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In my perception, Bong Joon Ho, the Korean director of the film Parasite, has crazed a global nerve still vibrating from its four Oscars awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Such films carry the wallop of myth, in former times, a spiritual force that corrected, educated, and inspired its listeners. Its title, Parasite, images the disgusting organism, secretive, invasive, even deadly, that lives in or on an organism of a different species. Often the host’s infestation remains undetected and mimics other diseases that complicate diagnoses and treatment.

The film Parasite presents the wealthy sophisticated Kim family and the scrounging Parks, both engaged in class warfare and seeking an elusive material security that pits them against each other. The parasitic infection is mounted through the cunning of Kee-Woo, the Parks’ teenage son and the story takes off from there. Beneath its surface, however, lurks an ominous tone that discomfits both families as well as the viewers. Something very dark lies ahead.

Although the film story runs two hours and twelve minutes, it plays into a much longer one in our psyches, one that unbeknownst to us, may have been running for decades—Thus, our parasite. Whatever our circumstances, material security has become the god of our consumer society, and greed, like the parasite, fuels this self centered pursuit.

How ferret out this disease that kills spirit? How do with less? How share with others without being condescending? When is enough, enough?

I continue learning …