Thanks for this essay. I do wonder if we are simply too torn as people. It reminds me of the jam jar theory- give yourself 3 types of Jam and you can find your favourite easily and are satisfied. If you are given 20 then you lose the ability to be satisfied and find your favourite. Perhaps, too much choice in our lives, both personal and professional, undermines the ability for us to feel satisfaction.
There is also perhaps a natural temptation to blame other things for our own perceived failures. Just as drunkenness, idleness, and affairs were the downfall and cause of misery for many a person in the past, perhaps today, we leap into diagnoses and rely on them akin to comfort blankets. There is still something very visceral about staring outwardly into the abyss with little but ourselves in the background.
Sorry, I just don’t understand what Byung-Chul Han Is talking about. Ours is not “a time of burnout” but simply the collapse of empathy and any impulse towards kindness because there’s no one to punish the worst in us and everything to reward the worst. Yeats expressed it perfectly in his “The Second Coming.”
Thanks for this essay. I do wonder if we are simply too torn as people. It reminds me of the jam jar theory- give yourself 3 types of Jam and you can find your favourite easily and are satisfied. If you are given 20 then you lose the ability to be satisfied and find your favourite. Perhaps, too much choice in our lives, both personal and professional, undermines the ability for us to feel satisfaction.
There is also perhaps a natural temptation to blame other things for our own perceived failures. Just as drunkenness, idleness, and affairs were the downfall and cause of misery for many a person in the past, perhaps today, we leap into diagnoses and rely on them akin to comfort blankets. There is still something very visceral about staring outwardly into the abyss with little but ourselves in the background.
My recent short story https://nimnim1.substack.com/p/poly-hell
Sorry, I just don’t understand what Byung-Chul Han Is talking about. Ours is not “a time of burnout” but simply the collapse of empathy and any impulse towards kindness because there’s no one to punish the worst in us and everything to reward the worst. Yeats expressed it perfectly in his “The Second Coming.”
Intelligent and thought-provoking essay—thank you!