The Burnout Society

De: Byung-Chul Han

Narrado por: Peter Noble

Our competitive, service-oriented societies are taking a toll on the late-modern individual. Rather than improving life, multitasking, user-friendly technology, and the culture of convenience are producing disorders that range from depression to attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder.

Byung-Chul Han interprets the spreading malaise as an inability to manage negative experiences in an age characterized by excessive positivity and the universal availability of people and goods. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena as well. Denouncing a world in which every against-the-grain response can lead to further disempowerment, he draws on literature, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences to explore the stakes of sacrificing intermittent intellectual reflection for constant neural connection.

This audiobook is expertly read by Peter Noble, with audio engineering by Logan Nyman. It was produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont.

©2015 Byung-Chul Han (P)2025 Echo Point Books & Media, LLC

An awakening!

This book made me realise that for most of my life I've linked my sense of self-worth to how perfectly I can execute my work in pursuit of the optimal productive output.

Brilliant

This book makes a compelling case for why we feel simultaneously tired, depressed, anxious, and hyperactive. There are no cute solutions offered; just a thought-provoking diagnosis of the problem of burn-out.

This book is an important theoretical step along the path to reclaiming the right to self-determine what makes us valuable and worthwhile.

Too many words to say so little

It is a philosophy book only really. Had hoped for something less academic and more actionable. No remedy readily theorized---we are all doomed by our own self exploration and a society that exacerbates achievement and positivity counter intuitively to our demise. That's the one paragraph summary.

90% fluff, 10% substance

One of the most boring books I've listened to. The author can't help but repeat the same point dozens of times over and over. Even with the constant repetitiveness, it's a crazy short book. Goes to show how much substance there is in this book (could've been an email). Paradoxically the short length is a positive because I just wanted it to end already.

Regarding the little bit of substance this book has, it's basically this: because you now have freedom (from god and dictators and diseases), you exploit yourself (because it's hard to choose things and so you choose the zeitgeist, looking good and being rich) and become an exhausted and depressed mindless zombie (because you're never looking good enough and being rich enough). That's it. That's all.

This got turned into a 2 hour long repetitive philosophical jargon.

As someone who completely believes modern societal burnout is real and needs to be addressed (that's why I listened to this in the first place), this book was such a disappointment. Zero substantial discussion of real issues like capitalism, money, inequality, modern slavery, production and resource constraints, identity and tribalism, technology, social media, attention, new ways of communication, and industrialized cognitive behavioral manipulation. So many big, juicy topics and none elaborated. And this guy is just "lol it u". I'm laughing, out loud, for real.

P.S. this book is philosophy 100% (I didn't know this going in). I'm not a philosopher so maybe it's better in those eyes, but even then this comes across as the opposite of wisdom. It's a platitude given form.