A Slave To Freedom

I want you to read this string of statements:

You can be great / You can perform at a high level / You can reach all your goals

If you’re anything like me, sentences like these fill you with a bit of pride. They sound like daily affirmations I’d repeat to myself in the mirror. The thought of reaching my fullest potential and achieving lofty goals is nice. I want to become that best version of myself. I want to be great.

Now read these:

You should be great / You should perform at a high level / You should reach all your goals

If you’re still anything like me, the second statements, altered by only one word, make you anxious, perhaps even angry. If you think too much, they’re reminiscent of all that is wrong in our society - the need, obligation even, we feel to constantly perform. We’re implicitly bludgeoned by this idea that we’re only valuable in as much as we can produce.

Nobody likes being told what they should do. But we all like being reminded what we can do.

In his book The Burnout Society, philosopher Byung Chul Han highlights this dichotomy as the mark of our transition from a disciplinarian society to an achievement society.

As a bedrock, he assumes that the goal of all societies is production. The only thing that differs is the means by which a society facilitates this production.

• Disciplinarian societies, popularized by French philosopher Michel Foucault, are characterized by strict rules and surveillance. Order is maintained through discipline and institutional behavior regulation (e.g., schools, work, prisons). Production and efficiency are an ensured via obedience and the imperative “should.”

• Achievement societies, in contrast, are characterized by freedom, individualism, and meritocracy. “Prohibitions, commandments, and law are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation.” Production is encouraged, obligated even, by this idea of personal ability and entrepreneurship. We can be anything we want, so why not be the best? And if you aren’t the best, you only have yourself to blame.

It’s a clever trick, isn’t it?

Be productive not because you should. Be productive because you can. You can do anything! The only thing stopping you is you!

You see, we’re not only our best motivators, we’re also our harshest critics. We’re remarkably efficient at making ourselves feel like we’re not doing enough without any help from big brother. This way, we work ourselves to the ground and can’t cry wolf.

It all came crashing down for me during a work break. I had been pushing nonstop on an uninteresting topic, at an unsustainable pace, in an uncomfortable chair. It was all bad. I opened up Youtube at the start of my break, and what did I watch? During one of my few breaks, after hours of grueling work, I watched a 10 minute video on applying the 80/20 rule to my finances and calendar. During my break from productivity, I watched a 10 minute video on how to be more productive. Is that not mental illness?

It’s easy to cry victim at a capitalistic machine that’s always pushing me to be productive. But what do I do when I find myself at the helm of that machine? Pushing myself to be better not necessarily for the sake of any job, but in the name of self improvement. I’ve been convinced that if I can be great, then I must be great; that if I can do anything, that I must do everything. And if I am not great, with all the opportunity I’m afforded, that I’m wasting my potential, with only myself to blame.

For those of us who are minorities, I often think of the implicit obligation we feel to make the most of our earned freedom. There was a time when there were more explicit and violent means to stop us from reaching our potential. Now that those physical shackles have been removed, how are you going to make the most of it?

. . .

Byung Chul Han ties this pernicious compulsion for self improvement to the rising rates of mental ailments in our society. We’re immobilized by anxiety, plagued by self criticism, and burnt out by the masses, and we’re kind of doing it to ourselves.

Chul Han says “It is not the imperative to belong to oneself, but the pressure to achieve the causes exhaustive depression. Seen in this light, burnout syndrome does not express the exhausted self so much as the exhausted, burn out soul.”

Frankly, I’m tired of having to be the best version of myself all the time. Yes of course I want to do big things and live out my dreams, but if the best version of myself requires a constant state of improvement (which is not necessarily, but often implicitly, fueled by a constant state of self-criticism), then I have to wonder: is that the version of me that I really want?

I’ll end with a note of grace.

Han does not write his book as a criticism against the individual. Ultimately, he blames a society that has tied performance to personhood. We’ve been led to believe that productivity does not end at work, but that it’s also relevant for our personal lives. Not producing enough as a worker has somehow become the same as not being enough as a person. This is a lie.

While I’m ultimately responsible for my actions and the obligation I feel to achieve, this is how that nasty capitalistic machine wants me to think. They’ve twisted my freedom into their tool.

But we are ultimately still free. We can decide not to become achievement subjects. We can choose to untie our personhood from performance. We can still reach our full potential, but remember, there are many other ways, happier ways, to become full.

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Bonus! No need to read them all, but I wanted to share a few other quotes from The Burnout Society that have stuck with me:

“The depressive human being is an animal laborans that exploits itself - and it does so voluntarily, without external constraints. It is predator and prey at once.”

“The complaint of the depressive individual , ‘Nothing is possible,’ can only occur in a society that thinks, ‘Nothing is impossible.’

“The achievement subject finds itself fighting with itself. The depressive has been wounded by internalized war. Depression is the sickness of a society that suffers from excess positivity. It reflects a humanity waging war on itself.”

“Beyond a certain point of productivity, disciplinary technology hits a limit. The positive can is much more efficient than than the negativity of should . . The achievement subject is faster and more productive than the obedience subject.”

“Depression began its ascent when the disciplinary model for behavior . . . broke against the 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.”