By Jason Lim
Today’s world is all about differentiation. This is the most natural and basic instinct that we carry as human beings as social animals who feel the need to constantly compare ourselves to others in order to derive a sense of well-being. In other words, we have to feel superior to others to feel good about our own situations. It’s all about relative ranking.
Nowhere is such a scaling system more commonplace and uncomfortably evident than when traveling. Everything is about status. You paid good money to get on that flight, but you have to wait until all the other priority groups first make their way to the jet bridge before you are allowed to board because you haven’t earned or paid for the “superior” status. Worse, even when it becomes your turn to board, you have to use a different lane to scan your boarding pass, physically reinforcing that you are not as good as those people who just boarded before you. However, you can always take comfort that you are not the lowest of the low since you are still allowed to bring on a carry-on bag and personal item while others even lower can’t.
Then you get to the hotel and realize that the airlines have nothing compared to the status scaling system of the hotels in which everything you do, eat, and play in a hotel is dictated by which precious metal or mineral your status is aligned to, (i.e. diamond, gold, etc.). You might rate a free breakfast, but only continental. You might get to dip in the pool, but not the hot tub. You can get free drinks and snacks in the lounge in the afternoon, but only for you and not your family. You can get that room upgrade for free but it has to be on the lower floors since the higher floor rooms with better views can only be made available to those with higher status.
Of course, all these points of friction and selective access are artificially created in order to incentivize customers to pay more. Our relative placements in these multidimensional, dynamic, and persistent scales determine whether we feel good or bad about ourselves. As such, we try to maximize the good feelings and minimize the bad feelings because they are directly related to our self-esteem. I understand. I don’t blame businesses for trying to maximize the revenue flow from a limited pool of customers by creating these status scales that cater to our need to feel good by comparing ourselves to others.
But constant comparisons are extremely fatiguing because we can never measure up. There will always be someone richer, more accomplished, better looking, etc. Some are just born that way; others have made themselves that way. And we will never be those people. Therefore, we wheeze through our lives in a panting haze that’s maddeningly dissatisfying, not realizing that dissatisfaction is the essence of ordinary human life.
Until we die. For death is the great equalizer that comes to us all.
In Dead Toad Scrolls, Kilroy J. Oldster wrote, “Death is the great equalizer of human beings. Death is the boundary that we need to measure the precious texture of our lives. All people owe a death. There is no use vexing about inevitable degeneration and death because far greater people than me succumbed to death’s endless sleep without living as many years as me.”
In a world that’s inherently unfair and filled with unquenchable dissatisfaction driven by our instinctive need to constantly compare ourselves to others, death becomes the only thing that will happen to us whether we are diamond status or a non-member, royalty or serf, or born with a silver spoon or no spoon at all. Death’s universal inevitability is its appeal. Death reminds us of our common humanity.
The closest thing to death in Korea as the great equalizer is the mandatory military service for all men. Every young, able-bodied man of a certain age has to suffer through this rite of passage, even if you’re BTS, literally the next coming of The Beatles. I think this is the great psychological hold that mandatory military service has on the Korean society. It’s a painful chore, but a chore that every man has to go through, no matter what your status might be in the real world. It’s the great equalizer that you can access without dying.
That’s why I think Korea tends to react so strongly to any attempts to use privilege to subvert this great equalizer. Even the scion of the most powerful and rich families of Korea, Inc. will have to go through basic training and unconditionally obey the commands of the sons of the poorest families with only a junior high school education. Although military duty is an artificial and temporary construct, it’s a place where the only status is defined by the time served; it’s the closest to a level playing field that you get to experience while alive. I think it’s these instances of great “equalizations” that enable us to go on without losing hope due to the inevitability of our rankings.
So, here is to another great equalizer: time. Another year has flown by. Time marches on us relentlessly at the same speed no matter who we are. Happy New Year!
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect The Korea Times’ editorial stance.
BTS and the great equalizer
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31.12.2023
By Jason Lim Today’s world is all about differentiation. This is the most natural and basic instinct that we carry as human beings as social animals who feel the need to constantly compare ourselves to others in order to derive a sense of well-being. In other words, we have to feel superior to others to feel good about our own situations. It’s all about relative ranking.
Nowhere is such a scaling system more commonplace and uncomfortably evident than when traveling. Everything is about status. You paid good money to get on that flight, but you have to wait until all the other priority groups first make their way to the jet bridge before you are allowed to board because you haven’t earned or paid for the “superior” status. Worse, even when it becomes your turn to board, you have to use a different lane to scan your boarding pass, physically reinforcing that you are not as good as those people who just boarded before you. However, you can always take comfort that you are not the lowest of the low since you are still allowed to bring on a carry-on bag and personal item while others even lower can’t.
Then you get to the hotel and realize that the airlines have nothing compared to the status scaling system of the hotels in which everything you do, eat, and play in a hotel is dictated by which precious........
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