The society of tiredness (Shepherd, 2010) is an essay by the thinker Byung-Chul Han. Has become bestseller for being a pertinent work, clearly written, in which society has been reflected. The rigor of this South Korean author who writes in German has positioned him as one of the modern referents of Western thought.
The book is an insightful treatise that exposes one of the great evils of the new century and millennium: the fatigue caused by our rhythm of life and the determination of a positivity and forced happiness that we have assumed and that governs our lives. This is a current essay on the excesses of positivity.
The fatigue society: the excesses of positivity
until exhaustion
The society of tiredness it is a philosophical treatise written with clear language, but following the roadmap of great thinkers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger or Kafka. Sure, Han gives his own take on modern dynamics about society, the economy, and health. Lhe key to his thesis lies in the accelerated course that our lives are taking that leads us to exhaustion. It's a kind of kidnapping, but with Stockholm syndrome. The author explains that the ones who hold us back are ourselves. The society of the XNUMXst century is determined to reach the limit in everything it does, and especially in what refers to the labor field. Productivity and performance have become the essence of our existence, and everything else revolves around it. What we are capable of offering to the world is the engine of our days, even if we reach exhaustion for it.
Han comes to the conclusion that the non-stop activity to which man is subjected has jumped from the oppressor to the oppressed.. At present, voracious bosses are no longer needed to hold their employees firm, because now it is the workers who wear themselves out in being the best and in achieving objectives and goals that absorb all their time. Society is tired, but it is in an insatiable spiral to always give more, because it has been believed that everything is possible. If you want you can and that kind of advice. You can always produce more, and be the best at what you do. In this, capitalism, which is the prevailing economic system in the West, has a lot to say.
Pathological productivity and positivity
The way in which economic neoliberalism is produced is the direct cause of the fact that the human being does not find peace in rest, in leisure. Or that I don't even know what it is rest, In fact. Because man produces, earns, spends, and produces again. In recent years, everyone seems to shy away with some guilt from that false free time that still exists.. This is what has led to pathological disorders that people suffer from in different ways. The book mentions increasingly common disorders such as depression, attention deficit, hyperactivity, borderline personality disorder or occupational burnout syndrome or burnout.
Different eras, different problems, comments the author in The society of tiredness. Despite having gone through a recent global pandemic, this time does not have its main threat in physical health, but in mental health. In addition to the aforementioned pathologies, the type of life we ​​lead with the misuse of new technologies (which are no longer so new) has given rise to a new slavery, or epidemic. People have trouble concentrating, finding peace of mind in healthy recreation, or appreciating art. Boredom has come to an end, and with it, frustration or the acceptance of the bad. On the contrary, positivity prevails, false, on the other hand. Because men and women have become slaves to work and the system. They have accepted that if they do not succeed it is because they have not given enough of themselves. So they are failures.
Conclusions
The society of tiredness is an insightful philosophical treatise that speaks frankly about one of the problems of the XNUMXst century: the weariness that is the product of the capitalist system. The point Han raises is that society has become a slave without realizing that it is also its own mistress.. Now people live in a more comfortable way, their needs are covered, they have higher education, thousands of beautiful things, or they can travel the world with an ease unimaginable just a few decades ago. Society is a victim of the system, or what is the same, a victim of itself. Because despite all these advances, her routine has made her a prisoner of absolute positivity and performance..
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About the Author
Byung Chul-Han was born in Seoul in 1959.. He studied Philosophy at the University of Freiburg and German Literature and Theology at the University of Munich. He is a doctor after having completed a thesis on Martin Heidegger and has worked as a teacher at various German universities. He is the author of several books whose publication in Spanish has been HerderEditorial. Although he came to Germany very young without knowing the language, this is the language he now uses for his works that are recognized within the Western thought of our time..
Other books by the author are: The expulsion of the different, the palatine society, Capitalism and the death drive, The disappearance of rituals, Good entertainment, Loa to the earth, Heidegger's heart, faces of death, hegel and power, death and otherness, hyperculturality, about power, The salvation of the beautiful.