Episode #188 - Transcript

So the last COUPLE episodes… we’ve been talking about the topic of how power operates in the world…SPECIFICALLY, WAYS that people’s behavior is directed where it’s not as obvious or as simple as there being a GUN pointed to your head TELLING you what to do. We’ve talked about a digital panopticon, we’ve talked about big data and surveillance…and I want to start with a quote from the philosopher were gonna be TALKING about today…

And for anybody out there who may be newer to philosophy but you’ve listened to the last couple episodes…I love moments like this by the way…where you READ a quote or hear a passage from someone’s work…and you KNOW that a few weeks ago you may not have known WHAT they were talking about…but after having done the work, GOTTEN to another level in your thinking… it FEELS good, seeing the difference KNOWING what the main character of this episode is talking about when he mentions something like a digital panopticon:

“Today the entire globe is developing into a panopticon … Google and social networks, which present themselves as spaces of freedom, are assuming panoptic forms. Today surveillance is not occurring as an attack on freedom, as is normally assumed. Instead, people are voluntarily surrendering to the panoptic gaze. They deliberately collaborate in the digital panopticon by denuding and exhibiting themselves. The prisoner of the digital panopticon is a perpetrator and a victim at the same time. Herein lies the dialectic of freedom. Freedom turns out to be a form of control."

Those were the words of Byung-chul Han, South Korean Born, German philosopher… and just for some time period context here he IS alive today…he’s kinda like zizek in that way…he’s truly somebody where if you wanted to know what it looks like to SEE a great philosopher walking down the street eating a hot dog…you could SEE it. Famous picture of Zizek eating a hotdog. It’s pretty great. 

And LIKE the last couple episodes Byung-Chul Han is somebody that’s DOING his work IN THE WAKE of Foucault and his analysis of how POWER functions. Like Deleuze from LAST episode…he thinks the ways that people are controlled… have undergone several major developments since the disciplinary model of Foucault… and you can see a GLIMMER of it… in the last line of the QUOTE that we just read where he says that FREEDOM turns out to be a form of control.

What does Han mean by that? Well Han thinks that in Disciplinary societies like the one that Foucault talked about, and MOST HUMAN SOCIETIES that have EVER EXISTED really…the WAY that people were controlled… is through WHAT he calls NEGATIVE POWER. Think of Negative power as any example of a person’s behavior being controlled by prohibition or limitation. Telling people, “No, you CAN’T do that.” Or “No, you SHOULDN’T do that.” Negative power is the way people are controlled for MOST of human history.

But HAN says the WAY people are controlled in TODAY’S modern, western CAPITALIST societies…is through POSITIVE power. POSITIVE power… sounds like this, “You, my friend…you can be WHATEVER IT IS that you WANT to be in this world. In fact if ANYBODY…EVER tells you what kind of person you should be…DON’T LISTEN to them. You’re in charge. You’re in the driver’s seat. You can be ANYTHING.

And NOW that we’ve established that you can be ANYTHING…now it’s time for YOU to choose who you want to be. Are you somebody with no goals or dreams that you want to shoot for? Do you want to be somebody that shoots for your dreams, or do you wanna sit around your apartment snorting lines of flaming hot cheetos your entire life? What kind of person DO you wanna be? 

I mean if you can BE ANYTHING wouldn’t you WANT to be one of those people that have a PRESTIGIOUS, POWERFUL, HIGH PAYING position so you don’t have any limitations in your life? That’s how people USED to be enslaved right…limitations from the outside. 

But YOU don’t have ANY. Think of all your ANCESTORS that USED to be subjugated. Who are YOU to turn this opportunity down. As long as you WORK hard enough. As long as you can put your head down, focus, grind, ACHIEVE your short term goals, set NEW ones, ACHIEVE THOSE ones. The ONLY PERSON…who is IN THE WAY of YOU being a BILLIONAIRE one day…is YOU. And now it’s TIME to get to work on those goals.” 

This is positive power. Positive power says can. Negative power says should.

And as Han says, “Can is much more effective than the negativity of Should. Therefore the social unconscious switches from Should to Can.” 

This is a new, interesting POSITIVE form of control. We are LIVING in what Han calls an achievement society. Not a disciplinary society. Nobody holds a gun to your head and tells you what to do. Again…that’s an OLD FASHIONED TACTIC at this point. ALL you gotta do to CONTROL people is tell them all the stuff they CAN be doing in THEORY… if only they MAKE themselves VALUABLE enough…if only they work hard enough to make their minds as efficient and optimized as they CAN be…what Han calls Psychopolitics. An extension of Foucault’s Biopolitics. 

You tell people THAT… and you don’t need a gun to people’s heads…in the pursuit of ENDLESSLY MAXIMIZING their abilities…they’ll spend the REST of their lives going CRAZY about NEVER being good enough…never DO ING enough…never being EFFICIENT enough. If there is EVER a moment where they are NOT SPENDING THEIR TIME being as PRODUCTIVE as they COULD be towards MAKING themselves more valuable…they will ACTUALLY feel bad about it. 

Han says we’re TOLD in these societies to be AUTHENTIC. You know cause AUTHENTICITY…that’s the TRUE MEASURE of someone who’s FREE…someone who’s NOT BEING TOLD by ANYBODY who they should be when you can be ANYTHING you WANT…but AUTHENTICITY he says is an ad campaign of neoliberalism. It’s a self-absorbed nightmare. 

Because WHEN you TELL somebody that it’s THEIR JOB to DEFINE THEMSELVES…THROUGH THEMSELVES…without ANY SORT of outside help…when you MAKE somebody the sole arbiter of CREATING the STANDARDS for themselves and what they’re capable of…and then ALSO the person that checks IN and determines whether they’re DOING the best job they can at MEETING those standards…roles that USED to be filled by OTHER things in societies of the past…there’s only ONE DIRECTION TO GO when you’re CONSTANTLY looking INWARD like that…and to Han that direction is gonna be Narcissism. 

That’s why wherever you are right now…if you’re inside go outside…go out into the middle of a courtyard, throw a rock in ANY direction and you’ll hit someone who’s a toxic narcissist in today’s world. Practically EVERYBODY is not a PERSON anyone…they’re their own little personal PROJECT. We turn OURSELVES into a commodity with market value. Everything we LEARN, is not just LEARNING…it’s an INVESTMENT… in OURSELVES…Everything is about MENTALLY OPTIMIZING yourself…working, PRODUCING more efficiently with your mind. 

And it’s a beautiful way to go through life by the way. If somebody calls you OUT for being a narcissist…you can just call them…a LOSER. That’s just somebody who’s LAZY…they’re not GOING for THEIR dreams like I am. They can’t understand the level of WORK that this kinda stuff takes. 

If you’re in a relationship or a friendship and the other person says you focusing on yourself and your own projects so much is causing problems in the relationship…you can just say WHOA. Being in a relationship…TOO MUCH DRAMA for me at THIS point in my life. I don’t have ROOM for all that…I gotta focus on ME and my market VALUE for a while. It REALLY IS a BEAUTIFUL set of excuses to make it seem to you like its a character deficiency in the other person…. rather than you focusing, you know ENTIRELY on yourself. 

And when your head is SO FAR UP THERE by the way…that you need a miner’s helmet to be able to see…you know you need one of those camping flashlights on your forehead to figure out where you are…when you’re THAT far it really is a special type of narcissistic delusion, it STARTS to even resemble religion. Han says, “The infinite work on the ego resembles self-observation and self- examination in the Protestant religion, and they, in turn, represent a technique of subjectivation and domination. Instead of looking for sins, now negative thoughts are the ones to be sought, the ego struggles with itself as against an enemy.” 

Even something like CREDIT CARD debt becomes something that resembles a religious DEBT to be repaid. You START in debt like with original sin…and then ONLY through your participation in the market driven, achievement narcissism game… do you ever get to REPAY that debt. A narcissist… is the moral exemplar of a neoliberal society.

And there’s that word than Han uses a lot neoliberal…and couple important points of context here to understand where he’s COMING from…there have been PLENTY of people out there who have made the claim that the world is full of narcissists, right? And they have all sorts of REASONS they’ll GIVE for making that claim. They’ll say it’s that we’re RAISING more kids to be narcissists with the participation trophy generation…they’ll say that narcissistic PEOPLE RAISE more narcissistic people so now the whole WORLD is more narcissistic.

But to Byung Chul Han…that’s almost the OPPOSITE of what’s going on. The narcissistic individual is not the CAUSE of the world being more narcissistic. The ETHOS of the world makes NARCISSISM an EXTREMELY common lane for people to fall into because they HAVE almost no other options. The same way in former societies it was very COMMON for people to fall into a lane in life like go to school, graduate go to work, get married, have kids, house, white picket fence…NARCISSISM is a lane we’re funneling people into in neoliberal society. 

At the risk of sounding boring it needs to be said because we haven’t talked about it on the show for a while…don’t be misguided here…the “liberal” part of neoliberalism has NOTHING to do with what people are talking about when they say liberal or conservative in the modern, american political landscape. 

Neoliberalism is a strategy that came about in the late 1980’s when western economies were becoming increasingly globalized. Where in an attempt to stay competitive, countries like the United States and the UK thought if we can get out of the WAY of businesses, massively deregulate them, lower their taxes, this will pave the way for them to increase production… which will then create more jobs, those jobs will then go to the middle class who will then SPEND that money back into the economy and this will lead to economic prosperity for everyone. 

David Harvey calls neoliberalism: "a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well being can be advanced by liberating individual, entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade."

Now depending on where you sit on the political spectrum in TODAY’S world you could see neoliberalism as being an incredible force for good… or the origin of MANY of the problems that the modern world FACES. As always…it’s not my JOB to be political here…I could do a whole EPISODE on it…the POINT is: THIS is where Han is coming from. When the ETHOS of a neoliberal society is about REDUCING outside regulations on companies to allow for economic growth and innovation…that SAME ETHOS gets applied to the individual person LIVING in one of these societies.

Again…it gets APPLIED to them through the maxim…”be whatever you WANT to be!” NOBODY is gonna REGULATE you from the outside anymore! The sky’s the limit. You are a commodity… and your job is to INCREASE your market value by constantly working on YOURSELF. And AGAIN…that self OBSESSION that people gravitate towards is NOT because people are BIRTHING more people with narcissistic brains. They are the EFFECT of how the world is. NOT THE CAUSE to Byung chul han. Narcissism is like water to a fish living today.

It’s where people sometimes feel like they NEED to live in order to survive. And it just NEEDS to be said: Narcissism carries with it such a negative connotation…I don’t think Han is trying to rub anyone’s nose in it like that I think he’s just saying that these Narcissistic tendencies can get out of HAND if you let them. Or they can just encompass ALL of your personality if you’re not even aware of how society funnels people in this direction. 

Now what HAPPENS in this WORLD that emerges where SO MANY people are focused on THEMSELVES above everything else…again setting their own STANDARDS, feeling GUILTY about anything they do that isn’t making them more EFFICIENT or OPTIMIZED…what happens to Han…is an INCREASE in levels of Depression and Anxiety. If there’s a LOT of that going ON in the world we’re living in…this self-focused ethos many people fall INTO in life…COULD be part of the reason why. 

Think of what LIFE is like, I guess a lot of you may be able to RELATE to it: You SET goals for yourself, you have a PICTURE of the PERSON that you want to be IN your MIND. You work hard, MAXIMIZING everything about yourself… only to wake up the next day and try to push yourself EVEN MORE…until one day…you break…because NOBODY is supposed to be CONSTANTLY exerting themselves…and then you often have the ADDED bonus of self hatred…because you’re left to deal with the feelings of what SEEMS TO YOU like you lack the motivation… to even BE YOU. I mean that’s a SPECIAL kind of torture.  

Remember at other points in human history, say you were born a PEASANT in the middle ages…you were GIVEN a social role to fill…you WORKED really HARD everyday no doubt, but you KNEW exactly who you were…you weren’t trying to till the soil…you know JUST 1% better every day so you could be a senior vice peasant one day…often times in these societies if you were a peasant and you wanted to improve something about yourself maybe you improved things in a spiritual area. And by the way the work you DID do in most of these former societies…was PHYSICAL work…where if you’re exhausted usually you just take a day a week off and your body HEALS itself. 

But in the world of PSYCHOPOLITICS where you’re constantly MAX IMIZING your MENTAL capabilities…exhaustion in THIS area leads to what Byung Chul Han calls BURNOUT. 

And just… as a PROBLEM…that’s not as SIMPLE as just taking a day off and then everything’s fixed. The depression he talks about people can get stuck in for years. 

See to Han the plight that people face in THIS society is DEPRESSION…not REPRESSION like in former societies. When it comes to THIS area of your mind nobody is REPRESSING you, holding you down. In MANY ways, he says, we’re encouraged… to AUTO-EXPLOIT ourselves. That’s part of what makes FREEDOM such a diabolical strategy to control. 

We’re both MASTERS AND SLAVES in our own minds…whipping ourselves to BE BETTER…DO MORE…STOP COMPLAINING. 

We either DON’T live up to our own standards, burnout and feel horrible. OR we find a way to accomplish the goals…and then with the nature of the human mind to restlessly strive for goals, get them for a day and then have some OTHER goal to shoot for…EVEN WHEN WE ACCOMPLISH the stuff we set out to DO…we just remain anxious, exhausted and perpetually dissatisfied. 

But nobodies coming to SAVE you…because anxiety as he says…leads to PRODUCTION. It is ultimately a GOOD THING for the economic ORDER of things for you to be constantly ANXIOUS and producing. 

Again NEITHER of these… depression OR anxiety… are areas you necessarily HAVE… to find yourself in. But these are COMMON LANES that people fall into the same way that in OTHER worlds it was common for people to sign up for the draft after they graduate school.

And the TECHNOLOGY that we have AROUND us today…makes it EVEN EASIER to end up in this depression or anxiety. 

What he’s going to eventually SAY that we’ll talk about in detail is that what has been REMOVED from modern life that makes these outcomes so much more common for people…is the PRESENCE of the OTHER. 

And it makes sense: if what this world makes people do is focus WAY too much on themselves…then if you’re a BETTIN’ person…what’s MISSING from their life is PROBABLY gonna be EVERYTHING ELSE OUTSIDE of them that has historically brought VALUE to people’s lives. He calls this the OTHER, difference, negativity, the hidden, the imperfect, these words will become practically interchangeable when discussing all the things that are MISSING from a solely narcissistic worldview.

And when you PAY ATTENTION he says… EVERYTHING in this world… is being SLOWLY turned into the SAME. 

He says, "the terror of the same affects all areas of life today. one travels everywhere, yet does not experience anything. one catches sight of everything yet reaches no insight. one accumulates information and data, yet does not attain knowledge. one lusts after adventures and stimulation, but always remains the same. One accumulates online friends and followers, yet never encounters another person.”

Now let’s break down what he means by ALL of those and how technology makes these easier… but maybe the FIRST thing that needs to be addressed is I’m sure there are some people out there who HEAR Han say that everybody in this world is turning into the SAME THING. And thinking: what world is THIS guy living in? 

People don’t have enough of the OTHER in their life? 

That’s literally THE problem with society… is that people are TURNING people INTO the other when it’s not appropriate to. This TRIBALISM that people cling to. They see someone who politically disagrees with them… and they DON’T see another person who all things considered we agree on MORE things than we DISAGREE ON…no they TURN this person into the ENEMY. 

Then those people talk PAST each other and they can never really have a conversation. The PROBLEM with this world someone could say… is that we EMBRACE the concept of the other TOO much…

But what Byung Chul Han would no doubt say is: would you call that…a genuine interaction with the OTHER? Would you call that the person REALLY encountering ideas that they disagree with, truly considering those ideas, and then sitting with them? Or is that WHOLE process just a poorly hidden attempt to confirm their own BIAS…so they don’t have to really GET to know the person and how they feel? 

In other words is this in REALITY… just another version of narcissistic self-affirmation? Tell me, if you’ve ever found yourself on one side or another of a political issue... and you write a comment and someone from the other side claps backs at you…do you ever feel like that person TRULY understands where you’re coming from? Does it even feel like they CARE…about KNOWING where you’re coming from? 

No, there’s nothing ABOUT them… that TRULY wants to encounter DIFFERENCE or the OTHER…what they WANT is for everybody to have pretty much the SAME thoughts that THEY do. EVERYTHING needs to be the same.

Because TRULY listening to another person, setting your ego aside, FEELING another person’s perspective…that can be INCREDIBLY uncomfortable…it FORCES you think hard about the limitations of your own perspective…it FORCES you to think of THEM…AS THEY ARE…SOMETHING TOTALLY DIFFERENT than you…NOT just how they BENEFIT you in some transactional way. 

These achievement society people will have ZERO deep, close relationships in their life…and the people they DO have as friends are just transactional, they INCREASE their market value in some way, they support the image they have of themselves, their friends are good CONTACTS to have in a networking sense…the narcissist LOVES to have FRIENDS that are the all the SAME as them and AGREE with them on everything. Tell them EVERYTHING they’re doing is JUST fine. I mean, heaven forbid there’s ANOTHER perspective out there that’s totally valid. 

And this EXTENDS to the way they act when they come across NEW, perspective shifting IDEAS…YES in the political sphere but also…documentaries, videos, podcasts, anything…they’re never looking to entertain anything that’s TOO far outside their field of view. They just want to see new ideas that are MOSTLY, KIND OF already corresponding with what they think they know. This is ANOTHER way a narcissist denies the other in their life, ISOLATING themselves just a little bit MORE. 

NONE of this…is actually trying to engage with TRUE difference. Just an ILLUSION of it. In reality as Han says the OTHER… is incomparable. Meaning EVEN looking at the OTHER and trying to understand that person or those ideas by COMPARING them to pre-defined categories…EVEN THAT, OBSCURES the true difference of the other because it’s just viewing them through your own individual set of terms that are important to you…it reduces the true BEAUTY of the OTHER he says…into mere diversity. 

What this LEADS to is a crisis of CONNECTION and a crisis of LOVE for people in the modern world. People want everything and everyONE to be the same another example is when someone takes a selfie and then puts a filter on it to SMOOTH out all the edges and the imperfections. This turns them into some STANDARD of beauty that isn’t them. And Han says when you REMOVE the otherness from somebody…you CAN’T ever really LOVE that person…all you can do is consume them. When you remove the otherness from an idea it CAN’T ever really AFFECT you…all you can do is consume it. 

And think of all the ways PEOPLE are turned into things to CONSUME when it comes to ROMANCE on the INTERNET. Sorry I THINK you get what I’m saying trying to keep this all PG, very muppet treasure island of me. Always want people to be able to listen to this when their kids are within earshot. 

Anyway, True INTERACTION with and true CONSIDERATION of the OTHER…THIS IS WHAT IS MISSING… for a lot of people in today’s world. And it makes it even EASIER to fall into this place Han says because the technology that PRETTY MUCH EVERYBODY USES…enables FURTHER ISOLATION almost like it’s an addiction.

When you’re on the internet…if you ever ENCOUNTER anything that makes you feel uncomfortable like you have to truly put your ego aside for a second and try to understand it from the eyes of someone else…you can just click OFF of the page…you can just swipe to the next video…and the ALGORITHM will HAPPILY go along with it…because it’s job is just to keep you ON the app…it doesn’t really care what kind of narcissistic game you’re playing…in a sense Han says we propagandize OURSELVES. 

We are in a world where people can get a constant STREAM on their phones of SURFACE LEVEL information. No doubt…we got access to information more than ANY people who have ever LIVED. But as Han says the world is more than just information…and the SCREEN is a bad representation of the world. So in reality we don’t HAVE a true connection to the world he says…and what happens is we sink into a scattered ego. 

What is he TALKING about there? Well MOST EXAMPLES of people being DOMINATED throughout history have had some sort of symbol that people carry around with them that represents their domination. Think of slaves being branded, think of a scarlet letter. Well to Han, the SMARTPHONE is that to us… and MORE because it actually STRENGTHENS our form of domination. 

He compares a smartphone to a rosary and beads…something that people who are under the control of a religion carry around with them and hold UP at the right times. It’s NOT ONLY a surveillance device…and ALSO a digital confessional. And Facebook is the church he says…a like is a digital amen…and instead of asking for forgiveness…we call out for attention. In fact almost EVERYTHING about the smartphone he says…is utterly incompatible with true THINKING and freedom. 

To understand where he’s COMING from with this point…we have to make a distinction between what he thinks is TRUE thinking… and what often PASSES as thinking for people…consider what it’s like to be on tiktok… or MOST of the internet for that matter…tiktok’s just a very obvious VERSION of it. 

You’re scrolling from video to video…you’re getting TONS of information. But there’s no…contemplation…that’s going on about it. In fact that’s the APPEAL of watching any of these channels that HACK your attention span. 

You don’t HAVE to put in any thought…nothing you’re watching has to CONNECT to some deeper picture of the world you have…it’s all self-referential…when you watch one of these videos…it REALLY IS just some narcissist dancing to a song they didn’t write in the mirror making cute little faces cause that’s what people DO when they dance…you switch to another video “I’m gonna bake the world’s LARGEST coconut cream pie…and then LIVE in it for 40 days!” And thats…it. That’s truly ALL the video is. And there’s something BEAUTIFUL about that that’s part of the appeal. 

But there’s no DEPTH to that experience. There’s nothing MEANINGFUL about reality that those things are connecting to with people. You’re having a SURFACE level interaction with reality…and then some people WONDER why it seems like MOST of the stuff they consume is MEANINGLESS.

THIS IS WHAT HE MEANT by that quote from earlier where he talked about the terror of the same affecting ALL AREAS of life. 

You travel everywhere, yet don’t experience anything. You SEE everything but have ZERO insight. You consume information, but gain ZERO knowledge. Lust after adventures and stimulation, but stay the same. Get online friends and followers, but never encounter another person.

He says BECAUSE the pace of the world is SPEEDING UP in modern times… because you CAN just pull up a screen and float from video to video that gives you a shallow experience of the world…you can BRING that shallow level of understanding to every experience that you HAVE in the world if you let it. 

Bu to Byung Chul Han…Meaning, knowledge, truth…these things ONLY COME… when you contemplate how the PRESENT MOMENT CONNECTS to the past and the future. But there’s no time to contemplate when you’re just SCROLLING from one distraction in life to the next. It takes takes someone ACTIVELY, MAKING THE CHOICE to SLOW DOWN… and take an inventory of HOW this stuff actually impacts you. 

Think of the person that speed reads through a book… you know just CONSUMING all the information…but then never remembers any of it after they’re done READING.

If you don’t TAKE THE TIME to CONTEMPLATE HOW that information connects to the existing order of things…ALL THAT will just stay raw information…nothing more. And again to the person TRAPPED in that shallow narcissism NEVER really considering the other…that SHALLOWNESS becomes the depth you’re capable of HAVING in EVERY experience that you encounter. 

See that’s one of the COSTS of BLINDLY LIVING in this achievement society…And I guess ALSO the first EXAMPLE in this episode of something we can DO to not be at the mercy of it. 

One thing I personally love about Han’s work is that it feels EMPOWERING in comparison to some other people’s work talking about this stuff. 

Cause man do I hate at this point in my philosophical journey to come across thinkers who say something like is it FREEDOM…or SECURITY? I dont know! Maybe somewhere in the middle I guess! What are we gonna do? 

Or even worse someone that PRESCRIBES some DOOMSDAY scenario about the world we’re living in…then offers NOTHING that can be DONE about it. Byung Chul Han is different…BECAUSE he’s less ambitious than other philosophers that try to write these SWEEPING encapsulations of how all aspects of society work together…because he’s MOSTLY interested in people’s individual experiences…this gives him the ability to comment on how someone might IMPROVE their situation if they FIND themselves in one of these lanes in life. 

And the GENERAL strategy…that’s going to apply to MANY different areas of life, just putting it up as a BILLBOARD here in the beginning: is that we need to find a way to REINTRODUCE…that negativity…or that OTHERNESS into our lives.

Look, if we are living in a society where people often get funneled into lanes in life where they have surface level, thoughtless anniversaries of burnout, anxiety and depression…that in PART are because they’re OVERLY focused on THEMSELVES as personal PROJECTS…well then to put it in as PRACTICAL a way as I can…if you NOTICE that people IN these societies AS THEY MATURE…often times learn to DO things like put their ego aside, listen more, truly entertain outside ideas, they slow down, they move towards a more DEEP understanding of the world they’re in…if these are things that OFTEN come with AGE…then to Byung Chul Han…that is NOT a coincidence…because each and every ONE of those things shows a person that is AWARE of how important the OTHER is… for living a good life. And it goes BEYOND just these things. 

That’s what’s so empowering about HIS view of society in particular. You may be trapped inside a digital panopticon…but if you’re AWARE of that fact…you CAN make SPACE for the OTHER in your life. Or as HE says… develop a SENSE for the other. And if this SOUNDS familiar…MANY of these ideas are going to be in reference to eastern concepts that we touched on in the series we just did on Simone Weil. You’ll see a lot of parallels as we go THROUGH this. 

Han talks about finding moments where you can TRULY listen…to someone else…as THEY are. This is an IMPORTANT thing to integrate into your life if you’re not already. You LISTEN to someone else…NOT JUST in terms of how they benefit you. NOT JUST COMPARING them to yourself. But slowing down and truly listening, emptying the self, getting your own ego out of the way… and as he says: becoming a RESONANCE chamber for the other person to “speak themselves free”. I mean that sounds like Simone Weil was reanimated from the grave, broke into his house and WROTE that in his journal. 

But we gotta do MORE than just listen. ANOTHER thing you gotta do to FIGHT this narcissistic urge TO ALWAYS need to be EFFICIENT and PRODUCTIVE…you know you’re out with people you should be hanging out with and you CAN’T stop feeling bad that you’re not being more EFFICIENT with this time…Han says you GOTTA try to make space in your life for things…where you’re DOING them and it’s NOT because they’re IMPROVING you in some way, it’s NOT because it’s making you money…find space to DO things that are PURELY for the sake of joy. 

That BALANCE…establishing CLEAR boundaries between work and leisure and leaving room for both…valuing things like REST as well…these are things that are easy to forget with as fast paced as things can be…but just like with the person who ONLY watches tiktok videos…if you don’t BALANCE productivity and this OTHER dimension of life of moral reflection…you’ll just never reach deeper levels of understanding about life, and again you’ll BRING that shallowness to potentially EVERY experience that you have. 

When it comes to the SPECIFIC ways that Byung Chul Han lives his life…he’s famously known for Gardening, for finding ways to do work with his hands, sitting in silence. These are just a few ideas but obviously you can do whatever works for you. 

And by the way he says for ANYONE out there who may want to use their brain to CHALLENGE the existing order of things and try to make the world a better place…whether you’re a musician coming up with a new song, or a dancer coming up with a new dance move, or a philosopher coming up with a new way of thinking…ALL of those, require people to do ACTUAL contemplative thinking. 

He says THINKING, ACTUALLY contemplating things at a deeper level…THAT’S something that differentiates us from other animals. The surface level, rapid fire, multitasking of attention that TYPICALLY goes on in an achievement society…THAT’S something you can see in ANIMAL behavior. What WE can do is we can CHALLENGE the way we are CURRENTLY thinking about things, and really SIT with something truly different than what we currently believe. And THAT is what the world needs if you REALLY want to be somebody that’s moving it forward. 

Now as you can imagine there’s some RESPONSES to what Han has been saying in this episode. You know you can imagine someone who’s young, they’re AMBITIOUS, they’re LIVING in one of these achievement societies… and they HEAR what Byung Chul Han is speaking on and they say wow…I have never heard ANYONE…give such a great HANDBOOK… for justifying TOXIC levels of MEDIOCRITY in their life. 

This person might say look, you can CALL what I’m doing narcissistic if you WANT. Because I’m working on myself. Because I want to be the best person I CAN be to provide for my family. But look…I call what YOU’RE doing… GARDENING and sitting in silence…I call that just a waste of time. Every second that you spend taking a REST day doing things SIMPLY for the sake of joy…for every one of THOSE seconds there is SOMEBODY ELSE out there grinding, working to take everything that you have. 

I’m trying to get a bugatti this person might say. I’ll be sure to WAVE at you from it when you’re on the side of the ROAD with all your leisure time. And I get leaving time for moral reflection about my PLACE in the world and all…but look you don’t gotta be Socrates to understand the BASICS of how to TREAT people in the world, don’t be a jerk. Take care of your responsibilities. These are not MYSTERIES of the universe, there’s a BASELINE of moral understanding that you need and once you HIT it the BIGGEST obstacles you have are solved by IMPROVING your market value. That’s how society works and THAT’S what I’m gonna do. 

Coming from the perspective of Byung Chul Han though…somebody may say back to this person okay. I get it. You APPLY yourself at the highest level you can. Nobody is saying ANYTHING about not APPLYING yourself or being lazy. They’re simply saying that there is MORE TO LIFE than productivity and efficiency. And that it is VERY POSSIBLE to LIVE life where MOST of your field of view is this narcissistic self-optimization, to FEEL the negative IMPACTS of IGNORING OTHER parts of life, and then to blame the way you FEEL on things that are just unavoidable about the modern world. Oh, I don’t have any friends because it’s hard to make FRIENDS in today’s world. I don’t have a partner because I just have to focus on my career. I crash and burn and argue with people on the internet because there’s just a lot of stupid people in the world today. 

It’s not a coincidence that that person in the bugatti may have a lot of SURFACE level relationships in their life. It’s not a coincidence they may have a lot of shallow ways that they think about treating other people. It’s not a coincidence if they don't have a very DEEP understanding of ANYTHING about how the world works. 

Somebody might say back look you can wave to me in your Bugatti when I’m out there in my garden…but I’ll be sure to wave back at you as you’re alone in your Bugatti, spouting some conspiratorial nonsense that in YOUR eyes actually passes as a worldview…as you talk about treating people in ways that sound like you’re a junior in high school. You’re right…you don’t need to be Socrates and reflect on morality all day to be able to live a good life…but the fact is… that person… DOESN’T EVEN MISS…the levels of depth to EVERYTHING that’s available to someone if they just spent a LITTLE less time talking and a little more time actually thinking. 

Anyway Byung Chul HAn can be seen as the FIRST MEMBER of this philosophical ROUNDTABLE for how to navigate the panopticon. The more I tried to fit everything in that episode into a SINGLE episode…the more I realized it was doomed to fail as only ONE episode. I just would be oversimplifying the problem. 

My question for YOU today if you’ve listened this far is WHO’S NEXT? There’s quite a bit more to cover in byung chul han’s work… so next episode is either going to be more of Han or the first episode on Zizek or someone else on the roundtable. If you listen to this MORE than 24 hours after it’s posted don’t waste your time coming to social media, but if you’re one of the first to listen I’m going to wait 24 hours and see what people request the most…more Han, Zizek, someone else…and that will be the next release on September 17th. 

Hope you all have a great rest of your week. Please be well.

Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.