Collective Emotion and Reductionist Thinking

I think Korean society, living under the threat of the coronavirus, has displayed two major characteristics.

One of them is how excessively vulnerable society is to being swept up by collective emotion. The creation of social scapegoats inevitably appears in the process. The sight of the leader of Shincheonji kneeling and apologizing amid the spread of the crisis, before a government armed with mass public opinion and politicians standing on its side, clearly shows how the value of honor is socially treated in Korea. In every society, the honor of those on the weaker side tends to be less well protected than that of politically powerful actors backed by the majority, but Korean society is particularly cruel in the way it tramples the weak. Ambiguous values such as honor are frequently disputed in court by individuals or institutions, even criminally, and in Korean society defamation suits are often used less to protect the weak from the strong than as a pretext for the strong to silence the weak.

Of course, it may sound strange to call Shincheonji a socially weak group in Korean society. Even so, even without expert knowledge of public health or epidemiological investigation, one can reasonably suspect that the relatively high testing rate imposed on the specific population group of Shincheonji last month likely produced serious imbalance and statistical distortion in the nationwide confirmed-case figures. For example, last month other Koreans, excluding Shincheonji members, were not forcibly tested for the coronavirus on the basis of their address, religion, hygiene status, or the like. Even with COVID-19, which is known to involve asymptomatic infection, it is not easy for most Koreans to spend considerable money, time, and energy to get tested when they have no symptoms. Nevertheless, articles criticizing Shincheonji for not “cooperating” with the public health authorities flooded the internet. Well, who can say with certainty that all non-Shincheonji people cooperated well? Depending on how one defines “cooperation,” the tone of such criticism may in fact be highly subjective.

From this perspective, the group whose honor may actually have been better protected in Korea in relation to coronavirus infections might be Chinese people. However, the government’s decision not to deliberately ban entry from China can hardly escape criticism that it was politically motivated. In a situation where Chinese nationals continued entering the country, expecting all of them to take the same level of proactive self-screening as Korean nationals was a rather idealistic approach. Also, while Chinese people may be a weak group within Korean society, China is not politically weaker than Korea. Just as there was no reason for non-Shincheonji Koreans to bear losses in order to protect Shincheonji’s honor, there is no reason for Korea to bear losses in order to protect China’s political honor. On the contrary, this may provide a pretext for some people trapped in factional thinking to develop exclusionary hatred toward Chinese people.

The second characteristic revealed through the coronavirus crisis is society’s excessive dependence on reductionist approaches. Individuals living in a society “gripped by fear” need more objective reflection from a longer-term perspective the more serious the situation becomes. The current coronavirus crisis raises for Korean society a fundamental issue that everyone is uncomfortable with, one related to the “air” we all breathe together, which has long been overlooked. The living environment in which Koreans now reside has been pushed into a state where it is extremely difficult to live healthily, yet this winter and spring fine dust seems already to have vanished from people’s minds. In fact, the number of people who die annually from fine dust in China is probably no smaller than the number who have so far died from the coronavirus. Back in 2013, one paper in The Lancet estimated the number of infant deaths in China that year due to exposure to PM 2.5 fine particulate matter at 916,000.

This is not to argue over whether fine dust is more dangerous than the coronavirus. The problem is that Korean society is far too biased toward a reductionist view of disease rather than a holistic view of health. Rather than thinking of health as the overall harmony between nature and the human body, people are too busy worrying about hygiene as a separate issue. I once saw an advertisement for a home appliance claiming it would make clothes “sterile.” Why should human beings have to wage war against the entire microbial world?

Even microorganisms we call “germs” must undergo a difficult journey in order to settle into a suitable environment and “infect” a host, such as the mucous membranes inside a human body with weakened immune function. They are probably more likely to come into contact with a host while floating in an enclosed space than out in an open field. Just as a bug that enters the house can be let out through the window rather than killed, if the air in the external environment were clean enough to breathe comfortably, opening windows or doors to ventilate would greatly help reduce viral infection as well. Yet in Korea’s reality, it is painful to see that society has little choice but to rely almost entirely on hand sanitizers and masks rather than placing greater emphasis on natural wind and ventilation.

At the core of the traditional Western concept of hygiene was the enhancement of the body’s natural healing power, inseparable from nature, through individuals’ management of their own lives and surroundings. For instance, even until the mid-19th century, when holistic medical theories were still flourishing to some extent, one of the most important hygienic regimens doctors prescribed to patients was walking while breathing clear air. That reflected the spirit of Romanticism and naturalism, but it was also rooted in the traditional concept of hygiene.

By contrast, Seoul is becoming, for the individuals who live in it, “a city where the wind does not blow.” Of course the wind still blows, but people neither welcome nor feel grateful for the wind that comes from nature; rather, they find it bothersome and even fear it. In that way, people have isolated themselves from nature. Fine dust has worsened year after year, yet cars and roads continue to increase, forests are disappearing, and the urban environment is moving in a direction where health is impossible—while people check their health by looking only at blood sugar levels and calorie intake.

In Korea’s increasingly populist political reality, it is becoming harder and harder to expect the political capacity needed to resolve this situation. Even those who support higher taxes on the wealthy and call for the realization of social justice may not actually support raising the fuel tax or road tax on the cars they themselves drive. Local governments’ pathetic green policies are not merely frustrating but suffocating: if they cannot reduce roads to create forests, the least they could do is avoid pretending that placing a few potted trees on concrete constitutes park creation. Painting something green does not make it green space.

Hygiene exists for health. Needless to say, anti-coronavirus quarantine and prevention measures centered on experts are important. But I hope this opportunity will produce a broader social awakening—not only toward reductionist measures emphasizing sterilization and disinfection, but also toward creating a social environment in which health can truly be realized in nature, thereby enabling individuals to strengthen their immunity more effectively.

Min Bae, history teacher at Soongeui Girls’ High School

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Original title: 집단 감성과 환원론적 사고

Author: Bae Min

Date: 2020-04-08

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=free_opinion&pn=14&idx=22542