The Art of Manliness - #476： Are Modern People the Most Exhausted in History？

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast people oft complain

00:00:19.120 about being tired and burnout these days from work and family responsibilities we think it's

00:00:23.000 because of the way technology has sped out the pace of life and the way we're always on and figure

00:00:27.060 we're living in the most exhausting age in history but are we really my guest argues that no people

00:00:31.740 have been complaining about being tired since at least antiquity her name is anna schaffner and

00:00:35.580 she's written a book called exhaustion a history which traces the fascinating evolution of physical

00:00:39.740 psychological and existential fatigue from the ancient greeks to the modern day today she takes

00:00:44.200 us on this tour and as we move from age to age we dig into how exhaustion has changed as to how it's

00:00:49.000 described whether we blame external or internal factors as its source and how much we believe

00:00:53.300 personal agency can control it after show's over check out the show notes at aom.is

00:00:58.000 slash exhaustion anna joins me now via skype

00:01:01.020 all right anna katharina schaffner welcome to the show hi welcome thank you for having me on your

00:01:14.300 program so you wrote a book called exhaustion a history i'm curious this is a an interesting topic

00:01:22.580 to delve into the history of exhaustion so what got you looking into that were you just really tired

00:01:27.560 one day and you were thinking did the ancient greeks like complain about being tired of being tired too

00:01:33.900 and i'm going to explore that so what happened there yeah it was it wasn't quite like that but it was

00:01:38.820 similar i did often you know feel very exhausted and tired and weary and overburdened you know as

00:01:46.020 academics tend to at numerous times in their lives and i also noticed a really interesting

00:01:52.700 increase in newspaper reports on television programs and scholarly studies on stress and burnout especially

00:01:59.100 in germany the germans we were really really obsessed with that topic a couple of years ago

00:02:03.900 and everybody basically said that we've never ever been that exhausted collectively that we're living the

00:02:09.540 most exhausting age ever and that basically you know everything about our time was sucking out our

00:02:17.220 energies and that we're confronted with this really demanding environment in which we constantly have

00:02:24.080 to be cognitively switched on and new technologies basically mean that we can never properly switch off

00:02:31.200 and also you know neoliberal working arrangements were you know psychosocially really really stressful

00:02:38.000 so everybody was making these big grand claims about our utterly exhausted and exhausting age and then i did

00:02:46.120 think yeah i mean i agree with that but i do wonder really whether exhaustion as a sort of mental and physical

00:02:52.660 state is is unique to our age and then i thought i'd look into it i was really interested and then i really

00:02:59.280 did find that exhaustion is really a topic that has concerned people throughout the centuries and it is not as we

00:03:07.120 might think related to new technologies it is not related to the sort of hyper-competitive neoliberal

00:03:13.420 environment but it's really a ubiquitous and timeless concern and i think you know i don't deny that we're

00:03:20.740 living in a stressful age and that there are numerous new psychosocial challenges that are very unique and

00:03:28.100 specific to our times but i did find that every age has sort of struggled with its own burden and its own

00:03:34.900 challenges and every age has also perceived itself as exhausting and a lot of people before us have

00:03:42.340 have actually made similar claims as to you know how suddenly everything was terrible and they look back

00:03:49.320 nostalgically to to the past imagining the past as much more much more kind of peaceful less stressful

00:03:56.980 so you have this sort of nostalgic glorification of the past as a you know as an age in which the

00:04:04.200 stressors were fewer and that happens in in lots of different periods not just in hours and and basically

00:04:12.080 i i was really fascinated with that because that's not how most people perceive it and i did also find

00:04:17.920 that quite soothing as an idea you know that we're not the only age that has struggled with the problem of

00:04:24.120 exhaustion so yeah this was i thought it was soothing too it's like well you know people thousands of

00:04:30.220 years ago also were tired just like like like i am so let's talk about that when was the first time we

00:04:36.400 see in you know recorded human record of people complaining about being tired or exhaustion yeah i think

00:04:44.760 i mean that really you know my my investigation my research took me all the way back to the age of

00:04:50.400 classical antiquity and you really do find it in some of the epics you find it also in in galen's

00:04:58.880 writing you know this uh great doctor who who basically established your moral medicine and and he he was

00:05:07.180 looking at exhaustion in the context of melancholia because basically exhaustion you never really encounter

00:05:13.800 it purely on its own in the literature of the past in the medical texts or in the theological text or

00:05:20.340 in the philosophical text what i did is i looked at different syndromes that entailed exhaustion as a

00:05:27.260 core symptom so i looked at texts on melancholia i looked at texts on neurasthenia on nervous weakness

00:05:35.740 on depression on chronic fatigue syndrome and on on burnout and exhaustion is always central to these

00:05:44.520 syndromes but it's not the same of course because in those syndromes it is always combined with other

00:05:49.520 symptoms and sometimes these symptoms are thought to be the cause of exhaustion is the the cause of

00:05:56.380 these other symptoms and sometimes exhaustion is thought to be one of the consequence of them so

00:06:01.360 it's always really interesting and one of the earliest writing coming back to your question about

00:06:05.560 exhaustion is is really in the sort of humoral medical texts on melancholia and humoral medicine is

00:06:12.740 really based on the idea that we have four humors that need to be in balance with one another and all

00:06:18.680 illnesses all distress all distress all forms of discomfort can be explained with recourse to

00:06:24.080 imbalance so galen thought that exhaustion and mainly in the form of torpor lethargy weariness and pessimism

00:06:33.780 is one of the core symptoms of melancholia and he had a lot to write about exhaustion in the sense that

00:06:41.580 he thought it was called caused by a surplus of black bile and he had also this very lovely image of um

00:06:48.740 how we how we kind of how black moods and um you know pessimistic worldviews happen he he basically

00:06:55.760 thought that when the body is confronted with too much black bile it starts to burn the excess of black

00:07:02.680 bile and the fumes of black bile they sort of rise up into our head and literally cloud our vision you know

00:07:10.280 they make us see everything through a dark through a glass darkly so so galen was one of the very first

00:07:16.700 to to write about exhaustion and he had this interesting idea that it was partly physical you know this idea

00:07:23.060 that it was because of an imbalance of of the humors and an excess of black bile but that this physical

00:07:29.480 imbalance obviously had effects on on our on people's mental life so it really manifested itself as as a lack of

00:07:37.660 energy but also as a mood disorder so to say well yeah that's interesting point because that's something

00:07:44.340 that i noticed throughout the book is as you go through the different stages of civilization and how

00:07:49.880 they approach exhaustion there was this i don't know a tension between whether exhaustion or depression

00:07:55.800 or whatever you want to call it is physiological right it's in the body or if it's psychological it's

00:08:01.700 just in the mind or spiritual so it sounds like galen was saying it was a little bit of both at the time

00:08:07.740 yeah i mean he he he thought it was originally physical but then had psychological impacts and what

00:08:15.380 is really interesting is how that relationship between the physical the mental and the social shifts in the

00:08:21.380 different theories of exhaustion and basically in my book i look at forms of exhaustion that constitute

00:08:27.220 physical and mental states and that are all also at the same time broader cultural phenomena so

00:08:33.380 physically exhaustion really manifests itself as fatigue lesergy and weakness and it can be a temporary

00:08:39.700 state and those aren't particularly scary because they they pass or they can or that kind of state of

00:08:46.140 exhaustion can be a chronic condition and in my book i really look at the pathological forms of exhaustion

00:08:51.520 exhaustion and those that are not obviously the result of an underlying and clearly diagnosable medical

00:08:56.860 condition and emotionally exhaustion can can be described as as weariness disillusionment apathy and

00:09:04.620 hopelessness or a lack of motivation and what i find really fascinating that is that throughout the ages

00:09:10.800 the different theories always theorize the relationship between the mind the body and the social very very

00:09:19.000 differently and that was for me the attraction about that topic because you know the ways in which we

00:09:25.220 think about the interconnection between the mind the body and the social it's really really interesting and

00:09:30.220 it also tells us a lot about other assumptions about you know selfhood and you know how connected we are

00:09:37.080 and also you know the kind of whole idea the cartesian idea of a split between the mind and the body is

00:09:42.960 obviously a later phenomenon and most of the earlier texts and theories are much more holistic

00:09:48.700 and they they assume that there's a sort of intricate connection between the mind and the body and and

00:09:54.340 they try to sort of theorize that connection very interesting ways and but also so there's this this

00:10:00.940 tension between mind and body but there's also you see throughout the history and we see even with

00:10:06.020 the ancient and classical antiquity whether exhaustion is a sign of weakness right of like a moral failing

00:10:13.140 or if it's just something that just happens to you and you're not you're you're pretty much blameless for it

00:10:17.440 and that changes but before we see how it changes like what did like say the ancient greeks or the ancient

00:10:22.600 romans think of exhaustion was it seen as a as a moral failing or a moral weakness of some sort or was it just

00:10:28.720 something like well yeah that just happens to you and that's okay yeah i think it wasn't seen as a moral

00:10:33.960 failing and it was also not considered as weakness as such it was something that started out in the body

00:10:41.500 and i mean i did believe that you could cure exhaustion and melancholic states by paying attention

00:10:48.700 to to diet by living a very moderate lifestyle you know avoiding excesses of all sorts so there was a

00:10:56.320 sort of there was an idea that our behavior contributes to to our exhaustion if we're not careful if we you know

00:11:04.100 eat the wrong kinds of food if we indulge in you know activities that are not not restful if we don't

00:11:11.620 pay attention to to our energy levels that we are partly responsible for for suffering from exhaustion and

00:11:18.600 and states of exhaustion but the other interesting thing about melancholia because you know melancholia

00:11:23.300 was the big sort of exhaustion syndrome in that period was that melancholia also had a vaguely positive

00:11:30.960 connections back then already because aristotle actually connected melancholia and the melancholic

00:11:37.560 temperament with genius so being melancholic wasn't just seen as something negative there was also this

00:11:43.880 you know connection with scholarship and with creativity and with you know intellectual powers but but

00:11:51.780 overall i would say exhaustion in in the um greco-roman period wasn't vilified it wasn't considered

00:11:58.480 sinful it wasn't considered a weakness it was rather about sort of temperament and

00:12:04.820 physical responses that we can influence by watching our behavior but it didn't have these sort of

00:12:10.960 excessive moralistic connotations that came with later diagnoses and so yeah let's talk about that change

00:12:16.920 that started changing in the middle ages with christianity yeah i think that's you know that's for me

00:12:22.200 probably the most interesting theory of exhaustion the idea that exhaustion is sinful and medieval

00:12:30.160 exhaustion was actually really present in a syndrome cluster that is called akidia and that was later

00:12:38.480 renamed as sloth so akidia really was born amongst hermit monks in the egyptian desert and early

00:12:46.720 theorists including evagrius ponticus and johannes cassian who lived in the egyptian desert and blamed

00:12:54.160 exhaustion on the noonday demon and akidia is really a very interesting phenomena it's a mixture of

00:13:00.940 melancholia and sloth and it was thought to be manifest in listlessness apathy and lack of care

00:13:07.240 and it was originally diagnosed exclusively in monastic environments but then it became sort of more

00:13:13.900 ubiquitous and became democratized and everyone was able to suffer from akidia and akidia has also

00:13:20.580 very poetically been described as weariness of the heart and the 13th century italian theologian

00:13:27.480 thomas aquinas was the first to very very explicitly define akidia as a spiritual sin and i think that was

00:13:35.600 a really interesting turn in the history of exhaustion because he thought exhaustion was a failure of morality

00:13:42.740 and it was owing to a lack of proper faith so basically the exhausted the lethargic the lukewarm

00:13:49.780 the weary were guilty of refusing to accept divine grace they were basically guilty of a bad mental

00:13:57.760 attitude and in fact very few people know that akidia or sloth was considered the most dangerous of the

00:14:05.940 seven deadly sins and it was the most dangerous because it basically breeds all the other bad

00:14:12.300 behaviors and the other sinful forms of acting because because it can all be traced back to this

00:14:19.520 lack of faith in god's goodness this sort of you know dismissive attitude about what is good and what

00:14:27.700 is important and what is divine and the underlying idea was also of course that by giving in to exhaustion

00:14:34.140 we we are guilty because because we we are weak our flesh is weak our mental state is weak and we let

00:14:41.860 the sort of evil forces from the outside take over because we're not vigilant enough and we we don't have

00:14:48.620 enough faith to to fend off you know the noonday demon for example and of course that has implications for

00:14:56.260 responsibility and agency i mean one of the other interesting things about exhaustion is that it always brings up

00:15:02.580 bigger philosophical questions about personal responsibility and agency and in the middle ages really the

00:15:10.700 the slothful and the akidic and the you know weary and lethargic were sort of as sinners

00:15:17.020 so what's interesting you talk about talking about italian italians in the medieval times is uh dante

00:15:22.820 and his divine comedy like exhaustion was front and center in that what did what can the divine comedy teach us about

00:15:29.780 how people living in that period thought you could overcome the sin of akidia yeah i i when i reread the

00:15:37.360 divine comedy i was really struck by how you know it can really be read as a book that traces the gradual

00:15:46.120 overcoming of weariness of spiritual and physical weariness and there are lots and lots of reference

00:15:53.760 to sleepiness to sleepiness to lethargy to tiredness to heaviness and and dante you know he sheds all his

00:16:01.440 sins on the way to paradise so he he you know he's lost spiritually and and literally at the beginning

00:16:09.420 of the divine comedy and then he meets his guide who you know basically guides him through the inferno and to

00:16:17.060 purgatory and in the end he you know he's reunited with his beautiful beatrice in paradise and in the

00:16:24.480 course of his journey he becomes more and more energetic and he shakes off this torpor this lethargy

00:16:31.560 and it becomes very clear that exhaustion and in the form of akidia and slothfulness has been

00:16:38.580 his major sin and he encounters he encounters lots of other lossful characters in the course of his

00:16:45.400 journey all of whom get punished you know there's this sort of law of contrapasso at work in in the

00:16:52.040 divine comedy this idea that all the sins are punished by tortures that either resemble or contrast with the

00:16:59.420 sin in question so some of the weary and slothful characters are forced into eternal activity

00:17:06.560 and the lukewarm who never really wanted to commit to you know to god's goodness or to to good causes

00:17:14.320 they're forced endlessly to run after an empty banners for example which is a very beautiful image i think

00:17:21.080 and then of course dante also encounters the the wonderful figure of belacqua who you know who sits

00:17:28.200 really tired and lethargic and weary at the bottom of mount purgatory and if he were able to climb up to

00:17:36.060 the summit of mount purgatory he could really find salvation there but ironically he he's just too

00:17:42.740 tired to make that climb and he can't be bothered and he doesn't really believe that you know he would

00:17:48.760 succeed in being forgiven for his sins so he just sits there at the bottom of mount purgatory with his

00:17:55.560 you know bowed his with his head bowed and you know leaning against the boulder in the shade this

00:18:00.860 wonderful image of someone who has really given up on the idea of salvation but not so dante you know

00:18:07.640 who is driven forward by by virgil his guide and who in the end succeed succeeds in in shaking off

00:18:13.940 his torpor his spiritual torpor and recommits to god in the end i think it's interesting you know you

00:18:20.180 mentioned that the the sin of slothfulness originated in monastic scenarios or environments when i was

00:18:26.340 reading this i was actually at the time i was i stayed in a monastery here in close by to my house

00:18:33.780 just like an hour away and one of the things i found was interesting i got there like all i wanted

00:18:38.040 to do was sleep like the day the day before i was fine like you know active but like i got there

00:18:44.000 i just got really sleepy i just wanted i wonder if it's something about the monastic way of life that

00:18:49.600 it is so regular and it is so i don't know it is kind of relaxing that just makes you makes you tired

00:18:55.120 it makes you want to sleep i don't know what was going on there yeah i can imagine that you know

00:18:59.180 if you have very kind of regular routines and also you know they have to they had to meditate a lot the

00:19:05.020 monks in the past you know they especially the hermits they were by themselves all day long every day

00:19:11.100 and and they had to be really really disciplined about their kind of spiritual commitments and the

00:19:18.900 meditation aspect of it and of course that can be really really hard and and and can cause incredible

00:19:25.480 problems with with concentration and there's some wonderful descriptions of weary monks in in some of

00:19:32.620 the texts i've studied you know monks who basically engage in all sorts of very modern sounding displacement

00:19:38.900 activities you know they go out and they stare at the sun and they become really sleepy and then they

00:19:44.760 go and see another monk and idly chat for hours and then they feel really tired again and you know

00:19:50.900 there are all these descriptions of monks who don't quite manage to commit to that you know very rigorous

00:19:56.540 discipline that was required and then of course i think what what also becomes interesting is that

00:20:01.500 in a monastic setting you know because because the um sort of hermitages the the hermit monks they were

00:20:08.060 obviously all living separately in their own little i'm not entirely sure how cell cells in the desert

00:20:15.320 yeah but then when when christianity became more more broadly organized around monasteries the lazy monk

00:20:23.000 became a big social problem you know because because monasteries depend on everybody chipping in

00:20:29.000 everybody doing their job everybody contributing to the community and and the one lazy monk could cause a lot

00:20:36.120 lot of resentment and that's you know as is still the case nowadays all right so during the medieval

00:20:42.260 time middle ages exhaustion was seen as a spiritual it's a weakness of the will as we shift into the

00:20:48.680 renaissance though again we see exhaustion changing so how did it change during the renaissance yeah i

00:20:55.480 actually studied a really interesting text by a 15th century humanist called massilio ficino he he wrote

00:21:04.160 a text a text that is called three books on life and ficino was a neoplatonist and was very very

00:21:11.520 interested in in occult theories he was into alchemy and he was into um you know astronomy astrology all of

00:21:21.200 these um slightly more obscure sciences and he profoundly believed in in the sort of microcosm macrocosm

00:21:30.580 and his main cure for exhaustion was really the idea that we need to realign our patterns of behavior

00:21:40.420 with the movements of the planets so he believed that exhaustion in again in the form of melancholia

00:21:47.360 was caused by the planet saturn and that you know saturn really really held sway over the melancholic

00:21:55.300 temperaments and that basically people with a melancholic temperament needed to do quite a lot

00:22:01.400 to to counteract the influence of saturn and he came up with fantastically obscure recipes for for

00:22:08.960 what the melancholics should should do and he also recommended which is one of my favorite cures for

00:22:15.960 exhaustion or thick dancing and or thick dancing is all about realigning your energy with the energy of

00:22:23.020 the planet so he recommended that we we imitate the movement of the planets by moving our body in a

00:22:29.280 certain way so so reading uh ficino is is actually very entertaining nowadays one of the things so it

00:22:35.540 sounds like here instead of seeing as exhaustion as the source being the individual being the source of

00:22:40.420 exhaustion like the planets were it was like an outside source that caused you to be really tired yeah i think

00:22:47.540 that's another you know that's another really interesting factor in the history history of exhaustion where

00:22:52.020 responsibility shifts from inner sources to outer sources you know sometimes they can be

00:22:58.100 environmental like the planets and very often they can be very specific socio-political developments

00:23:04.820 as we will see um later on um so for example in the 19th century when theorists began to talk about

00:23:11.980 nerves weak nerves and nerve force and a lack of nerve force and um and they started to think of

00:23:18.860 exhaustion as basically being caused by a lack of nervous energy a lack of nerve power lack of nerve force

00:23:26.640 and they very very explicitly blamed this lack of nerve force on the modern urban environment and that was

00:23:35.940 you know the the sort of first very clear-cut um reassignment of responsibility to something that is

00:23:42.900 outside of our control you know basically the theories of um the theorists of nervous exhaustion were all

00:23:52.080 saying that we are victims of socio-political developments and technological developments most

00:23:59.880 famous amongst these was of course the american physician george n beard who coined the neurasthenia

00:24:07.020 diagnosis in 1880 so he he invented this new diagnostic cluster neurasthenia which included all sorts of

00:24:16.740 things i mean it's absurdly long and absurdly you know wide ranging and it's no longer in loose in use

00:24:23.300 because it basically included far too many symptoms so it became very kind of baggy as a concept but what

00:24:30.320 is interesting about neurasthenia was that it was very clearly saying that the main cause of nervous

00:24:36.980 exhaustion is to be found in the modern urban environment and the idea was that the modern urban

00:24:43.380 environment assaults the highly sensitive nervous system of modern men and women with an incessant

00:24:49.360 stream of stimuli so you know beard was worried about speed he was worried about noise he was worried

00:24:56.520 about the telegraph he was worried about all sorts of technological developments and how they basically

00:25:03.320 kind of overstimulate our cognitive systems but beard was also very clever because he associated

00:25:10.480 neurasthenia with a whole range of very positive connotations as well because he said only the very

00:25:17.520 sensitive types actually suffer from neurasthenia so everybody of course wants to be sensitive and

00:25:23.480 cultured and civilized and that was one of the reasons for for why neurasthenia became a very

00:25:29.320 very fashionable disease it actually spread like a wildfire everybody wanted to be neurasthenic

00:25:35.380 because being neurasthenic meant you were sensitive you were in touch with your emotions you weren't

00:25:40.720 crude you were highly civilized you were sophisticated and he also said neurasthenia mainly affects captains of

00:25:47.740 industry and brain workers well yeah i think that's interesting because you see that also like going

00:25:55.440 back to aristotle right being a melancholic tired guy well it's a sign of genius the renaissance had

00:26:00.480 that same idea the romantics as well in the the 19th century if you were you know had a depressive

00:26:06.000 outlook on life well it meant you were you're poetic right it became fashionable to do that and you see

00:26:11.280 that also with neurasthenia we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back

00:26:17.200 to the show what's interesting too is not only how we think about exhaustion changes but like the

00:26:22.820 metaphors we use to talk about exhaustion so like in the 19th century you mentioned that people started

00:26:29.560 talking about nerve force or nerve power well like electricity was invented in the 19th century or

00:26:37.360 thereabouts like you know people started having in their homes so that they started using that as a

00:26:42.340 way to explain exhaustion right yeah absolutely and i think you know the metaphors of exhaustion are

00:26:47.440 really really crucial because metaphors really matter especially in the field of medicine because they

00:26:53.120 they really shape the way we imagine what is happening inside us so you know if we imagine our

00:27:01.380 nervous capital as um comparable to a battery for example that has lots of implications i mean the

00:27:08.360 battery the empty battery was a very very popular image that beard used you know also in response to

00:27:14.440 the spread of electricity and related technologies but the empty battery was very very popular back then

00:27:21.300 as a as an image that you know sort of captured what happens if we don't manage our nerve force carefully

00:27:28.360 and of course the idea was that batteries are you know i think they were non-rechargeable back then i'm

00:27:34.780 not entirely sure but you know the idea was that nerve force is is finite it cannot easily be renewed

00:27:41.580 it's a precious resource and if we squander it we will be left with nothing so another very popular

00:27:48.700 metaphor cluster that was used a lot in the 19th century was was revolving around economic imagery so the

00:27:56.200 idea that we have um you know that that we have an account and we have to manage it wisely so we have

00:28:02.440 to manage our nervous energy just as wisely as we would manage our financial assets because if we

00:28:09.020 squander it all at once it's gone and we're bankrupt so you know i think he george beard even uses the

00:28:15.320 the term nervous bankruptcy at some point and he often makes these economic comparisons which again you know

00:28:22.560 implies agency that you know although he blames exhaustion mainly on the modern environment there's

00:28:28.560 always a dimension of agency involved because otherwise if we had no agency we couldn't defend

00:28:33.680 ourselves against exhaustion you know we can't just be victims in this there has to be something we can do

00:28:38.680 about it so he is very much in favor of managing our nervous energy very cautiously very wisely very

00:28:44.800 astutely and other really interesting images that that the medieval theorists used one of my favorites is

00:28:53.220 really the idea of the tepid bowl of milk on which flies settled that is um i think it's from the 11th century if

00:29:04.400 i remember correctly and this is the idea that you know if we let our spiritual essence go sour we will attract

00:29:12.720 demonic and disgusting outside forces and i think it's a very powerful image the tepid bowl of milk on

00:29:20.780 which flies settle and of course other really interesting and important metaphors are related

00:29:26.140 to i mean modern day ones would be related to the mind as a computer and and that has lots of

00:29:32.800 implications as well imagining the mind as a computer is very reductive and i think very worrying because

00:29:40.260 you know it just entails that we can reprogram our our cognitive structures and we can get rid of

00:29:47.260 unwanted data and we can delete and you know reload and we can recharge and reprogram and we can basically

00:29:55.360 get rid of everything we don't like but i think it really doesn't capture the human animal as as a very

00:30:01.580 kind of irrational creature we're not just rational and we can't just be easily reprogrammed you know and

00:30:08.020 we're not robots but i think the idea of um the mind as a computer and that's very popular in in the

00:30:14.500 sort of modern burnout literature is is is quite a dangerous one because it really dismisses everything

00:30:20.220 that makes us human well no yeah i've i think i've seen devices you can buy i don't know if it exists

00:30:26.600 anymore it was out there i've never seen a viral article about it's this little device you kind of stick to

00:30:31.760 your forehead and then it sends like electric pulses into your brain and it can somehow energize

00:30:37.340 you or like make you calm so like it's that idea like oh yeah you can just reprogram your brain like

00:30:43.300 it's some sort of digital device with electrical currents yeah interestingly george m beard the

00:30:49.360 inventor of the neurasthenia diagnosis he used electrotherapy for the exhausted and that was one of

00:30:55.200 his uh you know therapeutic um suggestions like mild electric shocks yeah and so besides the

00:31:02.340 electrotherapy there was also hydrotherapy yeah therapy was another popular you know cure for

00:31:09.460 exhaustion in fact the cures that were proposed for exhaustion are also really interesting in

00:31:13.680 themselves so taking the waters was very very popular in 19th century britain so darwin for example

00:31:20.800 also suffered from exhaustion and he often took the water so he indulged in water cures at numerous

00:31:27.800 times in his life and he was also very cautious about managing his energy so he would always have

00:31:33.280 very rigorous periods of activity and periods of rest periods of activity periods of rest so reading

00:31:39.380 his letters it's very fascinating because he was really extremist about the way he organized his

00:31:45.840 leisure time and his work time for example yeah and then there are you know more more

00:31:50.560 obscure suggestions for for curing exhaustion you know lots of potions lots of strange alchemical

00:31:57.760 mixtures and of course in in the middle ages i think the that was probably the cruelest cure because

00:32:04.800 the cure was just more work more spiritual exercise so you know those who were exhausted by their

00:32:11.840 spiritual duties were just told to focus even harder on their spiritual duties or to work even harder so

00:32:19.600 that was of course a vicious circle so in the late 19th century exhaustion was seen as neurostinia and

00:32:25.840 exhaustion was one of the symptoms of neurostinia and there's a whole bunch of other symptoms that

00:32:29.520 associated with it but then as you notice as you note in the book in the 20th century like neurostinia

00:32:34.800 almost disappeared like after world war one uh what happened and like or did just exhaustion change the

00:32:43.200 way it was described or talked about yeah i think i think what always happens is that you know certain

00:32:49.440 diagnoses they run their course and um new ones emerge i mean we can even see that nowadays you know

00:32:55.600 where the dsm constantly comes up with new diagnosis and gets rid of older ones and so on so there's always

00:33:03.280 an attempt to you know to redesign refashion our diagnostic tools in order to capture what is

00:33:10.800 bothering us in more you know modern more you know accurate terms and i think that is true of

00:33:17.120 exhaustion as well but one of the reasons why neurostinia disappeared from the scene was that i mean also the

00:33:22.400 gender politics of exhaustion are very interesting so neurostinia was associated with women and the rest

00:33:29.040 cure was often proposed for neurostanic women and charlotte perkins gilman wrote a very famous story

00:33:36.640 about that um the yellow wallpaper and then the kind of gender politics of exhaustion changed in that

00:33:42.800 quite a lot of sensitive men began to self-identify as neurostanics quite a lot of artists quite a lot of

00:33:49.440 writers and it's very fashionable to be neurostanic for a long time you know most most of the you know

00:33:57.120 turn of the century writers would would self-identify as neurostanic because it was just en vogue to do

00:34:02.960 so but then there was a shift and neurostinia was beginning to to to be and people felt it was too

00:34:11.680 baggy to lose a diagnosis and it was also associated with shirkedom you know obviously during the second

00:34:19.760 during the first world war and after there was much less tolerance for for you know suffering of the soul

00:34:26.800 but because it all became um very very kind of physically orientated outwards oriented and of

00:34:33.680 course freud had entered the scene by then and freud really shifted the discourse and very dramatically

00:34:40.800 and he came up with some very revolutionary ideas about exhaustion so freud obviously he came up with

00:34:47.600 three core ideas so he did say that it's very exhausting constantly having to repress our desires because

00:34:55.760 we have to do that because we live in you know in a society that depends on individuals repressing

00:35:02.080 their selfish desires but repressing those desires makes us neurotic because you know they have to

00:35:08.240 somehow the forbidden wants out and and it becomes manifest in neuroses for example and it also becomes

00:35:15.600 manifest in sublimation of course but it doesn't always work and then we can end up suffering from

00:35:22.720 from exhaustion as a result but his more interesting theories about exhaustion concerned of course his

00:35:29.440 sort of meta-psychological idea of the death drive so he famously argued that there's a life drive you

00:35:38.880 know that is is responsible for us striving for us wanting to procreate for us wanting to be active and do

00:35:47.200 things and he also said that this drive is countered by its opposite drive the death drive and the death

00:35:53.120 drive wants to return us to a state of passivity a state of inertia an anorganic state it wants to return

00:36:02.960 us to basically a state before individuation before we we became separate before we became you know

00:36:11.680 individuals and he argues that both drives are conservative and they battle against one another

00:36:17.920 which is quite exhausting because you have these conflicting drives that are operative within us

00:36:22.720 and also sometimes the death drive takes over and it and it takes us into a lethargic state where we want to

00:36:29.600 avoid all activity all novelty all challenge where we just want to basically return to a state where nothing

00:36:38.400 disturbs our peace you know where we seek a sort of fake kind of nirvana by avoiding anything that might

00:36:45.040 be upsetting or challenging or or threatening um you know and and you can still say about certain people

00:36:51.840 oh they're very death-driven you know in the sense that they they they have become extremely passive

00:36:58.720 and um averse to to challenges and averse to to to anything that is is associated with life and novelty

00:37:06.320 and of course freud also came up with the idea of conflict inside us um that can eat up all our

00:37:13.360 energy that can use up all of our power in internal battles so he famously sort of theorized the id the ego

00:37:22.080 and the superego as psychological instances and he also argued that they can do battle with one another

00:37:28.960 you know that the id and the ego and the ego and the superego can be in conflict and that takes up a lot

00:37:34.960 of energy energy that you know is then wasted and cannot be invested in into any interactions with

00:37:42.320 the outside world so so this i i think this idea of of internal conflict eating up our energy is also

00:37:48.880 quite interesting and then he also talked about melancholia and the idea that losing a love object

00:37:55.280 can often result in us losing a stable sense of self and it's a very complicated process of

00:38:03.440 substitution but it can happen that we we become so eaten up by loss that this kind of obsession with

00:38:10.480 loss has an effect on our sense of self and when we've lost our sense of self we can we can basically

00:38:17.680 no longer properly interact with the outside world because we have used up our energy in in in

00:38:25.120 psychological conflict operations all right so yeah freud changed the game big time he added to the

00:38:31.600 idea that exhaustion can come from within based on based on all these conflicts and i can see that

00:38:36.880 happening right because like you know freud changed the way we thought about ourselves right or talk about

00:38:42.640 ourselves and i can see people being like yeah i'm just i gotta think i gotta sort out this problem

00:38:48.080 this internal problem they and before freud they would never have thought of it but now that freud says

00:38:52.640 oh it's there and you're like okay maybe it is there this is one more thing i have to think about

00:38:56.640 that makes me tired so we're just adding to it yeah but it's i mean it's you can really see that at

00:39:02.960 work i think in everyday life when you know when people are really preoccupied with their own problems

00:39:10.080 to such an extent that they really cannot give to anybody else or to outside activities i still

00:39:16.560 find it a very convincing narrative personally so let's talk about recent developments in the history

00:39:22.240 of fatigue and exhaustion because it's been controversial in the 80s we start seeing people

00:39:28.160 talking about chronic fatigue syndrome for those who aren't familiar with this like what what is chronic

00:39:33.680 fatigue syndrome like what does it feel like to have chronic fatigue syndrome do we know what causes it

00:39:39.360 etc yeah i mean chronic fatigue syndrome is of the different exhaustion syndromes i discuss in my book

00:39:47.520 it's by far the most controversial one and it is in terms of symptoms it is similar to some of the

00:39:56.160 others similar to neurasthenia similar and there's overlap with um with some of the older ones as well but

00:40:03.760 basically me or chronic fatigue syndrome means that that people who are afflicted by these syndromes suffer

00:40:13.120 from mental and physical fatigue and also post-exertion malaise and the sense of extreme effort that renders

00:40:20.960 many everyday activities impossible and it also entails difficulties with concentrating cognitive tasks and

00:40:27.840 short-term memory and it is a it is a highly controversial diagnosis because there were quite a few

00:40:36.080 people especially in the 80s who were very unsympathetic to people who suffered from cfs or me as it is also

00:40:43.840 known and there are some differences between the two but often people talk about me slash cfs me slash

00:40:50.320 chronic fatigue syndrome and i think what happened in the 80s was that there was a very very

00:40:56.080 unsympathetic reaction in the press people talked about yuppie flu and basically said it was a sham

00:41:03.520 condition and that it was all in the sufferers heads and the problem is that nowadays the the discussion

00:41:11.360 about uh cfs and me is very very polarized and a lot of cf e cfs and me sufferers feel very strongly that

00:41:21.520 there's is a purely biological condition a purely physical condition and then there are some people

00:41:29.040 who argue that there might be a psychological dimension to this illness nobody is saying that

00:41:36.960 this is just in sufferers heads um i think that you know very crude and horrible attitude has become

00:41:43.920 unacceptable but there are some people some psychiatrists and some medical researchers who

00:41:50.480 who say yes there is some physiological cause to that illness but then there may be a psychosomatic or

00:41:58.320 behavioral dimension to recovery from from the physiological um issue now that the problem with cfs and me is

00:42:09.360 that it it has become a very acrimonious debate in that sufferers feel terribly misunderstood and

00:42:16.080 misrepresented by the press in particular but also by certain um medical researchers and they they react

00:42:23.680 very very strongly to any suggestions that there may be a psychosomatic dimension to the recovery process

00:42:32.720 for example or to the illness as such i haven't taken a position on this in my book because

00:42:39.120 i'm not a medical expert and i really couldn't make a judgment on what is the true narrative here

00:42:46.320 i've simply presented the two arguments i presented the viewpoint of a sufferer and i've presented the

00:42:54.000 viewpoint of a psychiatrist who argues that there's a behavioral and psychological dimension to the

00:43:00.560 illness although this psychiatrist also never ever says that it's all in sufferers heads however i've been

00:43:08.640 attacked uh horribly for for my chapter on cfs and me by by some sufferers who who hated when you

00:43:18.000 even mention the other viewpoint as i said i haven't actually made a judgment call how could i i think i

00:43:25.440 think it is likely that there might be a biological cause for me and cfs that hasn't yet been found i very

00:43:33.440 much hope that is the case because that would mean that you know sufferers um could be cured once that

00:43:40.080 and cause can be identified at the same time i think it's it's not in any way shameful to say that there is

00:43:48.160 some psychological dimension to some of our conditions i mean i would always readily admit that that my health

00:43:55.920 is affected by my psychological state of mind you know when i'm stressed and anxious my immune system

00:44:02.880 is lower and i'm i'm more likely to get ill so i don't think it's it's a horrible thing to say that

00:44:10.560 some of our illnesses may have a psychological dimension you know not as an exclusive um cause but as

00:44:18.960 as a contributing factor but i think because me and cfs patients have been treated so horribly by the

00:44:25.520 press the the debate has become very very polarized yeah i think what it also does too is it it bring

00:44:33.440 it shows very acutely that tension between physiological and psychological so if it's physiological

00:44:39.760 we tend to think we we don't blame people as much if it's psychological we think well just get it

00:44:46.960 together you're responsible for that but maybe that's the the not we shouldn't have that approach

00:44:51.440 even to psychological issues yeah of course not you know and i think i find it surprising because you

00:44:56.400 know people who suffer from depression they would not you know they would not be stigmatized i mean

00:45:02.880 they still are in certain um you know in certain unfortunate scenarios there is still a stigma that comes with

00:45:10.080 mental health but there shouldn't be of course and you know and depression also has some biological

00:45:16.640 causes and i think it's it's in most cases um we have a both end scenario not a neither nor or either

00:45:24.480 or scenario so chronic fatigue syndrome the latest development in one of the latest developments in

00:45:30.320 how we experience exhaustion describe it but let's talk about the thing that got you thinking about this

00:45:36.320 was all those articles that were going on in germany about burnout because if you live in america too

00:45:41.600 we see those articles as well that burnout is on the rise so let's first talk about how do we when we

00:45:48.160 talk about burnout what are we describing how is it different from exhaustion in the past is it the

00:45:52.960 same can you kind of walk us through that yeah so they burnout is the latest exhaustion um syndrome

00:46:00.720 and burnout is really very very popular topic of conversation in especially in the non-anglo-american

00:46:09.520 countries i don't know whether a lot of people talk about burnout in in the us but i would say in

00:46:15.280 in the uk the discussion tends to revolve around stress which is much more about personal resilience and

00:46:24.240 personal work life balance management but burnout in the way it is discussed in germany for example

00:46:31.440 and also in some of the scandinavian countries has a dimension that we haven't seen so far and that is

00:46:37.520 it it includes social structures it includes the idea of working environments that can make us ill

00:46:46.240 and that's something quite new in the discussion so burnout is has been defined as basically a a reaction

00:46:56.160 to to too much work stress and the idea is that burnout entails entails three components and that is

00:47:07.200 exhaustion that is an inability to perform one's job and it is also a cynical attitude towards the

00:47:15.840 people with whom one works and i think that last dimension has to be explained because originally

00:47:21.680 the burnout diagnosis emerged in the 1970s in america in the context of care workers so

00:47:29.600 the idea was really that people who are in care in the caring profession so teachers social workers

00:47:36.800 nurses and so on tend to at some point become very disillusioned because they invest so much emotional

00:47:43.600 energy in their work and then often they don't get enough back or else they work in a in an environment

00:47:50.960 that you know really exploits them and that means that they cannot continue to give quite that much

00:47:57.360 emotional energy and and then in the 1980s and 90s the diagnosis of burnout became democratized again

00:48:06.640 and expanded to encompass all kinds of work and ultimately burnout is is a chronic state of stress

00:48:14.720 but it is more specific than depression in that it relates particularly and very specifically to one's

00:48:21.520 working environment now a lot of people are happier to diagnose self-diagnose as burned out rather than

00:48:29.120 depressed because depression is still very clearly a mental health issue whilst burnout can be actually

00:48:36.160 turned into something positive you know like neurasthenia in its early days because you can only burn out

00:48:44.320 if you give too much if you work too hard and working too hard is of course something that is validated in

00:48:51.200 our society that has very very positive connotations so in a way you you will find that um people you know top

00:49:00.000 managers and so on might be quite happy to self-diagnose as burned out because in a way it's almost a badge of

00:49:07.600 honor you have worked so hard you've given so much you've given so much more than you actually have that you now

00:49:14.480 need to rest so that you now have to earn your you know your your right to to rest and to take a break

00:49:21.440 so there we go again exhaustion being a status symbol again what i think is interesting too

00:49:28.880 is you see throughout human history with how we deal with exhaustion like the cures like they're

00:49:33.920 pretty much the same like even today when we say i'm tired i'm not talking about you know chronic

00:49:38.720 fatigue syndrome but just say you're just burnt out you're feeling exhausted or you're stressed out

00:49:42.800 like what we do we do like okay eat better food get more sleep we might we even have we do

00:49:48.160 things like hydra that people are taking cold showers or they're doing saunas or what are those

00:49:54.240 pods the um where you sit in and you the float tanks yeah yeah right or mindfulness i'm gonna meditate

00:50:02.160 it's i mean it's different but it is the same thing that you know galen was doing basically 2000 years ago

00:50:08.480 absolutely it's all about restoring some kind of balance you know but i think what is also really

00:50:14.640 interesting is that burnout can be read in two ways and i find that in germany and in some

00:50:20.480 scandinavian countries it has this it has a more overtly political dimension because basically people

00:50:28.720 expect the state to step in and to protect workers against hostile working environments so so there's an

00:50:36.240 expectation that that somehow um legislation will be changed in order to avoid these kind of epidemics of

00:50:44.320 burnout amongst um the workforce and so so there is a very kind of specifically

00:50:50.800 political spin to the burnout argument as well in the in sociological arguments uh in particular

00:50:57.760 you know which is which concern the um you know the the terrible neoliberal working environment in which

00:51:04.480 we are expected to give permanently in which we are expected to you know engage with our full being emotionally

00:51:11.920 cognitively um creatively um creatively and of course the boundaries between between work and leisure are

00:51:19.280 constantly being eroded and we have to be reachable you know 24 7 and so on so so in in germany for

00:51:27.760 example quite a lot of companies have put into place measures to prevent staff burnout for example you know

00:51:35.200 saying it's it's not possible to send work emails after 7 p.m so you know some companies have even

00:51:42.800 manipulated their their company emails accounts to such an extent that you cannot send after our emails

00:51:49.360 you cannot send or receive them or if you go on holidays your email your emails will bounce back so

00:51:56.160 that you can actually really properly relax on holidays and you won't come back to a mountain of unanswered

00:52:02.160 email so for example my brother works at mercedes and and they have this wonderful you know bounce

00:52:07.840 back holiday email system and operation and you know everyone who's on holiday they they basically

00:52:14.080 send an automatic message that says i'm on holiday if your concern is still of importance after

00:52:19.760 two weeks please get back to me but everything bounces back and so that's just one example of how

00:52:26.400 basically it brings us back to the question of responsibility you know and in a lot of burnout

00:52:31.760 discussions responsibility is is moved away from the individual and is is basically placed in the

00:52:38.560 court of the state and and people or the company for which one works so there is a sort of responsibility

00:52:44.240 of care for for the workers uh you know mental health and work life balance i find that in in

00:52:51.840 anglo-american uh discussions the focus is much more on personal resilience which which is all about

00:52:58.240 personal responsibility you know if you're too stressed if you get exhausted at work it's your

00:53:03.360 fault because you allow yourself to get so stressed so you need to work on your own resilience so you need

00:53:09.600 to eat more greens you need to meditate you need to do yoga it's all up to you so i find that very

00:53:15.840 interesting the kind of responsibility question that is attached to to the different cures right and so

00:53:22.240 instead of saying maybe i shouldn't get email after seven o'clock americans are like well i just need

00:53:28.080 to meditate so i can handle those emails after seven o'clock i mean i mean it's interesting because

00:53:32.480 you see you do see companies in america instant you know instituting these meditation programs you know

00:53:37.440 nap rooms and we had a guest on the podcast talk about like the happiness industry where he says yeah i

00:53:43.040 mean it looks like they're helping you out and but like really it's helping their bottom line right

00:53:49.200 because they want you to be well rested and not stressed out because that means you'll be more

00:53:54.560 productive for them it's all about enhancing productivity you know not really a concern about

00:54:00.640 well-being it's about you know we want you to be able to keep on working as long as you can so if

00:54:07.680 you got to take a 20 minute nap we'll we're okay with that so what do you think is the big takeaway

00:54:12.880 from this research project is like is exhaustion just some part of the human existence that we just

00:54:19.040 have to we have to deal with i i absolutely think it is i think exhaustion is is a you know is a

00:54:26.560 wonderful sort of both end phenomenon in that it's timeless and ubiquitous but it always puts on new

00:54:34.080 clothes so it's it's like an ancient beast that keeps appearing in new outfits and i would say it hooks

00:54:41.280 into you know really basic psychological anxieties about um illness the waning of our energy when we

00:54:51.360 die and when we when we grow old and ultimately it's about a fear of death you know losing energy is

00:54:58.160 associated with a loss of control a loss of our health a loss of our type of our powers and you know

00:55:04.560 we only become concerned about exhaustion when we do feel that our energies are on the wane

00:55:09.680 and so it's about you know illness and the process of aging and fear of death and but at the same time

00:55:17.440 but what i find so fascinating about exhaustion theories is that every age maps its own discontents

00:55:24.640 onto the condition so every age really projects whatever whatever it wants to onto this sort of basic

00:55:32.400 template and every age kind of reassigns responsibility and rethinks the you know mind

00:55:39.600 body social nexus in a very unique and special way and i i have also found that exhaustion is of

00:55:45.760 exhaustion theories are often a form of cultural criticism so people will will critique social

00:55:53.200 developments with which they disagree so for example in the burnout debates you have a lot of people

00:55:58.400 you know complaining about neoliberal techno capitalist developments that that they don't like and they

00:56:06.160 say these are the cause of our exhaustion or in the 19th century you have people saying you know women

00:56:11.840 becoming emancipated and joining the workforce is terrible and it makes them exhausted so exhaustion

00:56:18.240 theories are often used as a sort of cultural weapon you know they're weaponized in the sense that they

00:56:24.080 um underpin very specific ideological agendas well anna this has been a great conversation

00:56:30.720 thanks for coming on thank you very much for having me my guest today was anna schaffner she's

00:56:34.560 the author of the book exhaustion it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can

00:56:38.560 also check out our show notes at aom.is exhaustion find links to resources ring delve deeper into this topic

00:56:54.080 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website artofmanliness.com

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#476： Are Modern People the Most Exhausted in History？

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