Life in The Burnout Society
In his essay The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han describes a way of looking at the world which he thinks is inadequate to describe the problems of our age. That problematic view is to see things through an immunological lens, as if problems are caused by an Other which we must attack and eliminate, like a virus.
The immunological view frames problems as caused by “the negativity of what is immunologically foreign.” But this view cannot account for problems caused by “an excess of positivity” such as our most distinctive psychological ailments: ADHD, depression, and burnout syndrome. Han calls these “neuronal” (a better translation from the German might be “neurological”) and thinks we ought to consider the problems of our age as neuronal.
For instance, we might think of ADHD as caused in part by a society saturated with overstimulation and constant interruptions to attention. As Han notes, “Perception becomes fragmented and scattered.” Many people might object to this notion, claiming that ADHD is purely a matter of genetics. Even so, this genetic difference may be adaptive in certain contexts, including in hunting as part of our tribal lineage, or simply surviving in times when we lived outdoors and were subject to threats from other animals. However, it is clear that such fragmented attention is not currently ideal. As Han describes:
The attitude toward time and environment known as “multitasking” does not represent civilizational progress. Human beings in the late-modern society of work and information are not the only ones capable of multitasking. Rather, such an aptitude amounts to regression. Multitasking is commonplace among wild animals. It is an attentive technique indispensable for survival in the wilderness.
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. That is why animals are incapable of contemplative immersion — either they are eating or they are copulating.
This fragmented attention describes not simply people diagnosed with ADHD but also the average Twitter user or office worker. Increasingly, everyone is like “the animal forced to divide its attention between various activities.” Two friends of mine spent some vacation time in a remote area of Thailand. The locals who worked at the resort they stayed at were all addicted to Facebook, on their phones 8+ hours a day in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. While my friends went to Thailand to escape hyperactivity, the people living there embraced it.
Perhaps an even better example than ADHD is obesity, which Han mentions only in passing:
Harm does not come from negativity alone, but also from positivity — not just from the Other or the foreign, but also from the Same. Such violence of positivity is clearly what Baudrillard has in mind when he writes, “He who lives by the Same shall die by the Same.” Likewise, Baudrillard speaks of the “obesity of all current systems” of information, communication, and production. Fat does not provoke an immune reaction.
Obesity is a key risk factor in many “lifestyle diseases” such as cardiovascular diseases and cancers. It is in that sense one of the leading causes of death. This problem of obesity is due in large part to the success of the immunological approach to medicine. We have eliminated so many deadly diseases caused by bacteria or viruses that we now have a very long average life expectancy. It is also due to our immunological success in eliminating animals, insects, “weeds” and other “pests” who would eat or compromise our food supply. We can thank Monsanto for our long lives.
And yet the problems we face now are directly caused by that success. Obesity, often framed as a complex problem, has a relatively simple biological etiology: excess caloric intake. This is the first time in human history where most humans have access to an excess of calories. Attacking “fat” as an Other, a foreign immunological invader, leads to attempted solutions like liposuction, cleanses to remove “toxins,” or research into a weight loss pill. But these attempted solutions fail to address the problem, for they are attacking the negative rather than addressing an excess of positive. Neither does seeing the problem in terms of some macronutrient Other, like fat or carbohydrates, as the cause which must be eliminated. The problem is excess calories, not a foreign pathogen. The problem of excess must be addressed as excess, as neuronal, as systemic.
Digestive diseases, allergies, and auto-immune diseases seem to be the ailments of our age. Gluten intolerance, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, acid reflux and so on affect millions. Gluten seems to be a case of the immunological Other — simply eliminate it. But this too is a systemic, neuronal problem. Gluten intolerance is in fact an auto-immune condition. Symptoms include depression and fatigue, as well as a host of digestive issues, headaches, anxiety, pain, brain fog, and yet other auto-immune diseases. Similarly with allergies. The problem isn’t the foreign invader, is the over-response from the Self to something that isn’t harmful at all. The attempted solution becomes the problem.
“Auto-” literally means self. Auto-hypnosis is self-hypnosis. An auto-immune disease is not a disease caused by an immunological Other but a neuronal Self. The call is coming from within the house. The auto-immune problem is a problem of excess, the immune system is too active. The police force arrests too many people, including those who were helpful members of society, not threats at all. The racism of the criminal justice system in the United States opposed by Black Lives Matter is auto-immunological, seeing criminals where there aren’t any. Gluten is the new black.
Not only is the immunological view unhelpful for solving neuronal problems, many neuronal problems are auto-immunological, caused not only by an excess of positivity but specifically an excess of immunological positivity.
Donald Trump’s rounding up of immigrants and asylum seekers and treating them as foreign invaders and criminals is precisely such an auto-immune reaction, which is why it is anachronistic. Just as an auto-immune disease sees non-harmful things as harmful and attacks, Trump sees non-harmful humans as a harmful Other and attacks. They must be eliminated at all costs. As Han writes, “The object of immune defense is the foreign as such. Even if it has no hostile intentions, even if it poses no danger, it is eliminated on the basis of its Otherness.” If not stopped, this auto-immune response to foreigners will lead to genocide. But it does not only attack immigrants. ICE raids are beginning to target US citizens too, thus this is clearly auto-immunological in nature.
This doesn’t mean there is a simple neuronal response either. As Han notes, “Today, even the so-called immigrant is not an immunological Other, not a foreigner in the strong sense, who poses a real danger or of whom one is afraid. Immigrants and refugees and more likely to be perceived as burdens than as threats.” As Han was writing in 2015, perhaps he could not have seen the increase of Islamophobia or xenophobia globally. But even accounting for the rise of reactionary neo-fascism, he is describing a view held by many. Amongst progressives, refugees and asylum seekers are not seen as a dangerous Other, but often are seen as a burden. In opposing xenophobic immunological responses to immigration, progressives are often unsure of alternatives which would integrate them into the Self of our society and culture.
Returning to obesity, this of course does not simply describe literal obesity but also the bloat of the legal system, corporate bureaucracy, consumerism, and information overload. There is simply too much of everything. This even includes value systems and norms, which postmodernists have discussed already for decades. We have no single overarching mass culture, only many micro-cultures which are constantly shifting. The regressive reaction to globalism we are finding today in the rise of the far right is the sign of a failed neuronal integration, attempting to return to a simpler immunological view, fighting and expelling the Other. But even the far right is globalist. Canadian professor Jordan Peterson fights the same “Cultural Marxism” popularized in the manifesto of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, who himself references American Richard Spencer. Nationalists find inspiration from other nationalists. Contemporary bigotry is neuronal, auto-immunological. We are too connected to truly have an Other.
The ozone hole was an immunological problem. We eliminated the CFCs that damaged it, and it repaired itself. Global warming is a neuronal, auto-immunological problem. We have tried framing it as immunological, making carbon the enemy. But it’s not carbon, it’s systemic. It’s a problem of too much, too much driving, too many people, too much civilization.
Burnout syndrome is also caused by an excess of positivity, rather than a foreign negativity. More and more young people are complaining about depression and tiredness, often in memes and jokes. Han says, “the society of achievement and activeness is generating excessive tiredness and exhaustion.” I myself experienced burnout syndrome or chronic fatigue in my 20s, in part due to failed entrepreneurial ventures, but also just pushing myself too hard to improve. And in fact, Han recognizes this as the cause of burnout:
Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society. Also, its inhabitants are no longer “obedience-subjects” but “achievement-subjects.” They are entrepreneurs of themselves. …
Disciplinary society is a society of negativity. It is defined by the negativity of prohibition. the negative modal verb that governs it is May Not. By the same token, the negativity of compulsion adheres to Should. Achievement society, more and more, is in the process of discarding negativity. … Unlimited Can is the positive modal verb of achievement society. Its plural form — the affirmation, “Yes, we can” — epitomizes achievement society’s positive orientation. Prohibitions, commandments, and the law are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation. Disciplinary society is governed by no. Its negativity produces madmen and criminals. In contrast, achievement society creates depressives and losers.
Han offers a possible alternative, a different kind of tiredness from burnout. “Tiredness in achievement society is solitary tiredness; it has a separating and isolating effect.” Instead, we can be tired together, sharing in a “common tiredness.” This collective fatigue can relax hard individualistic ego boundaries and lead to greater connection. It also can be a kind of “not-doing,” rather than a “can’t do.” The achievement society frames tiredness as individual and as a can’t, whereas another view is possible, that of leisure, of deliberate non-doing, and of non-doing together.
My wife and I spend all day every Saturday together. The only rule is that we cannot make plans or get things done. When we tell friends about this, they are shocked, unable to conceive of a full 24 hours of leisure every week. In the achievement society, the Sabbath is taboo. But we cannot conceive of not doing it, and credit this time to having a successful marriage, and being relatively sane. On most Saturdays, we both complain about being very tired. But we are tired together, with nothing that has to be done.
This deliberate non-doing, tired of endless achievement orientation, is suitable to deep contemplation and inspiration. It is life-affirming tiredness. I often say something similar about depression. I see depression as a life-affirming strategy for dealing with a truly hopeless situation. It’s an energy conservation strategy designed to keep you alive. If a situation is truly hopeless, it is best to save your energy until conditions are more favorable. The problem is that depression can warp our view, making us unaware that the situation has changed and sapping our energy to attempt a solution now.
There are rest states that can be brought about through QiGong or meditation that at times I’ve avoided because they felt too much like the depression I’ve overcome. I sometimes describe these states as “void” because they are empty of any emotional content. But they are not depressive or hopeless in nature, they are of this other kind of tiredness, this withdrawing into contemplation and inactivity. They do not make me incapable, but capable of responding to life in a more calm and centered manner, often deciding to do less. The positive tiredness of an emotional void is a deliberate withdrawal from the hyperactivity of achievement society. As Han states:
The tiredness of exhaustion is the tiredness of positive potency. It makes one incapable of doing something. Tiredness that inspires is tiredness of negative potency, of not-to. The Sabbath, too — a word that originally meant stopping — is a day of not-to; speaking with Heidegger, it is a day free from all in-order-to, of all care. It is a matter of interval.
The interval is the liminal, the times in between. “Today we live in a world that is very poor in interruption; ‘betweens’ and ‘between-times’ are lacking.” Now we have no intervals, because we fill all waiting spaces with activity: checking email, Facebook, Twitter, sending a text message, reading a few pages. We do not value the in between, the interval, the void. The “negative potency” is seen as nothing of value at all. The only value is that which can be converted into some sort of measurable, preferably monetary value, a “good” which can be purchased.
Individual solutions to this problem as found in minimalism are partial measures. In fact, an individual solution to the burnout society is immunological: achievement society is a foreign Other which must be rejected. Immunological solutions involve retreat and rejection. A neuronal solution would be collective and integrative. A sabbath with my wife is a collective tiredness that brings us closer together. Carving out time daily to do nothing as a cultural norm would be an attempt at a neuronal solution. Integrative practices people do together, like Core Transformation which was so valuable to me, are neuronal solutions with the goal of increasing time spent in Being.
But ultimately we need wide-reaching recognition of the problem of excess positivity, excess achievement, excess calories and population and so on. We don’t need personal minimalism but collective minimalism, economic minimalism, technological minimalism. How we get there is anybody’s guess. But if we do not, we cannot address the problems we are currently facing.
