> [!INFO] Application Note > [[The Burnout Society Application]] ## Highlights Neurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and burnout syndrome mark the landscape of pathology at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They are not infections, but infarctions; they do not follow from the _negativity_ of what is immunologically foreign, but from an excess of _positivity_. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc70bq85qfkeqkc5kpc4y74z)) ^d0dli8 The violence [*Gewalt*] of positivity that derives from overproduction, overachievement, and overcommunication is no longer “viral.” Immunology offers no way of approaching the phenomenon. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc70wxmja7nf9hme2wz8m5pg)) ^1x3hjq the violence of the Same when no Otherness is involved—in immunological terms. Thus he writes: ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc70y28m3k9ses6wes2q6zpk)) The violence of positivity does not presume or require hostility. It unfolds specifically in a permissive and pacified society. Consequently, it proves more invisible than viral violence. It inhabits the negativity-free space of the Same, where no polarization between inside and outside, or proper and foreign, takes place. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc71619xk41c7j5ytqabaf4g)) ^bd98lp They do not stem from the immunologically Other. Rather, they are immanent in the system itself. Because of this immanence, they do not involve immune defense. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc716pphq1stx9cacy86m4yn)) ^decogz syndrome occurs when the ego overheat ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc71a9vvzt2cjjeb6sbt6cnp)) Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc71e0j372xfympyk9tc7zgy)) ^i0ujca Disciplinary society is a society of negativity. It is defined by the negativity of prohibition. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc71fk739146cdtd2j24dd4e)) ^v8sozt Prohibitions, commandments, and the law are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc71gjv27msf9aybre0j4ep0)) ^x60aul The positivity of _Can_ is much more efficient than the negativity of _Should_. Therefore, the social unconscious switches from _Should_ to _Can_. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc71je8d2hcpdwss9excm78c)) ^bs13ku Alain Ehrenberg locates depression in the transition from disciplinary society to achievement society: Depression began its ascent when the disciplinary model for behaviors, the rules of authority and observance of taboos that gave social classes as well as both sexes a specific destiny, broke against norms that invited us to undertake personal initiative by enjoining us to be ourselves. . . . The depressed individual is unable to measure up; he is tired of having to become himself.[1](private://read/01hc6yncwb2yhmndt7t1d5ffzq#id_128) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc71n88yk321045x8gnd86hv)) ^q87ltg depression is the pathological expression of the late-modern human being’s failure to become himself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc71pmpzg5xx8wrs5pcxq9vz)) ^ektubn ### New highlights added October 10, 2023 at 10:37 AM The depressive human being is an _animal laborans_ that exploits itself—and it does so voluntarily, without external constraints. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcc6x0zm98c1ee1nvndrfb59)) ^358cuw The achievement-subject stands free from any external instance of domination [*Herrschaftsinstanz*] forcing it to work, much less exploiting it. It is lord and master of itself. Thus, it is subject to no one—or, as the case may be, only to itself ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcc71w1t8fs7rpkrak75esbk)) ^1z0xym Thus, the achievement-subject gives itself over to _compulsive freedom_—that is, to the _free constraint_ of maximizing achievement.[3](private://read/01hc6yncwb2yhmndt7t1d5ffzq#id_124) Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcc73ceb7tfj8zk4y8qfkjtp)) ^6xmw5z Excessive positivity also expresses itself as an excess of stimuli, information, and impulses. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcc74426pxwz2mf20jkqha14)) ^gbzi1t That is why animals are incapable of contemplative immersion—either they are eating or they are copulating. The animal cannot immerse itself contemplatively in what it is facing [*Gegenüber*] because it must also process background events. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcc76xzyh855fb8y8ff2zr73)) ^7p7hau Not just multitasking but also activities such as video games produce a broad but flat mode of attention, which is similar to the vigilance of a wild animal. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcc77b7vbdtjg2xa6njjqd0d)) ^wgj2uv We owe the cultural achievements of humanity—which include philosophy—to deep, contemplative attention. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcc7b5jgsj9n2dc1hkxe88q7)) ^uiu6y0 hyperattention. A rash change of focus between different tasks, sources of information, and processes characterizes this scattered mode of awareness. Since it also has a low tolerance for boredom, it does not admit the profound idleness that benefits the creative process. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcc7c80mgn4cg47dkxna53f0)) ^fi07sb ### New highlights added October 11, 2023 at 9:37 AM There must be another answer to why all human activities in late modernity are sinking to the level of mere laboring—and, more still, why such hectic nervousness prevails. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcer8qa4qy17nte31pk8b7qd)) ^fr4y4b - 💭 why most of knowledge was founded in olden days The reaction to a life that has become bare and radically fleeting occurs as hyperactivity, hysterical work, and production. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcerf9q7bxtyazwzg1ta0pga)) ^5pd39l People who suffer from depression, bipolar disorder, or burnout syndrome develop the symptoms displayed by the _Muselmänner_ in concentration camps. _Muselmänner_ are emaciated prisoners lacking all vigor who, like people with acute depression, have become entirely apathetic and can no longer even recognize physical cold or the orders given by guards. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcerj083dyhts95a0mgbt5jg)) Reacting immediately, yielding to every impulse, already amounts to illness and represents a symptom of exhaustion. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcertb13p7d8hb3hm08jwqa1)) ^8nhydg - Reminds me of how people who involuntarily doom-scroll at the end of the day are experiencing daily micro-burnout because they are exhausted from the day ### New highlights added April 27, 2024 at 3:43 PM Mounting positivization of society also weakens feelings such as dread and mourning [*Trauer*], which are based on a kind of negativity; they are negative feelings.[3](private://read/01hc6yncwb2yhmndt7t1d5ffzq/#id_93) If thinking [*das Denken*] itself were a “network of antibodies and natural immune defenses,”[4](private://read/01hc6yncwb2yhmndt7t1d5ffzq/#id_91) then the absence of negativity would transform it into calculation. The computer calculates more quickly than the human brain and takes on inordinate quantities of data without difficulty because it is free of all Otherness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwgqa1bp4202xba3wrx88a5n)) ^3xkf5p - 💭 instead of rationalists being emotionless, or neutral, they are just excessively positive. The general positivization of the world means that both human beings and society are transforming into *autistic performance-machines*. One might also say that overexcited [*überspannt*] efforts to maximize performance are abolishing negativity because it slows down the process of acceleration. If man were a being of negativity [*Negativitätswesen*], the total positivization of the world would prove more than a little dangerous. According to Hegel, negativity is precisely what keeps existence [*Dasein*] alive. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwgqdrkkmt74nfh01cn13tbm)) ^z5rr9y - 💭 argument for against trying to minimize negativity in your life through medication and other means of avoidance. The reason why negativity is required for life is to promote change? to experience this whole spectrum which then provides the other side meaning? ### New highlights added July 4, 2024 at 2:55 PM In contrast, the process of repression or negation plays no role in contemporary psychic maladies such as depression, burnout, and ADHD. Instead, they indicate an *excess of positivity*, that is, not negation so much as the *inability to say no*; they do not point to not-being-allowed-to-do-anything [*Nicht-Dürfen*], but to being-able-to-do-everything [*Alles-Können*]. Therefore, psychoanalysis offers no way of approaching these phenomena. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1zs8mgc735sgghv41yqstah)) ^tobrou Depression—which often culminates in burnout—follows from overexcited, overdriven, excessive self-reference that has assumed destructive traits. The exhausted, depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down, so to speak. It is tired, exhausted by itself, and at war with itself. Entirely incapable of stepping outward, of standing outside itself, of relying on the Other, on the world, it locks its jaws on itself; paradoxically, this leads the self to hollow and empty out. It wears out in a rat race it runs against itself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1zsm6ff3wpb45w5jp0hdmq8)) ^k8tz68 - 💭 really interesting way of framing the dangers of self-improvement. when you exhaust yourself to such a degree you lose the capacity to tolerate the things that make you prone to depression? ### New highlights added July 5, 2024 at 1:50 AM Ehrenberg considers depression exclusively in terms of psychology and the pathology of the self. In so doing, he fails to consider economic context. Burnout, which often precedes depression, does not point to a sovereign individual who has come to lack the power to be the “master of himself.” Rather, burnout represents the pathological consequence of *voluntary* self-exploitation. The imperative of expansion, transformation, and self-reinvention—of which depression is the flipside—presumes an array of products tied to identity. The more often one changes one’s identity, the more production is dynamized. Industrial disciplinary society relied on unchanging identity, whereas postindustrial achievement society requires a flexible person to heighten production. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j20ksw48pw7cyegrp7ne58yn)) ^9v1it9 ### New highlights added July 5, 2024 at 4:09 PM The achievement-subject stands free from external instances of domination forcing it to work and exploiting it. It is subject to no one if not to itself. However, the absence of external domination does not abolish the structure of compulsion. It makes freedom and compulsion coincide. The achievement-subject gives itself over to freestanding compulsion in order to maximize performance. In this way, it exploits itself. Auto-exploitation is more efficient than allo-exploitation because a deceptive feeling of freedom accompanies it. The exploiter is simultaneously the exploited. Exploitation now occurs without domination. That is what makes self-exploitation so efficient. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j22e5apq3fyvsswk2r65qsh2)) ^7f2mfu - 💭 our autonomy rationalizes exploitation as a good thing, excess positivity The capitalist system is switching from allo-exploitation to auto-exploitation in order to accelerate. On the basis of the paradoxical freedom it holds, the achievement-subject is simultaneously perpetrator and victim, master and slave. Freedom and violence now coincide. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j22e7bs1jxs2w1gtsbmny46v)) ^12i99h - 💭 wow The reduction of life to biological, vital processes makes life itself bare and strips it of all narrativity. It takes *livingness* from life, which is much more complex than simple vitality and health. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j22ehrpsexm7za8c6t7jrsdw)) - 💭 what happens when you only optimize growth for the sake of growth, without much time for contemplation and just presence The life of *homo sacer* in achievement society is holy and bare for another reason entirely. It is bare because, stripped of all transcendent *value*, it has been reduced to the immanency of vital functions and capacities, which are to be maximized by any and all means. The inner logic of achievement society dictates its evolution into a *doping society*. Life reduced to bare, vital functioning is life to be kept healthy unconditionally. Health is the new goddess.[31](private://read/01hc6yncwb2yhmndt7t1d5ffzq/#id_2) That is why bare life is holy. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j22fa47hnnepw9gngnr5tqpk)) ^ghbskg - 💭 also can be food for thought for biohacking if it takes up your entire life The *homines sacri* of achievement society also differ from those of the society of sovereignty on another score. They cannot be killed at all. Their life equals that of the undead. They are too alive to die, and too dead to live. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j22fawthhfwt7m46yhgep52t)) ^fblahp - 💭 very poetic way to explain