The Burnout Society

The Burnout Society Plot Summary

Introduction

Contemporary society exhibits a distinctive pathological landscape that signals a profound paradigm shift in how we understand human existence and suffering. The 21st century marks a transition from an immunological paradigm dominated by bacterial and viral threats to a neuronal paradigm characterized by psychological afflictions like depression, burnout, and attention deficit disorders. These conditions stem not from negativity or external threats, but from an excess of positivity - too much of the same rather than confrontation with otherness. This shift represents more than a mere change in disease patterns; it reflects a fundamental transformation in social organization, from disciplinary societies based on prohibition to achievement societies driven by the imperative of possibility. The transition from "may not" to "can" has profound implications for how we experience freedom, work, and relationships. By examining this transition through multiple philosophical lenses, we gain insight into why contemporary individuals, despite unprecedented freedom and opportunity, suffer from exhaustion, depression, and a paradoxical form of self-exploitation that feels like freedom while functioning as a new and more insidious form of constraint.

Chapter 1: The Shift from Immunological to Neuronal Paradigm

Every era has its signature afflictions. The bacterial age ended with the discovery of antibiotics, and despite occasional fears of viral epidemics, we have largely moved beyond the viral age through immunological technology. From a pathological perspective, the early 21st century is defined neither by bacteria nor viruses, but by neurons. Neurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder, and burnout syndrome now dominate our pathological landscape. These conditions differ fundamentally from infectious diseases. They are not infections but infarctions - they do not result from the negativity of immunologically foreign elements but from an excess of positivity. Traditional immunological defense mechanisms target foreign elements, creating clear distinctions between inside and outside, friend and foe, self and other. The Cold War epitomized this immunological pattern with its military vocabulary of attack and defense. The immunological apparatus was designed to combat and ward off everything foreign simply based on its otherness, regardless of whether it posed actual danger. Recent times have witnessed a proliferation of immunological models in social discourse, but this trend might actually signal the paradigm's imminent demise. Contemporary society is increasingly emerging as a constellation that escapes the immunological scheme altogether. The defining feature of this shift is the disappearance of otherness and foreignness. Otherness as a fundamental category of immunology is being replaced by mere difference, which does not trigger immunological reactions. Postmodern difference represents the "Same" immunologically and lacks the sting of foreignness that would provoke strong defensive responses. The immunological paradigm proves incompatible with globalization. Immunologically organized worlds require borders, thresholds, fences, and walls that prevent universal exchange. The general promiscuity that now characterizes all spheres of life and the absence of immunologically effective Otherness define each other. Hybridization, which dominates contemporary cultural discourse and life experience, stands diametrically opposed to immunization. As otherness disappears, we enter a time poor in negativity, and consequently, the neuronal illnesses of the twenty-first century follow a dialectic not of negativity but of positivity - pathological conditions deriving from excess rather than conflict. This violence of positivity differs fundamentally from immunological violence. It does not deprive but saturates; it does not exclude but exhausts. Such violence becomes invisible precisely because it lacks negativity. Depression, ADHD, and burnout syndrome point to this excess positivity. Burnout occurs when the ego overheats from too much of the Same. The "hyper" in hyperactivity is not an immunological category but represents the massification of the positive - a destructive form of self-relation that emerges when traditional boundaries dissolve.

Chapter 2: Achievement Society: Beyond Discipline and Prohibition

Today's society no longer resembles Foucault's disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories. That reality has been replaced by a new regime - a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. The 21st century society is not a disciplinary society but an achievement society. Its inhabitants are no longer "obedience-subjects" but "achievement-subjects" - entrepreneurs of themselves rather than subjects of external control. The walls of disciplinary institutions that separated the normal from the abnormal have come to seem archaic. Foucault's analysis of power cannot fully account for the psychic and topological changes that occurred as disciplinary society transformed into achievement society. Even the concept of "control society" contains too much negativity to properly describe this transformation. Disciplinary society was defined by the negativity of prohibition, governed by the modal verb "May Not" and the negativity of "Should." Achievement society, in contrast, is characterized by the positive modal verb "Can." The affirmation "Yes, we can" epitomizes achievement society's positive orientation. The shift from disciplinary to achievement society represents both continuity and rupture. On one level, the drive to maximize production inhabits the social unconscious in both paradigms. Beyond a certain point of productivity, disciplinary technology hit a limit - the negativity of prohibition impeded further expansion. To enhance productivity, the paradigm of disciplination was replaced by the paradigm of achievement. The positivity of "Can" proves more efficient than the negativity of "Should." The achievement-subject is faster and more productive than the obedience-subject. Yet this shift creates new pathologies. Depression emerges precisely at the transition point between these social models. The depressive individual is unable to measure up to society's expectations of self-initiative and self-creation. But depression is not merely a failure of self-realization - it also follows from impoverished attachment and the systemic violence inherent in achievement society. Burnout syndrome expresses not just the exhausted self but the exhausted, burnt-out soul. It is not excess responsibility that makes one sick, but the imperative to achieve. The new human type emerging in mass form is not Nietzsche's "sovereign superman" but rather his "last man" - focused entirely on work. The depressive human being becomes an animal laborans that exploits itself voluntarily, without external constraints. It becomes both predator and prey. Depression erupts when the achievement-subject is no longer able to be able. The complaint "Nothing is possible" can only occur in a society that believes "Nothing is impossible." The achievement-subject fights with itself in a destructive internalized war.

Chapter 3: The Loss of Contemplation in Hyperactive Culture

Excessive positivity expresses itself through an overabundance of stimuli, information, and impulses that radically alters the structure and economy of attention. Contemporary perception has become fragmented and scattered due to mounting work burdens and new dispositions toward time and attention. Multitasking, often celebrated as a civilizational advancement, actually represents regression rather than progress. This mode of attention is common among wild animals - an attentive technique indispensable for survival in the wilderness but detrimental to human contemplation. Animals in the wild must divide their attention between various activities simultaneously - eating while watching for predators, guarding young, and monitoring potential mates. This necessity prevents animals from contemplative immersion. Recent social developments and structural changes in human wakefulness are bringing society deeper into this wilderness state. The concern for the good life is increasingly yielding to the simple concern for survival, manifested in phenomena like the pandemic dimensions of bullying. Cultural achievements of humanity, including philosophy, depend on deep, contemplative attention. Culture presupposes an environment where such immersion is possible. Today, this deep reflection is being displaced by hyperattention - a scattered mode of awareness characterized by rapid shifts between tasks, information sources, and processes. This mode has low tolerance for boredom and does not allow for the profound idleness that benefits creative processes. Walter Benjamin called deep boredom a "dream bird that hatches the egg of experience." If sleep represents bodily relaxation, deep boredom is the peak of mental relaxation. The disappearance of tranquility brings with it the loss of the "gift of listening" and the "community of listeners." Our contemporary community of activity stands diametrically opposed to this restful state. The capacity for listening depends on deep, contemplative attention that remains inaccessible to the hyperactive ego. Without tolerance for boredom, one responds to it with restless movement rather than discovering entirely new forms of motion. Walking may transform into running when one is bored, but this merely accelerates the same motion rather than discovering the qualitatively different movement of dancing. Contemplative life involves the experience of being in which what is beautiful and perfect does not change or pass - a state that eludes human intervention. Its basic mood is marveling at the way things are, without concern for practicality. Modern Cartesian doubt has replaced wonder, yet contemplation need not be bound to imperishable Being. Especially fleeting, inconspicuous phenomena reveal themselves only to deep attention. Contemplation allows one to step outside oneself and immerse in surroundings. The painter Cézanne, master of contemplative attention, claimed he could "see the fragrance of things" - a visualization requiring profound attention. Without contemplative composure, the gaze wanders restlessly and finds expression for nothing. Contemporary life is increasingly poor in interruption and "between-times." Acceleration abolishes all intervals. Following Nietzsche, active men are generally "wanting in the higher activity" - they roll like stones "in obedience to the stupidity of the laws of mechanics." Hyperactivity represents a form of passivity rather than freedom, as it lacks the negative power of delay and interruption essential to meaningful action.

Chapter 4: The Transformation of Human Existence to Bare Life

In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt attempted to rehabilitate the vita activa against the traditional primacy granted to vita contemplativa. She connects her revaluation of active life to the priority of action, committing to a form of heroic actionism similar to her teacher Heidegger. While Heidegger oriented possible action on death, Arendt focused on birth - the miracle that human beings are to realize based on their natality, conferring a quasi-religious dimension on action. According to Arendt, modern society as a "laboring society" nullifies the possibility for genuine action by degrading humans into animal laborans. Although action should occasion new possibilities, modern humanity passively stands at the mercy of anonymous life processes. Thinking degrades into mere calculation while all forms of vita activa sink to the level of simple laboring. Modernity began with an unprecedented activation of human capacity yet ends in mortal passivity. However, Arendt's explanation for the ubiquity of animal laborans does not adequately address recent social developments. She claims that modern individuals abandon their individuality to merge with the species' life process. In reality, contemporary labor society fosters individuality rather than dissolving it. The late-modern animal laborans is equipped with an ego on the verge of bursting, hyperactive and hyperneurotic rather than serenely animalian. The modern loss of faith extends beyond God to reality itself, making human life radically fleeting. Life has never been as transient as it is today. Given this lack of Being, nervousness and unease arise. Work becomes a bare activity corresponding to bare life, with both merely working and merely living defining each other. Without a narrative framework extending beyond bare life, health rises to divine status, as Nietzsche observed after the death of God. Late-modern life has become even barer than that of homo sacer - the ancient Roman figure who could be killed without punishment. While Giorgio Agamben uses homo sacer to represent absolutely expendable life, contemporary achievement society has reduced us all to bare life. Yet this bare life cannot be killed absolutely - it is undead, holy only in the sense that it must be preserved at any cost. The reaction to this bare, fleeting existence manifests as hyperactivity and hysterical work. The society of laboring and achievement is not free but generates new constraints. The dialectic of master and slave has not yielded a society of freedom and leisure but one where everyone carries an internal work camp, simultaneously prisoner and guard, victim and perpetrator. Self-exploitation becomes possible without domination, and the exhausted achievement-subject resembles the Muselmann of concentration camps - hollow and empty despite being well-fed. Arendt offers no viable alternative to this social development, concluding resignedly that the ability to act is restricted to a few. She inadvertently endorses vita contemplativa after criticizing it, failing to recognize that the loss of contemplative capacity is partly responsible for the hysteria and nervousness of modern society. The vita contemplativa is not passive affirmation but offers sovereign resistance to crowding stimuli - a mode of saying no that proves more active than hyperactivity.

Chapter 5: Self-Exploitation: The New Form of Power and Violence

The vita contemplativa presupposes instruction in a particular way of seeing. Following Nietzsche, learning to see means developing "calm, patience, letting things come to you" - cultivating deep and contemplative attention through a "long and slow gaze." Such learning represents the "first preliminary schooling for spirituality." One must learn not to react immediately to stimuli but to employ "inhibiting, excluding instincts." The inability to resist stimuli - to set a "no" in opposition - constitutes "absence of spirituality" and "common vulgarity." Sovereign action proves more active than hyperactivity, which merely indicates mental exhaustion. Without "excluding instincts," action scatters into restless reaction. Pure activity only prolongs what already exists, whereas turning to the Other requires the negativity of interruption. Making pause allows the subject to measure the sphere of contingency that remains unavailable in simple activity. Contemporary society suffers from a poverty of interruption - acceleration abolishes all intervals and "between-times." The general distraction afflicting society prevents the emphasis and energy of rage from arising. Rage puts the present as a whole into question and requires an interrupting pause. It differs from mere annoyance or "having a beef," which proves incapable of effecting decisive change. Like the distinction between fear and dread, rage applies to existence as a whole rather than discrete objects. Increasing positivization makes states of exception increasingly rare, absorbing them into conditions of normality. This mounting positivization also weakens negative feelings like dread and mourning. Thinking itself requires negativity - without it, thought transforms into mere calculation. The computer calculates faster than the human brain precisely because it lacks Otherness. The general positivization of the world transforms humans into autistic performance-machines, abolishing negativity because it slows acceleration. There are two forms of potency: positive potency (the power to do something) and negative potency (the power not to do). Negative potency differs from simple impotence - it represents a higher capacity. Without negative potency, one would stand at the mercy of rushing stimuli. If one possessed only the power to do and not the power not to do, it would lead to fatal hyperactivity. The negativity of "not-to" provides an essential trait of contemplation, as seen in Zen meditation's attempt to achieve pure negativity by freeing oneself from intrusive "Something." Paradoxically, hyperactivity represents an extremely passive form of doing that bars free action. It absolutizes positive potency to the exclusion of all else. Melville's "Bartleby" provides a pathological illustration of this dynamic. Set in the disciplinary architecture of Wall Street, the story portrays neurotic characters suffering from the constraints of a society hostile to life. Bartleby's famous phrase "I would prefer not to" expresses not the negative potency of "not-to" but a lack of drive and apathy stemming from his isolation within an inhumane working world - foreshadowing our current condition where self-exploitation replaces external domination.

Chapter 6: Depression as a Consequence of Excessive Positivity

As a society of activeness, achievement society is developing into a doping society. "Brain doping" has been rebranded as "neuro-enhancement," with some scientists arguing it would be irresponsible not to employ such substances. This development reflects how living beings are increasingly reduced to performance-machines functioning without disturbance to maximize achievement. The excessive tiredness and exhaustion characterizing achievement society are not immunological reactions but consequences of excessive positivity. This tiredness in achievement society is solitary and isolating - what Peter Handke calls "divisive tiredness" that strikes one "mute and blind." The isolated ego fills the field of vision entirely, destroying language and all that is common or shared. Such tiredness proves violent because it destroys proximity and communication. In contrast, Handke describes an eloquent, seeing, reconciliatory tiredness that opens a space between self and other by loosening the strictures of the ego. This "fundamental tiredness" shifts gravity from ego to world, creating "tiredness that trusts in the world" rather than the worldless, world-destroying quality of solitary tiredness. It reestablishes duality and makes possible lingering and abidance. Less ego means more world. Such tiredness brings together forms of existence and coexistence that vanish in absolutized activity. It represents not exhaustion but a singular capacity that inspires - it allows spirit to emerge through not-doing. This special tiredness enables a singular calm and serenity. It grants access to long and slow forms that elude hyperattention. For Handke, deep tiredness becomes a form of salvation and rejuvenation, bringing back a sense of wonder: "Everything becomes extraordinary in the tranquillity of tiredness." It loosens the strictures of identity, making things flicker at the edges, less determinate and more porous. This particular in-difference lends things an aura of friendliness as rigid delimitation is suspended. This tiredness founds a deep friendship and makes possible a community that requires neither belonging nor relation. Human beings and things show themselves connected through a friendly "and." Such "we-tiredness" differs fundamentally from the exhaustion of positive potency. It represents the tiredness of negative potency - the capacity not-to-do rather than the incapacity to do. The Sabbath exemplifies this day of not-to, free from all in-order-to, creating an interval or between-time distinct from work-time. The interval creates a time of peace and friendliness through in-difference. Tiredness disarms, replacing resolution with calm. Handke conceives of an immanent religion of tiredness that suspends egological isolation and founds a community beyond kinship. A particular rhythm emerges that leads to agreement, proximity, and vicinity without familial or functional connections. If the "Pentecostal company" inspiring not-doing stands opposed to the society of activity, perhaps the society of the future might be called a society of tiredness.

Chapter 7: The Society of Tiredness and the Possibility of Healing

In a cryptic tale titled "Prometheus," Kafka rewrites the Greek legend: "The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily." This revision can be interpreted as depicting the contemporary achievement-subject inflicting violence on itself. Prometheus, who brought both fire and work to mankind, represents the modern subject bound to self-exploitation. The eagle consuming his ever-regrowing liver symbolizes the subject's alter ego - the pain of the liver representing overwhelming fatigue. Yet Kafka envisions a healing tiredness when "the wound closes wearily." This stands opposed to ego-tiredness that exhausts and wears down the self. Healing tiredness allows the ego to abandon itself into the world - it is tiredness as "more of less of me," a healthy "tiredness that trusts in the world." Ego-tiredness, as solitary tiredness, is worldless and world-destroying, annihilating references to the Other in favor of narcissistic self-reference. The psyche of today's achievement-subject differs fundamentally from Freud's disciplinary subject. Freud's psychic apparatus was essentially repressive, setting up walls, thresholds, and borders like disciplinary society itself. Such psychoanalysis was possible only in repressive societies organized around prohibitions and commandments. Contemporary achievement society, however, has shed these negative structures in favor of freedom and possibility. The modal verb has shifted from "Should" to "Can." This social transformation entails intrapsychic restructuring. While Freud's psychic apparatus was dominated by negation, repression, and fear of transgression, the late-modern achievement-subject is poor in negation - it is a subject of affirmation. If the unconscious necessarily connected to negativity and repression, then the achievement-subject would no longer have an unconscious in the Freudian sense. The Freudian unconscious was a product of disciplinary society that we have left behind. The achievement-subject does not pursue works of duty but seeks freedom, pleasure, and inclination. It works for enjoyment rather than obligation, hearkening to itself rather than external commands. As a self-starting entrepreneur, it rids itself of the "commanding Other." However, this freedom dialectically develops new constraints. Freedom from the Other switches into narcissistic self-relation, causing many psychic disturbances. Without the Other as an instance of recognition, a crisis of gratification emerges. One cannot truly reward or acknowledge oneself. Contemporary relations of production exacerbate this crisis by making definitive work impossible. Work continues "into the open" without conclusive forms. Narcissism blurs the border between self and other, preventing stable self-image formation. The narcissistic individual is not intentionally avoiding achievement but is incapable of experiencing closure. Economic factors favor this openness and inconclusiveness to promote growth. While hysteria was the typical malady of disciplinary society, depression characterizes achievement society. Depression exhibits no characteristic form or morphology. The contemporary ego lacks character in the Freudian sense, which required censorship and repression. Instead, it is flexible, able to assume any form or function - creating economic efficiency at psychological cost. Depression follows from excessive positivity and the inability to say no. It is not a consequence of repression but of excessive possibility. Achievement society dismantles barriers and prohibitions, enhancing performance through the removal of negativity. This creates a state of general dissolution and boundlessness from which no energy of repression issues. Without the unconscious or repression, depression becomes a disorder of pure positivity - a destructive self-relationship emerging from overexcited self-reference. The exhausted, depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down, incapable of stepping outside itself or relying on the Other. It locks its jaws on itself, hollowing out paradoxically through self-consumption. New media and communications technology exacerbate this by diluting being-for-otherness. In virtual spaces, the ego moves independent of the "reality principle" that would provide alterity and resistance. The real increasingly disappears, taking with it the interruption and support it offers.

Summary

The fundamental shift from negativity to excessive positivity represents the defining characteristic of our age. Traditional disciplinary societies operated through prohibitions, external control, and clear boundaries between self and other. Contemporary achievement society has replaced these negative structures with the imperative of possibility, transforming obedience-subjects into achievement-subjects who voluntarily exploit themselves in pursuit of success. This transition explains why depression, burnout, and attention disorders have become our signature afflictions - they stem not from repression but from the inability to establish limits in a world that celebrates limitless potential. The most profound insight of this analysis lies in exposing the paradox of contemporary freedom. The achievement-subject who believes itself free, who understands itself as its own master, simultaneously becomes its own slave. In the absence of external domination, a more insidious form of compulsion emerges - self-exploitation becomes more efficient precisely because it feels like freedom. The society of tiredness thus offers an unexpected path toward healing: not through more activity, productivity, or positivity, but through rediscovering the power of negative potency - the capacity not-to-do, to establish limits, to experience profound boredom, and to restore contemplative attention. Only by reclaiming these seemingly passive capacities might we resist the hyperactive burnout that threatens to consume modern existence.

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Byung-Chul Han

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