Byung-Chul Han’s book The Burnout Society is over ten years old, but its diagnosis of the disease spreading through our world is anything but outdated. I first heard about Han through Stephen West’s excellent podcast Philosophize This! and I think his ideas deserve more attention.

In this article, I want to do three things: first, explain how Han diagnoses the ills of modern society; second, identify some remedies he suggests; and third, comment on why his analysis matters from a Christian perspective.

Why All the Depression, ADHD, and Burnout?

Han begins by pointing out that our world seems to be sick in a way it wasn’t before. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, we’ve seen a spike in depression, ADHD, and burnout syndrome. Meanwhile, we are being told constantly—and this is a historically novel doctrine—that we can and should do anything we want, that we have no limits, except the ones we place on ourselves.

Han calls this an excess of positivity, which leads to an achievement society.

Are there any upsides to the achievement society, fueled by all this positivity? For one, it motivates people to be incredibly productive because it blends can and should. By this, Han means that our mindset tends to be, “If I can, I must!” This ends up being much more effective in motivating people than the old disciplinary mindset. It’s impossible to deny that today our world is, as a whole, wealthier, faster, and more technologically “advanced” than any previous generations could have imagined. 

The question Han explores is this: Is there a connection between the burnout pandemic and this excess of positivity? Han’s answer is yes. He writes, “The complaint of the depressive individual, ‘Nothing is possible,’ can only occur in a society that thinks, ‘Nothing is impossible.’ . . . Depression is the sickness of a society that suffers from excessive positivity. It reflects a humanity waging war on itself.” In other words, by being told that we can do and be anything, we feel a deep sense that we ought to be everything. In being told we are free, we actually become enslaved to “compulsive freedom” of maximizing our achievements. 

Only decades earlier, we lived in a “disciplinary society” marked by “no.” Its cultural artifacts were “madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories.” In an achievement society, governed by “can,” our artifacts are “fitness studios . . . shopping malls, and genetic laboratories.” Disciplinary society, Han observes, “produces madmen and criminals. By contrast, however, “achievement society creates depressives and losers.”

What’s the Remedy?

Han doesn’t stop at diagnosing our modern ills: he offers what he believes to be three important aspects of the cure: profound boredom and tiredness. (Han offers more, but I’ll limit my discussion to these three).

Profound Boredom

We tend to think that boredom is something to avoid at nearly any cost. Never may we allow our minds to be unoccupied. The moment we feel slightly bored—or, in most cases, even before we do—our hands reach for our smartphones. Thus, we obliterate boredom by presenting to our eyes a ceaseless parade of diversion and amusement. We can even multitask, simultaneously staving off both boredom and the guilt of not being productive. We can bring our work into bed with us. We never need to be bored.

But are we losing something by never being bored? Han argues that we actually need boredom—profound boredom—to be neurologically healthy. By boredom, he does not mean lethargy, apathy, or laziness; rather he means something vigorous: embracing the discomfort of being unoccupied. Profound boredom is the gateway to contemplation, which Han calls “the pedagogy of seeing.” That is, instead of being zombie-like recipients of flashes on our screens, we must learn the patience and persistence of taking things in with wonder and awe—as you would gaze at a tree or spider, not to plan what you can do with it, but to marvel at what it is.

Exhaustion

As with profound boredom, it is counterintuitive to present exhaustion as a remedy. We think we are better off to avoid tiredness and exhaustion. To be sure, there is a kind of dangerous tiredness that says, “I’m tired of you,” or “I’m tired of the world.” But there is another kind of tiredness that is trusting and humble, that says, “I’m tired with you.” Just as profound boredom allows us to see the world as it is, deep exhaustion allows us to be in the world as we are, freeing us not to be everything.

Negative Potency

Finally, Han says that we need negative potency, which essentially means the power to say no to something you can do. Han puts this in contrast with a Freudian outlook, according to which human ills stem from repressed desires. Our problems, Freud taught, come because some external force—whether society or conscience or custom—is saying no to what we really want. Han argues that Freud’s answer is unsatisfying when it comes to contemporary maladies. “Depression, burnout, and ADHD . . . indicate an excess of positivity,” not repressed desires. Our problem is not that we are not allowed to do anything, but rather that we are able to do anything, and so become infected with “fatal hyperactivity.” In a society saturated with an excess of positivity, we must have the power to decide that there are some things—many things, in fact—that we will not do.

Why Han’s Analysis Matters

As a pastor and theologian, I’m constantly trying to understand and articulate how the truth of Scripture intersects with the world we live in. This often means noticing how sin affects us on the psychological and sociological levels. Han’s analysis gives us a powerful set of lenses for seeing the damaging effects of casting off God-given limitations and trying to convince ourselves that we can be and do anything, that freedom is found in bare “freedom-from” instead of “freedom-for.”

The mantra “You can be anything” sounds empowering, but when we refuse to accept what we exist for—a relationship with God—that “anything” becomes slavery, not liberty. And this is precisely what sin does: it enslaves, subjugates, and dehumanizes. The Burnout Society shows us the disastrous psychological effects of making achievement our savior and lord.

Here is where presenting the gospel becomes relevant. The gospel—strictly speaking, the announcement that Jesus is King—shows us another way. Since Jesus is King, we must swear our allegiance to him, and cut off our allegiance to (in biblical terms, repent from) the evil Tyrant “I-Can-Be-Anything.” Our frenetic efforts to validate ourselves by achievement, we can surrender to a rest in his achievement. The energy we have put into ourselves, we can and must put into loving and serving Jesus and others.