My research centers on what I describe as South Korea’s collective existential crisis. South Korea now faces the world’s lowest fertility rate (0.68), among the highest suicide rates, and rapidly rising rates of non-marriage. I approach these phenomena through the hypothesis that humans tend to explain the unexplainable through illusion, and that the self is a mediated illusion constructed from selective memory. At the core of this crisis, I argue, are two coercive metaphors: hierarchy and familism. Hierarchy enforces silence and comparison — the safest way to survive within it is simply not to be seen. Familism delivers this pressure through the most intimate channels, wrapped in the language of love and obligation. Together, they form a loop that makes a spouse or a child feel threatening — not because people do not want connection, but because they break the silence. For many, not marrying and not having children is less a choice than a form of survival. This leads me to a broader question: do humans, constituted as we are by imitation and memory, actually make choices? I hope to explore this at the intersection of anthropology and cognitive science.