Prologue: Facing the Void

1.
In the waves of nothingness

Spring days are passing by
Writing in the void
stare at the ruins
Look at the horizon
For rehabilitation

2.
The whereabouts of wealth, fame, and beauty

Life is a bubble
Dance with Death
See a corpse
Ask the skeleton

3.
Mortals in Time

What is time
Life in Time
Life is not a score, it's a performance
Identity is a fiction meant to endure time.

4.
Living long and becoming a god

Defending old age
The story of a dementia patient who became aware of his/her dementia
Between a free man and a homeless person
Have you seen the freshness?

5.
Day by day

The myth of Sisyphus continues
To love the hamster wheel of life
Seeing the clouds means
Slow is the recipe for life

6.
A matter of perspective

How to get out of sadness
Beyond imitation
You can't see the true face of a mountain in the mountains.
What is a mental victory?

7.
Nihilism and Politics

To compete or not to compete
Politics of Good Intentions
Politics is like love
Embrace the Cathedral

8.
Enjoying life

Play with life
Recipe for Sweetness
How to Enjoy Life's Desserts
Towards a society where people eat well and live well

Epilogue: For a life without purpose
Appendix News: "Red Cliffs"
List of illustrations and citation sources

A new question from Professor Kim Young-min, a researcher of the history of thought
“What to do with the emptiness of life”

Professor Kim Young-min of Seoul National University, a researcher of the history of thought and columnist, has published a humanities essay on the topic of “the futility of life.”
Although the theme of 'futility' appeared in previous prose collections, this is the first book to contain his thoughts solely on the futility of life.
Everyone, regardless of age or gender, has felt at least once that life is meaningless.
What would you do each time? Would you delve deep into the source of the futility, skip over it, ignore it, or overcome it? Professor Kim Young-min bluntly states, "Life is futile."
He declares that “just as humans can live without losing their souls, so too can humans live with the emptiness of life,” while saying that emptiness is like the smell of blood in the human soul, and that it cannot be erased no matter how much one washes it as long as the soul exists.


What exactly does it mean to live with emptiness? Author Kim Young-min argues that hope, goodwill, and meaning aren't always the answers to life's problems.
What good is it to offer hope, goodwill, and meaning to those who appear fine on the outside but are already exhausted, distrustful of the world, or empty inside?
That is why the author dreams of a state in which time can pass quietly without good intentions, without hope, and without meaning.
I want a life without a purpose.
Because I don't want to live life, I don't want to do the task of living.
This author's attitude toward life gives us a glimpse into what it means to live with emptiness.


Full of Kim Young-min's humor, wit, and insight
How to Live with a 'Vain Life'

So how can we live with the futility of life? This book offers a variety of ways to live with it.
As the book deals with the theme of futility, death, corpses, and skeletons often appear, but as always, thanks to Kim Young-min's humor, wit, and insightful writing, readers are able to maintain an appropriate distance from the futility of life without it being too heavy or too light.
The author's brilliant prose, which speaks of the medieval "dance of death" with skeletons, William Morris's argument for salvation through art, Sisyphus's repetitive labor to endure boredom, and the shift in perspective that overcomes Zhuangzi's sorrow, sometimes represents the readers' thoughts, while also leading them to new paths of thought they might not have normally considered.


His essays are not soft or sweet, and do not directly comfort anyone who feels that life is meaningless.
However, his writing makes the reader nod, underline, record, or copy it to remember it for a long time.
In addition, it is enriched with a list of paintings, films, poems, and novels that readers can look at with the same perspective as the author.
That alone gives me a little comfort in getting through my daily life.
The more you read it slowly, the more you keep it by your side and savor it for a long time, the more its value shines.


News of "Red Cliffs",
Becoming a motif for writing about nihilism

The origins of this book, "What to Do About the Vanity of Life," date back to a special lecture commemorating the publication of "A History of Chinese Political Thought" in the spring of 2021.
The special lecture topic of this book, which tells a new Chinese story that we have never experienced before by freely crossing over vast Eastern and Western literature, was 'What to do with the futility of life' based on 'Red Cliff' by Su Shi, a writer of the Northern Song Dynasty.
"Battle of Red Cliffs" is a poem written by Su Shi (Su Dongpo) while he was in exile and traveling along the Yangtze River. It contains the story of forgetting one's worries by reminiscing about the famous "Battle of Red Cliffs" from "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and realizing that life is short and fleeting, unlike the long-lasting nature.
Since this unique lecture, which linked the "History of Chinese Political Thought" and the "Futility of Life," the author has published fragments of his thoughts on living with futility in various publications. This book is a new reorganization of those writings, tailored to the flow of "Red Cliff."
Each piece, arranged in accordance with the eight-chapter structure, is an independent piece, but at the same time, it is connected to each other and continues with the same flow and breathing as “Red Cliffs.”
If you examine the contents of "Red Cliffs" included in the appendix in connection with the main text, you can enjoy a different kind of pleasure in reading the book.


The futility of life is not just a common problem, but a universal problem that has plagued countless people for a long time.
The author crosses the boundaries between literary works such as poetry and novels and numerous artistic works such as paintings and films, capturing and reinterpreting the thoughts of those who have previously pondered the futility of life through his own unique perspective.
In that sense, this book is the author's reply to those who have already pondered the futility of life, and at the same time, it can be said to be a new commentary on So Shi's "Red Cliffs."


A feast of images that make you intuitively perceive the void

Another unique feature of this book is its images.
Just as images existed before text in the beginning, the author focuses on images that speak of the futility of life, separate from text.
This book contains a variety of nihilistic images, including paintings, murals, prints, wallpaper, ceramics, picture books, films, and installations that transcend time and space.
Sometimes the image seems to support the text, but other times the text explains the image as if it were supporting the text.
Another way to read this book is to first encounter the images and intuitively experience the emptiness before reading the text.
The author's affection for this visual culture, which allows us to intuitively understand the meaning of nothingness just by looking at it, is evident throughout the book.
Images that could not be included due to space limitations will be republished in another edition.