Take a photo of a barcode or cover
foxsters 's review for:
The Burnout Society
by Byung-Chul Han
The premise of the book, at least the way it was described to me, sounded interesting. What if society switches away from controlling and punishing individuals, from using ‘negativity’ to force productivity? What if instead it uses ‘positivity’? If we switch from an external motivation to an internal one, but coupled with the pressure to constantly achieve more and more, then the worker will burn out from this internal self-destructive impulse to compete with an unrealistic expectation.
The premise was promising, but there are a lot of issues with the book. First of all the author assumes that this shift has happened universally everywhere. That we no longer have division based on the Other, whether that’s race, class or something else. He states we are all the same. And therefore there’s no more control, from the outside. We’re driven internally to achieve more and more. But taking a look around Europe and the US, even if one could stretch the premise to say it’s what corporations want, it’s certainly not true for every individual. Plenty of people are not treating their life as a project full of side hustles and bio-hacking. Plenty of people have been accused of “quiet quitting”. And finally plenty of fear of otherness and control still exists in the form of Brexit and other similar rhetoric over the past decade. So that’s the first issue, the assumption that the author’s worldview and what feels like shallow personal experience are universal and universally valid.
Second, he doesn’t argue for his world view. He just states it as fact. “Depression is the result of excess of positivity in society. ” He begs the question over and over again, with no actual evidence or even logical reasoning.
Thirdly, he brings up author after author and rejects their premise based on his argument, but it’s just a list of authors he’s disagreeing with by simply saying “ they are wrong”. I’ve read 9th grade essays that had more clearly arranged arguments.
Fourthly, he has some frankly shockingly inaccurate and harmful opinions of autism, adhd and depression. It’s the equivalent of someone telling people that cancer is caused by an inflation of the super-ego causing excess bile in the gallbladder. It’s a mix of unfounded judgement and a shallow but admiring reading of Freud.
Fifth, it’s full of German words and phrases on almost every page. As if the translator or writer, whoever made this choice, was so attached to the German version they couldn’t let go and write a coherent text in English. These aren’t philosophical terms, they’re just.. phrases. It’s a jagged, painful read even for someone like me who can read German.
There are only a couple of coherent thoughts and they could be summarised in a couple of sentences. Capitalism wants us to be more productive, regardless of our happiness. It’s more efficient to make people be self-driven and for them to be their own guards. That way more people can be productive more of the time. Perhaps this is worse than controlling us explicitly because now we are our own worse enemies all of the time. So this is bad for us and makes our lives shallower, separating us, making us compete, and making us constantly look for the next thing to achieve. There. That was more coherent and more instructive than the entire book.
I don’t recommend this book, it’s a waste of time. I think this man is very good at writing rage bait content. Pamphlets with one or two coherent thoughts and a bunch of quotes from other more established authors, to give the book an academic appearance. But then he uses the quotes to say they are simply wrong and to restate his premise. I’m surprised anyone is talking about this book. I would imagine it was written by AI if it was published a couple of years later.
The premise was promising, but there are a lot of issues with the book. First of all the author assumes that this shift has happened universally everywhere. That we no longer have division based on the Other, whether that’s race, class or something else. He states we are all the same. And therefore there’s no more control, from the outside. We’re driven internally to achieve more and more. But taking a look around Europe and the US, even if one could stretch the premise to say it’s what corporations want, it’s certainly not true for every individual. Plenty of people are not treating their life as a project full of side hustles and bio-hacking. Plenty of people have been accused of “quiet quitting”. And finally plenty of fear of otherness and control still exists in the form of Brexit and other similar rhetoric over the past decade. So that’s the first issue, the assumption that the author’s worldview and what feels like shallow personal experience are universal and universally valid.
Second, he doesn’t argue for his world view. He just states it as fact. “Depression is the result of excess of positivity in society. ” He begs the question over and over again, with no actual evidence or even logical reasoning.
Thirdly, he brings up author after author and rejects their premise based on his argument, but it’s just a list of authors he’s disagreeing with by simply saying “ they are wrong”. I’ve read 9th grade essays that had more clearly arranged arguments.
Fourthly, he has some frankly shockingly inaccurate and harmful opinions of autism, adhd and depression. It’s the equivalent of someone telling people that cancer is caused by an inflation of the super-ego causing excess bile in the gallbladder. It’s a mix of unfounded judgement and a shallow but admiring reading of Freud.
Fifth, it’s full of German words and phrases on almost every page. As if the translator or writer, whoever made this choice, was so attached to the German version they couldn’t let go and write a coherent text in English. These aren’t philosophical terms, they’re just.. phrases. It’s a jagged, painful read even for someone like me who can read German.
There are only a couple of coherent thoughts and they could be summarised in a couple of sentences. Capitalism wants us to be more productive, regardless of our happiness. It’s more efficient to make people be self-driven and for them to be their own guards. That way more people can be productive more of the time. Perhaps this is worse than controlling us explicitly because now we are our own worse enemies all of the time. So this is bad for us and makes our lives shallower, separating us, making us compete, and making us constantly look for the next thing to achieve. There. That was more coherent and more instructive than the entire book.
I don’t recommend this book, it’s a waste of time. I think this man is very good at writing rage bait content. Pamphlets with one or two coherent thoughts and a bunch of quotes from other more established authors, to give the book an academic appearance. But then he uses the quotes to say they are simply wrong and to restate his premise. I’m surprised anyone is talking about this book. I would imagine it was written by AI if it was published a couple of years later.