most convenient methods to derive superiority from their activism. Do they genuinely inhabit liberated and fulfilling lives? I maintain that answers must be sought not in the external world but within the internal realm. If my life’s essence resides in external phenomena, then existence devoid of such elements lacks justification for continuation. Should an extremist capitalist confront the collapse of dollar hegemony, should an extremist environmentalist inhabit a world wherein environmental contamination becomes obsolete through technological purification innovations, their sense of loss would likely prove ineffably immense. However, inner essence remains perpetual so long as I exist. Life’s rationale and genesis reside within myself, rendering existence itself the foundation for living. I shall adopt this methodology to sublimate the melancholia accompanying bipolar disorder.

Thus emerges the ultimate inquiry: Who am I?