Create a healthy 'between' through empty space.

 The process of individualization in pursuit of freedom, modern society. Create a healthy 'between' through empty space.

In modern times, people started to dream of 'one's own room'.

A 'one's own room' is a space where a person can absolutely withdraw from the outside, reflect on himself, and be reborn as a true being. Modern people can no longer simply depend on traditions and customs for their lives. In other words, in modern society, the social life of an individual is mostly unpredictable and variable, and accordingly, each individual is not a group but himself, "the ability to continue a specific narrative" and "the individual must be responsible. It has become a situation where you have to become the subject of a “reflexive project”. Achieving this is self-actualization.

To be an individual is to be different from other people. The individual 'I' has his own uniqueness that is different from anyone else. This uniqueness must be irreducible by any other characteristic and disappears the moment it is forcibly reduced to something else.

Even though there are many 'we' in 'I', something unique to 'I' that cannot be reduced to any 'bundle' of us must remain for 'I'. When that 'something' disappears, I am just a bundle of bundles.

The explanation of 'I' is divided into pre-modern and post-modern times.

Before modern times, 'something' was called the soul. It is given by God and persists after death. However, in modern society, this thing is called 'self/self', and a being with this self is called an individual. So, in modern society, people who do not have 'self-consciousness', that is, who cannot become themselves, were considered the lowest.

With the advent of modern society, the individual as an independent and distinct being who becomes the subject of his or her life with 'self-consciousness' and plans and manages his or her life has become a task that everyone must achieve and bear. Now, we have to become the beings who resist with 'no', not the subjects who basically obey with 'yes'. The moment I say 'yes, I become a subordinate being subordinated to the person who said it.

Revealing who we are, and realizing who we are, has become a task for all of us, just as important as the Middle Ages' entry into heaven.

​

Modern society is a process of individualization that has no choice but to constantly pursue individual freedom. In the early modern times, personalization meant 'the liberation of human beings from community dependence, surveillance, and coercive, tightly knit organizations.' As the class system collapsed and scientific and rational thinking unfolded, it was transformed into an era in which everyone can become an individual. In the past, humans bound by the status system, especially slaves and serfs, were never able to plan their own lives, but now, the idea that all human beings are born to be free is by no means an external restraint like the status system. was not approved, and this inevitably led to the abolition of the status system.

​

All human beings are born free, and human autonomy is the most important value and purpose for human beings and the basis of human dignity. It was believed that human beings were dignified because they were free, and that they could be dignified by being free. A being who pioneered his own destiny by his own power, this was the basis and goal for the birth of modern humans.

​

The most necessary thing to be an individual was to have one's own unique thinking, that is, self-consciousness, that was different from other people. This is because only when you have an idea can you plan your life according to that thought, and only when you become a subject like this can you become the protagonist of your life. To become a subject, one must not move as society or nature leads. This is because he proves that he has not been freed from slavery. Thus, freed from the outside world, human beings are constantly in a state of discord with society and nature. The outside and inside were in a state of constant tension. Hegel described this as a fall from a noble spirit to lower consciousness. But this fall is progress, not regression. In other words, the low consciousness is a higher level of free consciousness than the noble consciousness.

That is why this lowly conscious person needs an outside called the world and an inside called the inside. The other and the inner are in a dialectical relationship. Because there is the other, we constantly try to communicate with that other. In the process of communication, the 'I' must constantly look back on myself. This space in which I look back and live on the inside. In the inner space, we draw others into ourselves, have conversations, and reflect on ourselves through them. Being completely sucked in by the Other is not independent life, and life completely immersed in oneself by forgetting the Other is not an independent life. The ego, having met and had conversations with others from the inside, has to go back to the space where others are, that is, the world. For this reason, the dual space of life, the inner and the world, develops vigorously as a constant conflict and tension between the other and the self. 'One's own room' symbolizes this inner space.

Authenticity also means something unique to one's own. Conversely, without privacy, there is nothing unique to oneself, and it cannot be maintained without respect for human beings. It is for this reason that Ulrich Beck called electric modernity 'half modernity'. Without privacy, it is not an individual in the modern sense.

Social distance is close to infinity, but physical distance is close to zero In this society, you need empty space for yourself and a wall that can keep the minimum distance from others. This 'empty space' is the gift of a healthy 'between'.