When the social changes occur, people often feel very uncomfortable and get stresses because it escapes from familiarity. Sometimes they try to escape familiarity and want to have new experiences, but eventually return to a familiar environment. Change, in a way, forces us to adapt constantly, and we are fundamentally afraid of changes because we are exposed to unknown risks as the external environment changes. However, the more society develops, the greater the change, and the fate of society as a whole, as well as the individual as to whether or not to adapt to change, is often determined their future.
When a new system is introduced, a period of adaptation to the system is needed. The more the new system differs from the existing system, the higher the people’s pain index increases. When the pain reaches a critical point, it is faced with resistance. Changes we are facing have reached to the social system, working ways, and way of thinking mainly due to the development of science and technology, which become unbearable pains to the ordinary people. It is anticipated that artificial intelligence, robots, and genetic engineering will be developed very rapidly and widely, this moment we have very limited imagination on the magnitude of the changes in future. Science and technology develop exponentially, which will change society much faster, deeper and wider than the changes we have experienced so far. Just as science and technology almost brought the birth of the universe through the big bang, it seemed to create a whole new world. On the other hand, adaptability and learning abilities of human beings have limitations, so they have a strong resistance to changes when they meet the changes.
Society and individuals are at the crossroads of acceptance or denial of technology, but they are directly linked to the problem of being distinction or survival if viewed from the whole society. The arrival of the Iron Age and the Bronze Age naturally brought the end of the Stone Age, and the nations that opened the industrial age earlier now have a status as a developed country. As the development of the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Agricultural and the Industrial revolution, many countries have experienced ups and downs.
But Big and even small social changes are accompanied by pain to the people. The pain index can be briefly described as follows.
The size of the pain = the speed and quantity of change / the adaptability to social change
In other words, if the speed and amount of change are fast and huge, the Social Stress (Social Pain) gets bigger, but when the capacity to adapt of society or individual to change increases, Social Stress (Social Pain) decreases. The magnitude of change is proportional to the pain, but the adaptability is inversely proportional to pain. The speed of change is so rapid that when society members are subjected to extreme stress, society becomes highly unstable and becomes very aggressive toward others.
Korea has had a period of fast transformation in the last few decades that fundamentally changed Korean society. With the industrialization from the 60s to the 80s, the information and communication society since the 1980s, and the establishment of institutional democracy in the 1990s, including the economic crisis they experienced rapid changes that were impossible for individuals to adapt all the changes. People who have used change well have scaled up their wealth or succeeded, but many who did not cope well with had to spend hours of pain. Because of these changes, social pain index is much higher than other countries and social conflict is also wide and deep. Therefore, the whole society is divided into friends and enemies they are fighting each other. The hostility and hatred towards others who think they are enemies are expressed without filtering. It almost seems like if you do not kill the others or you will be killed. People try to divide society from good and evil, there are a lot of people who try to get rid of evil with the name of justice.
In order to alleviate social conflicts and hatreds and to integrate society, individuals and society need to increase their adaptability to change. High individual acceptance to social changes is shown from the people who are mainly of low age, high education level, healthy body and mind, positive thinking and sociable personality. Not only personal acceptance but also social acceptance is important. If the overall atmosphere of the society, that is, higher confidence index, the safety device for failure, or the social safety net for the poor is well structured, it becomes a society with high acceptance to change. Social changes from technological development are unavoidable. However, we try to make better and healthier society by seeking various ways to increase the acceptance of changes in individual or society, minimize the group of underdogs in society, and seek ways to live together. There are groups that benefit from changes, and there are those who see losses. If groups obtained benefits does not take care of those who lose, the same hatred and conflict will continue.