Next month’s book is Farsighted by Steven Johnson, join the Book Club to get all of the content. I’m on vacation next week out of internet range so there will be no post which gives you two weeks to get started on the book.
This month we’ve read The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han which was a far more philosophical book than I expected. His main thrust is that the overwhelming push towards positivity yields burnout, because anything that happens in our lives that isn’t positive is met with anger and frustration1. In this he echoes Neil Pasricha in You Are Awesome who talks much about the porcelain dolls2 we create in current society by removing all hardship from youth so that when they encounter any hardship later in life they have no early life experience of failure they can lean on to help them get through the hardship they’re encountering later in life. I’m not even talking about big things like a death in the family, the hardship could be as small as their coffee order taking too long or not getting the right sauce with their meal.
When all of life is represented as positive, any deviation from the happiness ideal is devastation.
Han also echoes ideas from Cal Newport when he talks about the harm that [[multi-tasking]] does to our ability to have deep thoughts. But Han takes it a step further drawing a connection between hunter-gatherer societies needing to multi-task so that they didn’t get eaten by a predator and the regression that puts on modern workers who no longer have a chance for deep thought as they strive for achievement via multi-tasking3. If our cultural achievements were a result of deep thought, as Han claims4, then how much progress are we leaving on the table by forcing everyone to multi-task? With no deep thought possible for most of society, the biggest cultural developments of our generation are being buried beneath quick email responses.
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Finally, Han talks about achievement society being a society of self-exploitation5. In this society we don’t need someone to oversee us and drive us to work, we fall back on our desire for achievement and exploit ourselves because we want some idealised success. We bring ourselves to burnout6.
Misses
While Han makes minor mention of economic violence being used on workers as a threat so they “voluntarily” exploit themselves in hopes they remain to be worthy of food and shelter, I don’t think he spends enough time recognising the lack of power in workers today. I don’t think he spends enough time looking at how capitalist owners continue to push workers to mere commodities that can be swapped out with any other worker at the drop of a hat.
The other big miss for me was the continued feeling through the book that I needed to read 10 other philosophers and all of the 12 books they each wrote to hope to follow the full context that Han was discussing. This is clearly a philosophy book, and though it appears short, if you want follow it you’ll need to stop and read sections again to wade through the complex arguments being made if you want any hope of following what he’s saying.
Should you Read The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han?
If you’re looking for a philosophical treatise on burnout, then this book may be exactly what you’re looking for. I tend towards practical books though so I didn’t get as much out of it as I had hoped.
- Purchase The Burnout Society on Bookshop.org – Support local bookstores
- Purchase The Burnout Society on Amazon