"In this installment, I want to focus on Byung-Chul Han’s concept of the Burnout Society."

"In this instance, I want to focus on a different concept, namely Han’s notion that we are living in a “Burnout Society” that causes a wide range of characteristic dysfunctions and ailments."

"These are difficult for society to address because the assumptions built into our inquiries are actually causing these problems."

"You can’t solve a problem when it’s caused by the very methods you use to solve problems. And that’s at the root of our growing crisis of self-destruction."

"“Multitasking is commonplace among wild animals,” he writes. “It is an attentive technique indispensable for survival in the wilderness.”"

"Wild animals must always be wary and cautious—danger is ever present—so they can never focus entirely on a single task."

"Han sharply disagrees with Michel Foucault, who famously depicted modern society as based on a disciplinary model—and looked at prisons, mental institutions, hospitals, and other places of confinement as paradigmatic examples of the human condition."

"This might have been true in the past, Han admits, but today, the pressure on individuals comes from the pervasive need for self-actualization, not external discipline, which has weakened to the point of irrelevance."

"In other words, the enemy is hard to find because we have internalized it. We are told to be “entrepreneurs of the self.”"

"Thus even in the most intimate moments of our life, our quest for true connection with kindred spirits, the achievement mandate dominates the horizon in every direction."

"But we have a need to combat enemies even when the actual battlefields are disappearing. This leads to a panoply of dysfunctional behavior patterns—many of them resulting in battles on an individual basis."

"This is a person we can subjugate and oppress round-the-clock, and there’s no way for the target of our hostilities to escape. This is the essence of the Burnout Society."

"I’d add one more comment: I suspect that solutions here demand a kind of counterculture capable of resisting the monolithic mindsets causing burnout—and the sad fact is there is no genuine counterculture right now."

"It was once fashionable to opt out from the groupthink and reconstruct your own life in a free-spirited or even openly dissident way. But the groups and power brokers have gotten less tolerant of dissent nowadays, and it’s harder to find a space for self-invention outside their purview."

"Not too long ago, if you didn’t like the system you could drop out—there was even an aura of positivity to the notion of the dropout."

"And even if you wanted to drop out nowadays, could you? You are identified, tracked, networked, and classified everywhere you go, at every moment of your day."

"Only a rare person finds a personal path to serenity in this kind of culture."

"I can’t stress this enough: You do not need to walk in lockstep with everybody else. You aren’t required to accept blindly the dominant values of your society."

"Even if you work inside the system, you don’t have to let the system work inside of you."