The Burnout Society

We are living in a time of excess. We are “achievement-subjects” — multi-tasking, productivity maximizing, hustle culture entrepreneurs of the self. Even our leisure is commoditized - pretty picks of vacation destinations or fancy meals offered up for numeric judgement in the form of clicks and likes. Self-care is only in service of returning refreshed, getting back to the grind so that you can be more, better, richer. We are in the midst of Performance Society, there is no limit to our potential and so burnout is inevitable in the face of constant striving. Depression is our inability to measure up, becoming tired of having to become ourselves. We need to admit the idleness that benefits the creative process. We need to be bored and be able to contemplate.

This picks up the thread from Byng-Chul Han's earlier work The Scent of Time and in my head gets mixed up with the recently read How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. This one proved a bit more of a slog but coming in under 80 pages one can hardly complain. I've always got time for a bit of anti-capitalist philosophical thought.