Title:: [[The Burnout Society]] Authors:: [[Byung-Chul Han]] Tags:: #philosophy #nonfiction Read:: [[2025-01-22]] Instagram :: ## Editions - Edition:: [[Stanford University Press]], 2015 - Original Copyright:: 2010 - Pages:: 52 ## Purchase * Bookshop.org:: https://bookshop.org/a/94437/9780804795098 ## Annotations Byung-Chul Han was not on my radar until he popped up in [@leafbyleaf_official](https://www.instagram.com/leafbyleaf_official/)’s year-end review, and I’m glad to have fixed that oversight.  Han thinks and writes a lot about the effects of capitalism on people, and grounds that thinking in the foundations of continental philosophy. So you get a lot of sentences like, “The positivity of Can is much more efficient than the negativity of Should,” and the appropriate response is to nod knowingly and move on.  The reward for moving on is worthwhile. Han has a knack for articulating things we probably all feel without quite being able to put it into words, while also offering some explanation for it. I’ve shared a few shakily underlined favorite parts above.  The core argument Han makes is not just that we are too inundated with stimuli, but that culturally we have internalized so much of the demands to do things that used to be external demands. This makes it hard for us to do nothing. To be bored. To think. To be in states like this that lead to creativity and nourishment.  This all makes sense intellectually, but practically? I still don’t know how to truly relax. I can’t shake the feeling that I need to be doing something when I’m not doing anything. Not sure Han has a solution, but knowing is half the battle.