The Banality of Modern Business — Part 2: The Desecration
An anomalistic book review of László Kővári’s Critical Thinking?
„Ein leichtes Leben, eine leichte Liebe, ein leichter Tod — das war nichts für mich.“ -
Hermann Hesse in Steppenwolf
Continued from: Part 1 — The Machine
The Desecration
People are gasping for the authentic and refreshing air of real life on the fringes of mere existence. As Byung Chul-Han, the South Korean-born German philosopher, wrote in his book Müdigkeitsgesellschaft Burnoutgesellschaft Hoch-Zeit: sacred time (which lies completely outside of the domain of work) is absorbed by profane time (time dedicated to work). Furthermore, work is glorified as a self-fulfilling, ultimate purpose; and while for many it might be so, it used to be an abhorred, banal, albeit necessary activity to maintain the mere physical foundations of life and society, enabling them to achieve higher aspirations: namely, intellectual and spiritual fulfilment.
Yet, it is no coincidence that the ancient concepts of honour, heroism, or loyalty appear to be ridiculous and surreal in the corporate environment. Such alienation can occur in a society that has become mechanical, bureaucratised, and atomised; one which has jettisoned the aspiration to connect with the metaphysical realm, and which consensually despises and denigrates immateriality. By forcing the ethereal into the material dimension, the very essence of the former evaporates in the moment of materialisation. What remains is a banal, meaningless, even laughable residue; a caricature of meaning. Hence, love becomes prostitution, daydreaming becomes “time off”, passion becomes the animalistic motivation of a laboratory rat, creation becomes “content generation”, faith becomes brand strategy, self-realization becomes a hobby.
The dichotomy of “work-life balance” is pretentious, as the two domains are not equal; they belong to different dimensions (entgegengesetzt — as B. C. Han writes). Life encompasses the entire spectrum of human existence; while human society should ultimately subordinate work for survival to the role of a profane necessity to create the foundation for the true fulfilment of human existence: self-realization. Nietzsche wrote about Goethe (4):
“What he wanted was totality; he fought the mutual extraneousness of reason, senses, feeling, and will (…); he disciplined himself to wholeness, he created himself.”
Beyond a mere separation from it, today work claims total authority over life. Hence, as Han writes, we do not have festive times anymore, where work did not exist — we have pathetic holidays, which are essentially part of working time, as they ensure regeneration for further toil. What lies beyond the mere need of survival and material safety? Beyond spiritless material activity, the immensity of existence presents itself — promising daunting emptiness or infinite possibilities.
Redefining Rationality
Unless one lives as a recluse in the mountains, one needs to adapt to the reality of modern business and the prevalent meta-views. When we raise the question as to whether we can provide business with a superior context, modern man instinctively hopes to find a solution from the exterior, from materia through analytical thinking, which aims to understand and organise the former, leading to the “further refinement” of processes, improved social theories, more efficient legislation, or an altered company architecture. Paradoxically, we might find this context (which is by definition an external set of conditions) within ourselves.
According to Kővári, the missing context can be provided by a consistent worldview (Weltanschauung). The solidity of such a view stems from traditional values. Universal virtues of loyalty, honour or authenticity have governed the lives of people throughout the millennia. Beyond the scope of true self-realisation, one should maintain an incessant aspiration for the metaphysical — indeed, the former is probably dependant on the latter. This aspiration is the mere admission of the immeasurable immensity of existence and the understanding that grasping the entirety of the Universe through purely analytical thinking is impossible. The standpoint of metaphysical openness can pave the way to the humbleness of the erudite (knowing that I don’t know what I don’t know), bestow “work” with a meaning (5), and bring about the cultivation of virtue, thus far completely alien to modernity. Thus, the “rationality” propagated by modernity is essentially and inherently irrational, as it is detached from from higher principles in the name of “efficiency”, and destroys the fundamental conditions (i.e., humanity, the environment) on which its existence depends.
In contrast with the modern interpretation, business can be different; yet, we might not call it business anymore in today’s sense. Action grounded in principles is organic, deeply and intimately personal (including personal risk-taking — see Skin in the Game by N. N. Taleb). It is immersed in the soul, yet connected to the spiritual domain; rooted in traditional values, it both feeds on and nurtures organic human relationships. Intellectuality means intellectual sovereignty, fuelling a relentless aspiration to align deeds with principles, actions with words, seeking self-realisation in an unabiding search for truth. Purely manual work (especially if it is of an artisanal nature) is probably more suitable for a human seeking intellectual sovereignty than inauthentic, mechanistic, corrupt pseudo-intellectual “work” which lacks authentic inspiration, does not aim to unveil the truth (a domain beyond the purview of business), and which denigrates the intellect to the highest possible degree by harnessing it for a purpose that contradicts its natural disposition: to perform activities completely devoid of meaning, or worse, that provide the illusion of meaning to hide the banality of a sinister agenda.
One Dimension Too Many
That some do not find their place in modernity is barely a new phenomenon. For them, there is actually no place in modernity. Literature has abundant examples of the character of the misfit. Gordon Comstock, the protagonist of George Orwell’s novel “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, is an aspiring British poet torn between the options of working for a ridiculous advertising agency or becoming an artist. Yet, poverty threatens to deprive him of not only the mundane yet essential joys of life (even love), but also of his most cherished gift: artistic inspiration. In the early 1900s Hermann Hesse drew the stark portrait of a vagabond man in his famous novel “Steppenwolf”, in which Harry Haller, suffering from the incessant inner battle with his untameable wild, quasi-animalistic self, rejects societal expectations and institutionalised bourgeois hypocrisy. When Harry meets the brilliant courtesan Hermine, she immediately becomes his mirror. On one occasion she tells him:
“You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
Only the few are ready to embrace the void. In Hesse’s Steppenwolf, people with a sovereign identity and a sensitivity for the immaterial appear as “verrückte”, mentally deranged — as if it were they, and not society, that were sick. These “lunatics” have “one dimension too many” (“eine Dimension zu viel”); their sensitivity , self-reflection, and consciousness become burdens in the modern environment, which is built on the evasion of depth.
The desire to not be an outcast from the tribe, a pariah, is probably a deeply rooted human instinct. The chances of a lonely person of swimming against the tide and surviving are minuscule. As Byung-Chul Han writes, a herd of cattle is kept together not through external, but internal exploitation (Selbstausbeutuung), which ultimately stems from fear. It is probably the elemental terror of marginalisation that lies behind the various shades of mimicry that Kővári so accurately classifies — ranging from the cynical player who ruthlessly exploits the system, to the “clueless majority” who do not even realize their role in the game, nor that they are in a game. As the character of Mike McDermott (played by Matt Damon), said in the cult poker movie Rounders:
“If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half-hour at the table, then you’re the sucker”.
Read Next: Part 3 — The Superficiality Society (Coming Soon)
Notes
(4) Friedrich Nietzsche: Twilight of the Idols
(5) It is worth reading the thoughts of the Hungarian philosopher Béla Hamvas on the matter. As he wrote in Patmos I (Chapter 1): “(…) For every advantage that is beyond social irrelevance and economic subsistence, one has to pay not with work, but with the dissolution of morality”.
