Spring Reading Group (The Burnout Society, Meeting #2)
Details
Part 2 ...... the second meeting on Byung Chul Han's book The Burnout Society For this session will cover the second half of this short book, from the section "The Pedagogy of Seeing" till the end.
You can download the book for free here, and listen to it here.
Please be sure to bring your own lawn chair for sitting on, as that enables us to sit somewhere quiet in the park. Hope to see you there!
Cheers,
Colin
UPDATE WITH SUMMARY
Part 2 summary
I will admit I found the second half of this book very challenging to read and comprehend. I was really hoping to find some concise and compelling prescriptions in terms of what, at both the individual and societal level, Han believes we should do to redress the concerns raised in the first half of the book about the harms of the achievement society.
While I found the core principle of part 1 of the book compelling- that the major threat to human wellbeing now comes from within (vs without)- I struggled to make sense of what he thought we should do to redress this.
The threat “from within” is, ironically, us, we are both the victim and culprit. So what can be done? The chapter “The Pedagogy of Seeing” seems to be the critical chapter, with its emphasis on vita contemplative and seeing in a particular way.
Learning to see means “getting your eyes used to calm, to patience, to letting things come to you”. Hun characterizes this as a practice of spirituality. And this point is one I think it would be worthwhile to discuss in more detail. Do you tend to react immediately to things, yielding to impulse, or can you “resist crowding, intrusive stimuli”?
I would have really appreciated more details and nuance from Hun on this point, as life provides many different types of stimuli and adversity, some of which his point seems to apply sagely with and others I think it does not. For the latter I have in mind real trauma, such as the death of a loved one. With such experiences I believe it is important to let one’s emotional response, especially the immediate reactions, be expressed.
Hun’s general stance could be interpreted as one of avoidance, of not letting one’s emotional reactions have expression. That desire to “protect yourself from pain” could itself have shortcomings. But perhaps my concern is compatible with Hun’s idea of “letting things come to you”. In any event, let’s discuss. Does the art of seeing provide nuance and guidance for responding to different types of aversity and stimuli?
“Today we live in a world that is very poor in interruption; “betweens” and “between-times” are lacking” (22) Can you think of practices or strategies you have tried, successfully or unsuccessfully, for managing the pressures of the multi-tasking, hyper-stimulating modern life? Times away from your phone? Times connecting in nature? Times when you don’t watch the news? Etc. Time alone or between relationships?
The chapter on "The Bartleby Case" refers to this story by Melville: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIH43gT0M8Q&t=60s
The final chapter covers an expansive array of topics such as depression, social media and capitalism which I am sure we can discuss and debate.
Cheers,
Colin