The Burnout Society

Book Link: https://smile.amazon.com/Burnout-Society-Byung-Chul-Han/dp/0804795096

For such a short book, this one really delivered. It is not a casual read, and can be difficult at times forcing a re-read of sections, but I got tremendous value from it. The overall theme is the authors blanket description of society as a whole and how it has moved from a disciplianry society to an achievement society. One of the symptoms of an achievement society is excessive positivity and "can-do" attitudes to maximize resources wherever and whenever possible. That positivity, it is argued, is what breeds depression and ultimately burnout. "The pressure to achieve [...] causes exhaustive depression. Seen in this light, burnout syndrome does not express the exhausted self so much as the exhausted, burnt-out soul."

While I don't agree with characterizing all of the world as "society" and distilling it down to a single perspective, there are some interesting insights that can easily be applied to smaller cultural groups or larger movements. There are well-delivered takes on depression, multi-tasking, friendships, and social capital throughout the 70ish pages that were very interesting to read and will likely permeate my own thinking when in those situations.

Some highlights/thoughts from my reading: 1. Despite widespread fear of an influenza epidemic, we are not living in a viral age. Thanks to immunological technology, we have already left it behind. 2. The violence of positivity does not deprive, it saturates; it does not exclude, it exhausts. That is why it proves inaccessible to unmediated perception. 3. Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society [Leistungsgesellschaft]. Also, its inhabitants are no longer “obedience-subjects” but “achievement-subjects.” They are entrepreneurs of themselves. 4. Disciplinary society is still governed by no. Its negativity produces madmen and criminals. In contrast, achievement society creates depressives and losers. 5. It is not the imperative only to belong to oneself, but the pressure to achieve that causes exhaustive depression. Seen in this light, burnout syndrome does not express the exhausted self so much as the exhausted, burnt-out soul. According to Ehrenberg, depression spreads when the commandments and prohibitions of disciplinary society yield to self-responsibility and initiative. In reality, it is not the excess of responsibility and initiative that makes one sick, but the imperative to achieve: the new commandment of late-modern labor society. 6. The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Nothing is impossible.” No-longer-being-able-to-be-able leads to destructive self-reproach and auto-aggression. The achievement-subject finds itself fighting with itself. The depressive has been wounded by internalized war. Depression is the sickness of a society that suffers from excessive positivity. It reflects a humanity waging war on itself. 7. Multitasking is commonplace among wild animals. It is an attentive technique indispensable for survival in the wilderness. 8. Culture presumes an environment in which deep attention is possible. Increasingly, such immersive reflection is being displaced by an entirely different form of attention: hyperattention. A rash change of focus between different tasks, sources of information, and processes characterizes this scattered mode of awareness. 9. Reacting immediately, yielding to every impulse, already amounts to illness and represents a symptom of exhaustion. 10. depression occurs when the subject striving to display initiative founders on the uncontrollable. However, the uncontrollable, the irreducible, and the unknown—like the unconscious—are figures of negativity; they are no longer constitutive of achievement society, which is dominated by excessive positivity. 11. In social networks, the function of “friends” is primarily to heighten narcissism by granting attention, as consumers, to the ego exhibited as a commodity. 12. The capitalist economy absolutizes survival. It is not concerned with the good life. It is sustained by the illusion that more capital produces more life, which means a greater capacity for living. The rigid, rigorous separation between life and death casts a spell of ghostly stiffness over life itself. Concern about living the good life yields to the hysteria of surviving. 13. The life of homo sacer in achievement society is holy and bare for another reason entirely. It is bare because, stripped of all transcendent value, it has been reduced to the immanency of vital functions and capacities, which are to be maximized by any and all means.