치킨 철학자 뉴욕에 가다

무용의 쓸모를 잃다

I am not a man who fits this era.

Korea today has lost its laughter.

In my youth we were poor, but we laughed. The soup-shop owner on the corner, the busconductor, the old philosophy professor in the lecture hall—all of them joked. Weendured by making each other laugh.

But after industrialization and democratization, laughter was pushed aside by efficiencyand results. Humor now is a few seconds of a video clip, or a celebrity’s self-deprecatingjoke.People find questions annoying; contemplation is labeled “a symptom of depression,”silence is called “a personality problem.”

In a world ruled by usefulness, philosophy lostits place. Yet in that uselessness I felt the need for existence even more.

Since childhood I had walked a beat slower than the world. While others played soccer, Isat by the classroom window tracing the dust in the sunlight.

When classmates wrote“judge, doctor, scientist” as their future dreams, I wrote “philosopher.”My teacher asked, “But philosophers don’t make money.”That phrase echoed in my ears my whole youth.

For a while I dreamed of being a film director, but my father was blunt: “Film directorsstarve.”I was neither a warrior of industrialization nor a fighter for democracy.

I simply likedmovies, enjoyed backpacking, and felt my heart race whenever I heard the word“freedom.”

At twenty I preferred The Deer Hunter with Robert De Niro over Ko Bong-jun’s Dawn ofYouth. I liked alleys more than public squares, and chose a plane ticket over an noblecause.

Believing life without money was possible, I eventually became a philosophy teacher. I taught Plato and Kant, but in truth I borrowed their sentences to tell my own story.

I never stopped asking questions—from “Why must we live?” to “Why does ramen tastebetter if you put the seasoning first?” The world had more questions than answers, andthose who enjoyed questioning were always a minority.

In class I asked my students: “Does the useless have meaning too?” Most stayed silent. Then I opened my book—as a slim volume I had written in my midfifties, The Use of Uselessness. Its first line read:“The world is full of usefulness, but humans sometimes recover themselves inuselessness.”

Few read it, and the publisher was quiet. But after writing that book I hated the world less. Useless days felt precious. Back then I fancied myself not a “useful teacher,” but aguardian of the useless.

Now I am not so sure. I preached “the use of uselessness,” but perhaps I’ve become trulyuseless. I spoke of uselessness because I lacked use, but now even philosophy feelsuseless.

One busy day, frying two hundred chickens, I cried out inwardly:

“Oh existence, make itcrispy!”

And suddenly I wondered: perhaps uselessness is a luxury only for the useful?

That night, frying the last drumstick in the fridge, I thought of using my book as papertowels to wipe the chicken oil. That would at least give it some “practical philosophy.”

In the end, I didn’t tear it.

I reopened The Use of Uselessness and saw the oil stains on itscover. I decided those stains were proof of life.

From that day, I began doubting again—not only the use of uselessness, but the usefulness of existence itself.