The Burnout Society
Byung-Chul Han, 2010
Why are we so tired, even though no one is forcing us? The philosopher Byung-Chul Han believes that what wears people out today isn't a ban but an endless "you can." In this short book, he explains how people became their own overseers, and why rescue may come from boredom, a pause and a special, shared kind of tiredness.
Who it is for
For anyone who gets worn out even when no one is asking anything of them. And for everyone curious about why a world where "anything is possible" is so exhausting.
It's a mistake to believe that the more active a person is, the freer they are.
No energy left, though no one made you
Picture an ordinary evening. Your boss went home long ago, and no one is asking anything of you. But there's still a list in your head: finish the report, go to the gym, answer your friends, read a useful book. You set yourself all these tasks without anyone telling you to. You have no energy left, but stopping feels shameful.
The philosopher Byung-Chul Han begins his short book with a simple thought: every era has its own main illnesses. There was the era of bacteria, and it ended with the invention of antibiotics. Han also considers the age of viruses behind us. And the beginning of the 21st century, in his words, is defined by depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, borderline personality disorder and burnout.
The book's main idea is unexpected. Han believes these illnesses don't come from an enemy or from bans. They're caused by an excess of "yes": too many options, tasks, messages and calls of "you can do anything." Han has his own word for this: positivity. It sounds pleasant, but in the author's view, this is exactly what wears us out more than any ban.
Further on in the book, you'll meet Prometheus with the eagle and a wild animal that can't let itself get absorbed in anything. Then come a person who invented dance out of boredom, and the scrivener Bartleby with his strange "I would prefer not to." And at the end, two very different kinds of tiredness, and one of them, oddly enough, heals.
An enemy walls can't protect you from
Han calls the twentieth century immunological, that is, built the way immunity works. Immunity divides everything into its own and the foreign, and attacks the foreign. Society lived the same way: us and our enemies, inside and outside. The Cold War also rested on this pattern of attack and defense, of walls and borders. The foreign was pushed away for being foreign, even when it posed no threat at all.
A vaccine works on the same pattern. A tiny piece of something foreign is put into the body so the body learns to defend itself. A person willingly does themselves a small harm to be saved from a much bigger one.
The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard described how the image of the enemy changed. First it's a wolf, and people build walls against it. Then a rat, fought with cleanliness. Then a beetle and, finally, a virus that hides inside the system itself. Han notes that even a virus is still an enemy, an outsider.
Han believes this era is passing. The foreign no longer frightens us, it has become exotic. A tourist goes to a faraway country not to defend themselves but to look around. The new danger comes from inside, from an excess of the same. The author lists its sources: overproduction, overload and too much communication.
Baudrillard also wrote about the "obesity" of modern systems: of information, communication and production. Han adds that there's no immune reaction to obesity. You can picture it like this: an extra slice of cake doesn't look like an enemy, and the body doesn't put up a defense against it, it just gets heavier. The same thing happens with an extra email, an extra task and an extra episode of a series.
In Han's words, excess is violent too, but this violence doesn't exclude, it exhausts. An enemy with a weapon can be seen from afar. The pressure of excess is almost invisible, because it grows in a peaceful, tolerant society and looks like abundance. That's why Han calls the illnesses of our time not infections but infarctions: the soul gives out from overload, the way a heart does.
What does this change for you? People usually look for the cause of their tiredness outside: in their boss, their city, strangers. Han suggests looking in the other direction. Sometimes what wears us out isn't what attacks us, but what there's too much of, and what we ourselves say "yes" to.
About the author
Byung-Chul Han is a Korean-born German philosopher. Over the past decade he has become very popular in the West. His books are translated into many languages.
All books by this author: Byung-Chul Han
Terms from the book
- Burnout
- Melville
- Wall Street
- Bartleby
- Multitasking
- Nietzsche
- Sabbath
- Kafka
- Attention deficit: Full name: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A condition in which a person finds it hard to keep their attention on something and to sit still.
- Borderline: Borderline personality disorder: a condition in which a person's feelings, relationships with people and sense of self are very unstable.
- Positivity: Han's word for an excess of "yes": of options, tasks, information and calls of "you can" that have nothing to balance them. It's the author's term, not a psychological concept.
- Immunity: The body's defense system. It tells its own from the foreign and destroys what it sees as dangerous.
- Cold War: The standoff between the US and the USSR, with their allies, after the Second World War, which lasted until the early 1990s.
- Baudrillard: Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher and sociologist. He wrote about how the image of the enemy changed, and about the "obesity" of modern systems.
- Foucault: Michel Foucault, a French philosopher. He studied how society controls people through prisons, hospitals, schools and barracks.
- Disciplinary society: A society of bans and orders, as Michel Foucault described it: prisons, barracks, factories, where a person is kept in line from the outside.
- Achievement society: Han's name for today's society: what rules it isn't a ban but the word "can," and everyone drives themselves on. It's the author's concept.
- Prometheus: A hero of ancient Greek myth. He is chained, and an eagle devours his liver, which keeps growing back.
- Self-exploitation: Han's word: a person squeezes every last bit of strength out of themselves, and no one is forcing them. They are their own boss and their own worker.
- Ehrenberg: Alain Ehrenberg, a French sociologist, the author of "The Weariness of the Self," a book about how depression spread in modern society.
- Benjamin: Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher and critic. He called deep boredom a bird that hatches the egg of experience.
- Hyperactivity: Here: restless, feverish activity without pauses, when a person responds to every signal.
- Apathy: A state in which a person doesn't care about anything and doesn't want anything.
- Handke: Peter Handke, an Austrian writer and playwright. Han examines his "Essay on Tiredness" in detail in the last chapter.
- Divisive tiredness: Peter Handke's phrase: a lonely tiredness in which people drift apart and can't even talk to each other.
- Fundamental tiredness: Peter Handke's phrase: a calm tiredness that loosens the grip of the "I," opens a person to the world and brings them closer to others.
- Still life: A painting that shows objects that don't move: flowers, fruit, dishes, sometimes insects.
All terms
Similar books
Read in Livria
