On Being Human

Sometimes a traveler also explores their mind.
                     - Kino's Journey

The Year is almost finished.  My fourteen hours that lasted for twelve months are ending in less than twenty days.  You can bet I've given thought to being back with my family and my friends.  And my homeland-Ah to sail again on the sea of cornfields of the Great Plains!  Those Amber Waves of Grain are calling my name.  I'm excited to be back in the land where restaurants give you a drink with your meal...and they'll refill it if you finish.  I'm excited for all of those things that a world-weary young man ending his year of self-imposed exile would love.  But I have to admit something else to you here.  And if you've stuck with me and read 14Hours this entire year,  you're probably not easily offended, so I'm going to take a gamble and be open with you.

I'm excited to get back my humanity.

I'm sorry if that comes out rough.  Let me preface it by saying that I have met some people in Korea who would give good old Midwest hospitality a run for its money.  I've seen a young man out with his friends stop to help a drunken old man who had fallen in the road.  I've seen an older gentleman immediately give a young pregnant woman on the bus his seat (though he stood with a cane).  I've seen displays that would do hearts anywhere some good.

But now that I can be honest with you, I want to tell you about the other side I've seen this year, and how much it frightens me. 
Because you see, here, suffering is often just a way of life.  Kids play-fight back home, but there's a brutality to it here that jerks at my insticts, a stop this now.  Teachers hit students with a violence that has made me try to call for it to stop, before I even knew what I was doing.  Women often have finger-shaped bruises on their upper arms from either being roped into meeting men at booking clubs, or simply from an abusive boyfriend/husband.  The reality of a culture, a morality built on a strict structure of ranks is that if someone ranked above you abuses you, you simply endure it.  How do you know who outranks who?  Easy:  listen to what people say.  The language itself is such that you have to use the person's rank in things as small as your conjugation of verbs. 
The mindset becomes one of "Will I lose face among people I know for not caring about this person?"  The answer in public situations is often that you don't know the person and will probably never see them again.  And neither party is obliged to the other.  Which leads to a common conundrum: No one is enforcing your obligation to me, nor mine to you.  So both of us simply act careless of the other.  You drop your keys on the crowded bus next to me, and though I could easily reach them and help you, I don't.  I'm sick and tired and have been travelling all day, but you get through the train line before me and rush to the seat, then plug in your headphones and make no eye contact.  A parent's child screams and runs around a restaurant, but rather than discipline the child and worry about the other disturbed guests, the parent continues to eat and talk with friends.  It becomes so simple as two people walking will push right through each other, with neither offering an "excuse me". 
Is it awful?  There are two reasons I find this awful.  The first reason is that at one point I wholeheartedly believed this mindset.  The world was big out there, there were tons of people, and who cared if I inconvenienced someone I'd never see again?  I had nothing to gain from helping a stranger, it would only slow me down.  Likewise, I didn't expect help from strangers.  The world was a slick, icy place, and I had found the fastest pair of skates.  But something changed this year-  I left the Midwest.  In Korea, that mindset is EVERYwhere.  And it's completely mortifying to see a society espouse that mindset without a second thought.  I wholeheartedly admit I was wrong for having thought anything to this end. 
So....great!  Korea was actually good for me.  Made me a better person.  Now's the time where I turn to the camera and give a short monologue about doing good for others, regardless of personal gain.  Except there's no music swells, no heartfelt hug,  no fade to black with credits roll afterward. 
The harsh reality is that the movie doesn't end there.  Things get worse.  Now that I've decided to care about the welfare of strangers, the enormity of the wrongness here is even more unsettling.  Every husband slapping a wife around is culturally-approved unhappiness I can't fix--and no one else here seems to find it wrong.  Every person who pushes their way to the front of the line is an unfairness to those who were waiting, and everyone else accepts it as normal.  They say the mark of a person who has lost his sanity is often that he thinks everyone else has gone mad.

Well, I've not been one to be crazy.  The awful truth is that I scurry to my seat in the train, even if other people might need the seat.  I let the door close on the person behind me without holding it.  I don't move out of the way to let someone through a line, because i know my spot will be taken.  Even knowing all these things are wrong, Korea puts those who live within its culture in a position where you have the option of sacrificing your humanity one small portion at a time, or becoming a doormat to everyone who does.  And yes there are pushy people in the Western World.  But even on the streets of Chicago or New York City, I never saw anything like this. 

So what would you trade your humanity for?  A train seat?  The last bus to your apartment?  A job? 
It'll be good to come home. 

Dreaming of Airports again,
Jeff-Teacher