Byung-Chul Han is a Korean German philosopher who writes short, angry books about why modern life feels like a nightmare. He is popular in certain internet circles right now, and for good reason. He put words to a feeling everyone has but nobody could name.
we have moved from a society of discipline (Foucault’s world of prisons and factories) to a society of achievement. Nobody tells you what to do anymore. You are supposed to want to do it. The neoliberal subject is not a slave obeying a master. The neoliberal subject is an entrepreneur of the self, constantly optimizing, always on, never fucking satisfied.
The result is burnout. Depression. Anxiety. Insomnia. You are not exhausted because you work too hard. You are exhausted because you never fucking stop. There is no off switch. The achievement imperative follows you into bed, into your dreams, into your weekends. You have internalized the boss. You are the boss now, and you are a terrible boss.
The Burnout Society is 60 pages. Read it in an hour. It will sit in your head for weeks(years man). Every time you feel guilty for resting, every time you open your work email on a Sunday, every time you scroll social media out of compulsion, you will hear Han’s voice (and you will wish you had not).
Starter book: The Burnout Society (2010, English 2015). If you know me and we have met irl then there is a 70% chance that I have recommended you to read this book, Han is one of my favorite contemporary philosophers and all his works are short and every sentence is written in a way that you can’t resist but just highlight the whole book
