The Burnout Society

As parents and teachers we should often ask ourselves How much help / cajoling / pressure do we put on students in class or at home?  But there are many facets to the diamond of educating young people and it’s also worth considering less-frequently asked  questions about the pressure our young folk put on themselves, and why they do so.

I have often said to my own kids 'don't put yourself under so much pressure'; they unerringly point to my own tendencies, those of their friends and to the competitive systems of which they are a part - implicitly and perceptively locating apparently personal issues in broader systems of socialisation.   Korean philosopher Han Byung-Chul writes about this powerfully in The Burnout Society, and here I draw on his ideas, which provide a provocative stance that links this to increased rates of mental illness we seem to be seeing.

The centre of his claim is that large sectors of society have over the last hundred years moved away from a 'disciplinary society’, where ‘discipline' was enforced by massive social regimes of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, schools and factories.  While some of these have not gone away, Han observes the evolution towards an 'achievement society' where ‘achievement’ is enforced by similarly massive regimes of  fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls and progressive schools (?) with the ubiquitous drone of social media buttressing the cultural message.

Han suggests that mirroring the move from industrial society to information society, the focus of enforcement has moved from body to soul.  But what remains constant is that systems of power remain structured so that individuals internalise their places in society; so we are no longer obedience-subjects but instead are socialised into becoming achievement-subjects.  In modern parlance - we are all now entrepreneurs of ourselves: Prohibitions, commandments, and the law are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation. And for Han, the consequences are clear: Disciplinary society... produces madmen and criminals. In contrast, achievement society creates depressives and losers.  

Psychiatrist Alain Ehrenberg has noted something similar and locates the increase in prevalence in 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 into norms that invited us to undertake personal initiative by enjoining us to be ourselves. . . .

There is something here that really rings true to me, as an educator and a father. We are always trying to help our kids live up to their potential, become their best selves, not waste their talents... in short, to measure up to some future self.  Put like that, it does sound rather depressing and there the more often I re-read those previous lines, the less comfortable I am with that sort of language which seems be the language of perpetual failure and abiding dissatisfaction.  And Han's key insight here is not just that this happens, but that no-one does it to us - we learn to do it to ourselves; we internalise and do it voluntarily, without external constraints. He writes:

The achievement-subject stands free from any external instance of domination forcing it to work, much less exploiting it. It is lord and master of itself. However, the disappearance of domination does not entail freedom. Instead, it makes freedom and constraint coincide. Thus, the achievement-subject gives itself over to compulsive freedom. Excess work and performance escalate into self-exploitation. This is more efficient than exploitation by others, for the feeling of freedom attends it. The exploiter is simultaneously the exploited. Perpetrator and victim can no longer be distinguished.

The observation  - presciently made in Brave New World almost a century ago -  that we are no longer motivated or directed by obedience, law or obligation, but rather by freedom, pleasure, and inclination fits well with this thesis, and with the familiar 'burnout' work culture we know, where we drive ourselves far harder than does anyone.  Han's analysis of competition is equally cutting.  Having long advised students that they are only ever working for themselves, and not for me as a teacher, I wince to wonder if Han is right when he says: Individual competition... escalates into absolute competition. That is, the achievement-subject competes with itself; it succumbs to the destructive compulsion to outdo itself over and over, to jump over its own shadow. This self-constraint, which poses as freedom, has deadly results.  Essentially he’s arguing that a focus on individual achievement does not yield genuinely free individuals but generates new constraints. In this society of compulsion, everyone carries a work camp inside them. What might this mean for schools, and for families?  Can it be a coincidence that the search for improvement is now evolving into pathological perfectionism? 

Maybe those of us (full transparency: I am one of them) who have developed and internalised those hallmarks of modern progressive education -  growth mindset, grit, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and so on - have constrained ourselves in a cage of our own making.  Of course, these hallmarks are also desperately important.  I wonder if one practical strategy might be to see these things less as necessary absolutes in themselves and more as impermanent, somewhat arbitrary steps in a wider journey.   If we can do that (perhaps not easy in our current, driven millieu), and believe it ourselves, then we might be able to help our children take that broader view, and avoid the internal compulsion to compete against themselves, with all the ills that entails.

 

Reference

• Ehrenberg, A. (2010), Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press

• Han, Byung-Chul (2015) The Burnout Society. Stanford Briefs; Stanford University Press

With thanks for Ellie Alchin, Gemma Dawson and Theo Sweeting for great conversation on these ideas.