Whether I'm sending this to share the presence or absence of my fear, I'm not sure. It is about the conscience. Last night, the quote below from Nobel Laureate Han Kang's [Human Acts](https://0599faed.streaklinks.com/CKeeEfnzMzrcbs3qfwDuctsM/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Fbook%2Fshow%2F30091914-human-acts) pierced through me. The novel centers on the 1980 [Gwangju uprising](https://0599faed.streaklinks.com/CKeeEf3uLremPM1DEQUdZ5ix/https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FGwangju_Uprising), a pivotal event in South Korea's democratization. What began as student protests against military rule became a citywide rebellion. It was brutal - 800,000 bullets were given to suppress 400,000 civilians - but it exposed the regime's violence, fueling nationwide protests that led to 1987 free elections. Moon Jae-hak, the real-life basis of the novel's protagonist, was only 16 years old when he chose to resist. > "It wasn’t as though we didn’t know how overwhelmingly the army outnumbered us. But the strange thing was, it didn’t matter. Ever since the uprising began, I’d felt something coursing through me, as overwhelming as any army. > > Conscience.  > > Conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world. > > The day I stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands of my fellow civilians, staring down the barrels of the soldiers’ guns, the day the bodies of those first two slaughtered were placed in a handcart and pushed at the head of the column, I was startled to discover an absence inside myself: the absence of fear. I remember feeling that it was all right to die; I felt the blood of a hundred thousand hearts surging together into one enormous artery, fresh and clean … the sublime enormity of a single heart, pulsing blood through that vessel and into my own. I dared to feel a part of it." - From _Human Acts_ I was startled to find myself crying and resonating with Gwangju civilians who felt it was all right to die. I never did a year ago..  To communicate with you, the conscience I am following intuitively, I'm learning. For now, all the language I have is -- I fear the violence in current academia that forces conformity, recognition, and hierarchy. But as I struggle to be conscientious scholars like you, I feel an absence of fear. ![[Pasted image 20241023093213.png]]