What do you know about BTS? And how often do you think about Korea? So Korea is uniquely positioned
to show the world how to move forward. No other nation has the clout
that Korea has at this point in history. Korea has something to show
the rest of the world. And we need to see it
and we need to follow you. I've been a college professor for 38 years And these days I teach
800 student class on culture and society to students from across the planet. If you've watched my videos then you know
that I like to listen to my students tell me their stories
and tell me about their cultures. And as part of my work I've also traveled
and lived in many dozens of countries around the world. And just like my teaching style, I travel because I like to listen
to people so that I can understand
the sociology of their everyday lives. The first country I fell in love with
was Spain, when I lived there
as a 21-year-old student. But the first country
that I was fascinated by and I mean really intrigued by was Korea As a second-year graduate student
when I was 24 years old, another student and his wife
both from Korea invited me to dinner. I loved the food but I was struck by
how they talked about their culture. And this stayed with me when the following year I started
my ph.D studies and met 3 other Korean graduate students. They motivated me to read about
Korean social life and history when I had the time. But I didn't have much time
because my focus was Latin America. And those countries consumed 95% of
my intellectual energy in my travels Then after I received my ph.D, my study and travel schedule took me
to the Middle East, to South Asia, to Western Europe, Eastern Europe,
and of course South America. But never to Korea. But I never forgot about Korea. And when I had the time I continued to read everything I could
about your country, always thinking that one day,
one day I would visit. And then about four years ago, after a lifetime of studying
and talking about people and cultures from around the world, I woke up one morning
to a radio story about BTS. I don't know why.
I don't know why this was the day. And this was the story
because I had heard and read many stories. But I said to myself that's it. I'm following this 33-year desire
to know and understand Korea. I want to see how it compares to
all of the other countries and cultures that I've come to know. And so I walked in to my 800 student class
and I asked what do you know about BTS? And how often do you think about Korea? And I've been talking about your country
ever since that day, but never really to Koreans. So a couple of months ago I was speaking to my students
about climate collapse. And one of them asked me which country
I thought was most prepared to make the necessary change
that needs to happen so that we can avoid the worst crisis. It's a great question for a professor
who compares social systems in countries across the planet. But in the moment I said I wasn't sure. And then a couple weeks later
I was preparing a talk on Korea, and it suddenly became clear to me that the answer to that student's question
was actually Korea. It is your country that is best positioned
to show the world how to move forward. And having a country take the lead
and be the model is important. Because human beings always need
models to follow. Whether they are individual role models
or organizations or companies that can lead us in one direction
and another or maybe sports teams. People need groupings of other people
who are united around some identity, some focus. Then what we do is we adapt
our own behavior to that identity. And, for what I can assess, most countries are not socially and
culturally structured to be a model for us for how to get through
this climate crisis. Certainly not my own. But Korea is different. Korea has some key features of
what I think is probably needed to move us toward a solution.
I'm sure there are more. But I'm going to discuss 4 characteristics
of your country that together could provide a beacon of possibility
- a map for moving forward and doing what will need to be done
in these next 20 years if we have any hope of avoiding calamity. So the first thing is that yours
is a society with a deeply held sense that community well-being
uplifts individuals. All East Asian countries have
much stronger inflections toward community than do countries in the west. But so do Arab countries in
many African nations and cultures. The focus on community
is particularly strong in Korea. And I also know that
it is weakening in your culture. But hear me out. In my first major research project
when I was in my 20s I spent 2 years following Catholic priests
around the countryside of Ecuador and I developed the idea of
a communitarian-oriented moral order. This refers to a society in which
community-based moral codes lead people to more often act in ways such that
their personal decisions about what is right and what is wrong
positively impact their community. It's not conscience. It's beaked into a culture, actually. And this doesn't mean that the community
need shape every individual action. It just means that social life, the sum total of
the billions of daily individual decisions has an overall orientation toward
what is good for the whole. And Korean culture has a strong inflection
toward a communitarian-oriented moral order going back
many centuries and dynasties. So it applies to our climate crisis because we can only arrive at solutions
at large segments of populations, pattern their behavior and thinking around the idea that their individual actions
benefit the common good even when they don't understand how. Without these communitarian moral codes, Individuals simply will not sacrifice
for the greater good And all of us are going to
need to sacrifice Think about it this way. I'm going to give something up. But I must know that most people
around me are doing the same thing and that they're not taking advantage of
my sacrifice by jumping ahead of me. But culture-based social networks
are like synapses in the brains. Once they're created and once
they tie neurocells together they can be dormant for long periods
and suddenly be reactivated. But it's difficult to create new synapses
in mature systems. The second factor that leads me to think that Korea can be a model nation
for addressing the climatic collapse is your advanced and efficient approach
to education. In fact, I would say that the seriousness
with which you put yourselves into education is practically unmatched
anywhere in the world. You know this. You know this. And it's been said of many times by people
inside of Korea and outside of Korea. Sometimes it's been overstated by people who don't look at some of the troubling
aspects of Korean education. But you have a unique and notable way
of educating youth. In fact in all my travels, in all my study I don't have a single example of a nation
that has invested so much in education and then organized families to
single-mindedly pursue education for their children. And I know that many
of these children rebel and they reject what's being told to them and what they're being told to do
by people around them. And they are told that regardless of
how hard you study, you need to do it more vigorously. But a surprisingly high percentage of
Korean youth follow the path of hard work. This doesn't just happen around the world except in small segments of populations
and different nations. And your education system is
not only efficient but it's rooted in positivist principles with
a strong foundation in science, technology,
engineering, and math. And this is exactly what we need to
continue to do to excavate solutions to climate collapse Once again I'm not blind to the many
problems with how you educate people. Every year I teach more and more Korean students. And the weakness of many of them is
that they often do not know how to ask really good questions and
follow their own curiosity because it seems all they've ever done is memorize
what's going to be on the next exam. So too many of them are good at performing
and being obedient and are less talented at being fascinated by life itself. Normally I would actually criticize this
as wasted time spent memorizing for exams along with the inordinate
pressure that it puts on students to succeed But if I'm being honest, really honest
I must admit that what you have managed to do which is to motivate legions of
young people who work extraordinarily hard sacrifice and be stressed is
an essential ingredient to the climate solution, given the gravity
of the issue that humanity is facing. So the third ingredient for addressing
climate collapse is for people to be willing to follow rules that benefit
the collectivity even when they don't fully trust
the people who are making those rules. And Koreans are very good at this. You may not think so, but I suggest that you look at other cultures around the
world and see how the rest of us are doing For my argument, following rules matters
because addressing time and collapse is going to require taking away a great
number of individual rights and opportunities. And here's how to think about this. The world's getting, it's getting smaller,
resources are becoming more scarce. For all of us to sustain social systems
that look reasonably familiar Then greater numbers of people are
going to have to work together in ways they would not otherwise choose to do. This is related to my first point but here
I'm focusing on how nations will necessarily implement new rules, laws, and
mandates that people are not going to like And here's another case in which I feel
compelled to say I'm not blind to often people here get around rules and
laws in order to advance some personal interest that they have. This is part of human nature but there's
a general social acceptance that manifests itself in the sociology of Korean behavior
that is important and that is necessary And you've been successful at doing this
even as you rank very low compared to other countries in terms of how much trust
you have in your government. The fourth, final reason that I'm hopeful
that Korea can be a beacon for other nations is because you already have
the cultural clout, the soft power. When the world thinks about Korea,
what we increasingly envision is a modern, prosperous, safe,
an educated country. We don't think of chaos, crime and people
who like intellect and sophistication. It doesn't matter that the impetus behind
many of these positive associations stem from K-culture K-pop K-drama K-film. What matters is
how the world perceives Korea. In sociology there's an adage. If we believe something is real
then it's real in its consequences. So Korea is uniquely positioned to be
a vision of possibility for people around the world who want to work together
to devise solutions to this crisis, working both within their communities
and across nations. And of course there are other
possible countries. Again not my own because people don't
trust U.S. ambition nor do they trust the other current superpower,
which would be China. But no other nation has the clout
that Korea has at this point in history And we cannot wait for tomorrow. So you might be thinking Okay professor,
this is all good but what should we do? What's our first step? So I have
ideas but that's for another talk. Right now I just want to send
this simple message. And I'm going to leave you with a quote
from a talk that I delivered in Porto Alegre, Brazil back in 2014. The talk was called
"The wisdom of sociology" Respond and help us. Help us see a path through this mess
that we're in Korea has something
to show the rest of the world. And we need to see it.
And we need to follow you.
