Burnout society

2024-07-18

After reading a book Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han, I got myself questioning the current state of the world as well as myself.

The plot

The book is divided into thematic sections, each discussing something else, although some ideas appear many times in different forms.

First, the author states that otherness, required to trigger an immunoreaction is being replaced with difference. Immunological paradigm is no longer valid, because of globalization, hybridization and dissolution of boundaries. The thing that sets off immunoreaction is negativity. However, currently we are dealing with (this is going to be repeated many times) excess of positivity. We get overachievement, overproduction, overcommunication… We have obesity of all current systems. Issues are on a neuronal level appear. The violence of positivity does not require hostility. It does not deprive, it saturates, it does not exclude, it exhausts. And we get neuronal diseases such as depression, ADHD or burnout syndrome.

Obiedience society has shifted to achievement society. Achievement subjects are enterprenuers of themselves. Should is replaced with can and other positive affirmations. Obiedience society creates criminals and madmen, achievement society creates depressives and losers. Continuity holds in this paradigm shift. But why does the shift occur? Author states that the drive to maximize production inhabits the social unconscious. The shift is necessary to surpass production limit of negativity of prohibition. And what factor contributes to depression according to the author? The pressure to achieve. And what about burnout? Excess of responsibility and initiative. Depression comes with creative fatigue and exhausted ability. Achievement subject gets to this state by putting said pressure on itself, and by applying auto aggression. Nonetheless, the subject is not controlled externally, it is a master and a slave at the same time.

Excess of positivity is also excess of stimuli, information and impulses. Structure and economy of attention is infracted. Multitasking emerges, yet it represents nothing but regression. An animal busy with eating must also attend to other tasks. For example, it must hold rivals away from its prey. It must constantly be on the lookout, lest it be eaten while eating. At the same time, it must guard its young and keep an eye on its sexual partner. In the wild, the animal is forced to divide its attention between various activities.

Author states that besides multitasking, there are other activities evoking animalistic vigilance and as an example gives video games. He goes even so far to write that a general regression is happening due to increased bullying and concern for good life focusing mostly on the most basic survival needs.

It is no suprise that for any complex work, deep contemplative attention is required. Another important component is deep boredom. If sleep is physical relaxation, then boredom is mental relaxation.

Modern society degrades humans into animal laborans, yet they are anything but animalian. They don’t abandon their individuality to dissolve into the life process so they do not gain the following serenity. They are hyperactive and hyperneurotic.

Loss of faith and denarrativization of life make it bare and fleeting. Uneasiness and embedded anxiety arise. Health gets placed as the ultimate value and achieves a degree of absolutness. Society of laboring is also not free, everyone is a master and a slave, everyone carries a work camp inside. Refusal/rejection is an essential trait of contemplation. Zen mediation is negative in a sense that it frees one from rushing, puts one against the void. It is an extremly active process in contrast to hyperactivity, which is in fact passive.

Achievement society leads to excessive tiredness and exhaustion. It produces an isolating tiredness.

A crisis of gratification is brought by absence of relation to the Other (ex. God). For Kant, God represents the instance of gratification: He rewards and acknowledges moral accomplishment. Because the structure of gratification has been disturbed, the achievement-subject feels compelled to perform more and more. But why? Gratification presupposes the instance of the Other so it does not occur in its true form. Narcissim and strong self-love stand in opposition. The latter requires an explicit stand against the world, while the former blurs the border, one sees oneself in everything. So narcissim is paradoxical, because in the end subject fails to achieve stable self-image. Shapelessness/flexibility allow modern men to achieve economic efficiency. Flexible people are required to heighten production. Achievement subject competes with itself. Gap between real ego and ego ideal brings forth auto aggression. Subject liberates itself into a project. The achievement-subject stands free from external instances of domination forcing it to work and exploiting it.

Capitalist economy absolutizes survival, it is not concerned with good life, it is sustained by the illusion that more capital produces more life. Why is that an illusion? The author does not elaborate.

He ends with a statement that a logical evolution is that into a doping society (where a new height of productiveness is achieved with a use of drugs).

The opinion

The majority of the book is well written (apart from sometimes vague langauge and random German terms) and reasonable. I actually did not include some parts in the plot section (mainly the ones I labeled as random, read on for more information). It does provide actionable changes one can make, which are appear reasonably beneficial. We can deduce:

He does not tell that explicitly, but these things appear in a positive contrast.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s just his writing style or if he really derives some wild conclusions. Like the computer is stupid because it does not have the ability to delay??? Like, it is not even a valid factor as computers could be capable of simulating a human brain if we had more processing power. He also gets kind of unhinged bringing up a dude who claims to see fragrance of things??? We also get random stuff like distinction between rage and anger, types of exhaustion as well as Bartleby case. While the last represents his ideas in a way, I do not approve of bringing fictional art as it can have various interpretetions and is something rather for an individual to contemplate. In his book, only facts, reasoning as well as idea presentation should be used. But that’s just my opinion. But those small things don’t take away from the main ideas.

Obviously achievement society induced neuronal diseases do not affect everyone, but in general sense we lose our core human features and become more machine-like. Regardless, it is imminient, as I mentioned in Vulnerability post.

It is also funny as in the motivation and self-development industry you encounter growth mindset. Does the author recognize subject’s internal competiton and this mindset as the same thing? I do, and in my opinion it is funny how the same idea is approached from different perspectives.

The final idea seems obsolete a few years after publication of this book. Instead of drugs something like cyberware could be used to further enhance us and eventually fully lead us to an evolution into pure machines.

My final score is 7/10.