‘쓰레기-치유’를 위한 문학 윤리

Abstract

In solving the problem of the garbage the ethics of the people is as important as the political endeavors or technological innovations. If we can produce less garbage, rather than struggling how to dispose of or recycle the produced garbage, the economic and ecological benefits would be enormous. Among the many ways to approach the issue of the ethics of the people, the literary approach is culturally meaningful and has proved powerful in promoting ethical consciousness. In this paper, I’d like to discuss ethical ideas that some works of the Korean writers present to solve the problem of garbage in three aspects. First, Korean writers articulate the ethics of “life without waste” and the importance of controlling excessive desires. They criticize the surplus production and consumption of the capitalist society, which causes enormous amount of unnecessary garbage. They think we can reduce the garbage by controlling our desire, the very source of this “surplus” culture, which is in line with the ethics of traditional Buddhism. Secondly, they propose a new perspective that garbage is not an object to be disposed but an object to be cured. This approach gives us a new insight by allowing us to see garbage from the point view of garbage. Thirdly, they present a new ecological attitude toward garbage based on the Korea’s traditional idea of the unity of heaven�earth-humankind. If people practice this idea of symbiotic and circulatory life, garbage would be reduced dramatically. The ethics of “garbage healing” is a viable ethic for our “old future.”