Gangnam Style: North and South

'The real world has its limits; the imaginary one is infinite.'
--Rousseau.

Bound & Free 

All great civilisations are based on parochialism...To know even one field or one land is a lifetime's experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width.

---Patrick Kavanagh on the universal and the parochial.

~~~

Of course, some might say the South is too permissive, the North is obviously repressive. If that's the choice, then better to err on the side of freedom. It goes without saying that the imposition of limits (by the state, religion, the family) is often a repressive measure. But are there any other ways of "measuring" one's life, finding some kind of joy or meaning in a common, shared and small-scale world or set of experiences? 

If capitalism and modernity are about eradicating barriers, transgressing (though it has to be remembered that it re-imposes those limits by expelling many from its privileged domain and also, paradoxically, requires "spheres" that are not subject to market principles, mentalities and practices) then is there any meaning-except the negative connotation-to the idea of limits?

In a weightless world Bark, the former slave, felt the need to tie himself down, the need to bind himself in some way so that he could experience what it was to be bound and free-wasn't that, precisely, the human condition? To be completely free or completely bound (by nature, say) was to be either a god on the one hand or a beast or angel on the other.

There is something desperately sad about the North and the child-like state the populace has been reduced to, fainting or sliding into a trance at the sight of the Great Leader. But there's also something all-too predictable and mechanical about the freedom of the South: the Hunter's Club could be anywhere and the people in it could be anyone.

By chance:

“When you’re nineteen, all the girls get plastic surgery, so if you don’t do it, after a few years, your friends will all look better, but you will look like your unimproved you,..”

The 'Bagel-girl look'. Go to the Improvement Quarter, Gangnam district.

'Question: Which entertainer do you most want to look like?

If you get the result you want from plastic surgery, what’s the thing you want most to do?

[] Upload a selfie without using Photoshop

[] Get a lover

[] Find a job

[] Enter a competition for face beauty

One doctor told me that he had a patient who showed him a cartoon that she wanted to resemble.

Now we all have these basic things, so the competition has moved up to comparing one’s looks, health, and spiritual things as well.'
{from The New Yorker}