The Art of Manliness - Auto-Exploitation, Positive Violence, and the Palliative Society： A Modern Philosopher’s Ideas for Making Sense of the Present Age

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

00:00:11.120 feelings of burnout and boredom have become prevalent in modern life to understand the

00:00:16.020 roots of and solutions to these issues we can turn to both ancient philosophers and contemporary

00:00:20.180 thinkers among the latter is korean german philosopher byong chul han whose thought-provoking

00:00:25.320 analyses are gaining increasing recognition if you're not yet familiar with han's philosophy

00:00:29.600 steven nepper the professor at the virginia military institute and the co-author of a new

00:00:33.780 critical introduction to this modern philosopher's work will take us on a tour of some of han's key

00:00:38.360 ideas in the first part of our conversation steven unpacks han's concept of the burnout society

00:00:43.340 and why so many of us feel tired from participating in what he calls auto exploitation and positive

00:00:48.160 violence we then discuss how our burnout society is also a palliative society that tries to avoid

00:00:52.720 suffering at all costs and how our obsession with health has turned us into a modern version of

00:00:56.900 nietzsche's last man we end our discussion with some of han's ideas for resisting the pitfalls

00:01:01.140 of modernity including embracing ritual contemplation and an openness to the mystery of others after the

00:01:07.580 show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash han

00:01:10.280 all right steven nepper welcome to the show thanks for having me it's honored to be here so you co-authored

00:01:30.360 a book about a modern philosopher that i've been seeing more and more of in my my readings this guy

00:01:37.380 named byung choo han he's a german korean philosopher for those who aren't familiar with

00:01:42.580 this guy who is he and why am i seeing him more and more in my philosophical reading yeah he is popping

00:01:48.880 up everywhere today on the internet on social media so byung choo han he is a korean german philosopher as

00:01:56.900 you said he was born in seoul korea he's living i think that's important to point out he's continuing to

00:02:02.920 write all the time so he's very much a thinker on the move he's born in seoul korea as a younger man

00:02:08.420 he studies metallurgy and is really into engineering kind of material science but as a young man studying

00:02:16.300 those he becomes more and more interested in philosophy and philosophical questions in literature

00:02:22.040 so he travels to germany to study abroad and he lets his parents under the impression that he's going

00:02:29.220 to continue his material science studies in germany but he makes this big move into studying

00:02:35.400 theology literature and especially philosophy at the graduate level so i think that's just kind of

00:02:41.260 a fascinating thing in and of itself about 15 years ago now he had this breakthrough book that is really

00:02:49.300 his turn to more topical problems problems of the day and that book was called the burnout society

00:02:55.660 and it was a big hit in germany but it also was you know relatively quickly translated into a whole

00:03:01.680 bunch of other languages and byung choo han some of your listeners may be familiar with matthew crawford

00:03:08.340 who wrote books like shop classes soul craft and they might be familiar with arguments about how more and

00:03:15.140 more we live in a society where there's this war for our attention where our attention is commodified

00:03:21.120 and you'll be in the line at the service station and you get up there to pump your gas and suddenly

00:03:28.120 the gas pump starts talking to you and giving you ads or even above the urinal there might be ads

00:03:32.980 so our attention is getting pulled more and more in by these digital technologies and certainly all of

00:03:40.000 those kind of more real world examples like the gas pump in the urinal pale beside the smartphone which

00:03:45.720 is algorithmically tailored to harvest our attention so han is a really sharp critic of those kind of

00:03:53.360 dynamics and i think that's a big part of the appeal but he really zooms into on the ways in which

00:03:58.420 while acknowledging that all these things are designed to catch us we also kind of catch ourselves

00:04:03.140 we go along with it we are very easily encouraged into binge watching or going deeper into email

00:04:11.420 and he talks about how we auto exploit and i think that's what's really captured people's mind because

00:04:17.240 i think a lot of people can recognize that in themselves i know i can the ways in which we don't

00:04:22.200 have to be checking work email but we do the way in which we have a down moment and we pull out that

00:04:26.760 smartphone i think he's really an astute critic of that okay so i hope we can talk more about these

00:04:33.080 ideas these criticisms he has of modern life in depth and yeah i'm sure our listeners are familiar

00:04:37.920 with matthew crawford we've had on the podcast a few times talk about shop classes soul craft the

00:04:41.920 world beyond your head so i think this will be right up their alley i'm curious you're a professor

00:04:46.900 at the virginia military institute so how did a professor at the virginia military institute where

00:04:53.180 they do drum outs take an interest in this korean german philosopher yeah so i love vmi i love working

00:05:00.940 with cadets as you might expect they're very ethically serious and they're very disciplined and they live

00:05:07.180 in a system that encourages discipline and virtue but cadets are not immune from some of these same

00:05:14.480 dynamics they too struggle with screen addiction they too struggle with being able to focus their

00:05:20.900 attention and you know a subset of cadets come to a place like this because they want that structure

00:05:26.320 they know they need it to succeed so in one ways i think that working at vmi gives me some insight into

00:05:32.720 some of the ways we can deal with these things because vmi for instance during their freshman year

00:05:37.260 what's called the rat year here cadets aren't allowed to use their cell phones but on the flip side

00:05:42.380 i think just like if i were teaching anywhere i can see how my students are struggling with some of these

00:05:47.480 dynamics okay let's dig into han and his philosophy kind of bigger picture how would you describe

00:05:53.020 his approach to philosophy like what school of philosophy would you put him in is he a

00:05:57.300 aristotelian an existentialist what's han's philosophy how would you describe it yeah there's

00:06:03.500 lots of different ways i could answer that question and he draws on some very different

00:06:07.060 sets of philosophical resources including zen buddhism including christian theology at times

00:06:12.900 but i think i would answer that question for right now and the way that i i think really focuses

00:06:18.740 why he resonates so much with people is that he comes out of this tradition especially in german

00:06:23.380 philosophy that's very techno skeptical uh sort of earlier critiques even before the digital age

00:06:29.560 that are concerned about instrumental reason about how we tend to approach the world and other people

00:06:35.000 as things as objects as machines how there's that reductionism involved in that how bureaucracy and

00:06:41.900 this technical reason rationalize our lives and organize it but then also might seem like they're

00:06:46.520 squeezing out room for freedom so some figures here you might think of on the left would be someone

00:06:51.600 like theodore adorno and on the right would be someone like martin heidegger but also german catholic

00:06:56.680 thinkers like romano gordini or joseph peeper and han draws on all these thinkers but more recently

00:07:02.800 you know there's this turn toward thinking especially about technology and how it shapes the world so someone

00:07:10.660 like heidegger is going to talk about how technology inframes the world it determines how we see the world

00:07:17.700 in each other itself there's something about the way the technology restructures our world and that

00:07:22.900 gets taken up in media theory by people like marshall mcluhan outside of germany and a lot of other media

00:07:29.180 theorists that han is in dialogue with who are looking at the ways in which yeah technology isn't just

00:07:36.240 sort of this passive transmitter of information or this tool that we use technology and especially

00:07:43.340 communication technologies shape how we see the world often in ways that we're not aware of

00:07:48.980 and i think we've all seen that with the digital think about how the experience of smartphones has

00:07:55.500 reshaped how we experience the world how we experience time so he's certainly a philosopher that

00:08:02.020 picks up those concerns and takes them in very interesting and precise ways into our digital present day

00:08:11.040 okay so yeah he's kind of taking a turn towards media theory and yeah he does talk about marshall

00:08:15.340 mcluhan i'm sure people have heard that phrase the medium is the message exactly yeah the idea is

00:08:21.140 there that the tools that we use for media consumption or communication it shapes the way we think i did an

00:08:27.900 article about this on our sub stack called dying breed about nietzsche and the typewriter yeah and

00:08:34.120 actually there was a famous german media theorist that wrote about this talking about how you know nietzsche went

00:08:40.540 blind and once he went blind he had to start using a typewriter and this guy talks about how his

00:08:45.860 writing style changed once he went from writing out by hand to writing with the typewriters writing

00:08:52.040 became punchier became more aphoristic more bombastic and so yeah the same sort of thing happens i'm sure

00:08:58.300 people have noticed how their emails have changed since they started communicating primarily via email

00:09:03.880 i remember when i wrote handwritten letters it kind of flowed and was more stream of conscious and it

00:09:09.640 was long sentences and now with email the medium of email it's got to be short punchy into the point

00:09:15.180 because that's how you do email yeah and even text messaging i think has refigured how we do email

00:09:21.380 but you might think too about something like how we've had this move that's ongoing from text to

00:09:27.020 video and then from video to short videos like in google now you can search for short videos

00:09:32.460 and there's lots of research that's emerging about what that's done to our attention span you know

00:09:37.260 how tiktok kind of rewires our brain and i think that's a great example of this dynamic people aren't

00:09:43.420 aware of how this technology is reshaping how they experience the world but it's doing it and

00:09:49.500 han's part of that tradition that's trying to make that explicit for us okay so han he is trying to

00:09:54.680 figure out why modern life can feel just weird overwhelming boring sometimes you just feel like

00:10:01.720 you're in this rat race and you can't get out of it but it feels fast so let's dig into this more

00:10:06.020 because i think everyone's listening to that has probably experienced that let's talk about that

00:10:09.560 book you'd mentioned that was his breakout book the burnout society what is his central diagnosis

00:10:15.820 of modern life in that work yeah so he emphasizes in the burnout society that when it comes to

00:10:25.120 feeling burnout which is this new phenomenon that many many people feel burnout even though if you look

00:10:30.640 at statistics at least in the developed world we have more quote unquote free time than any other

00:10:35.880 generation that came before us but we often have this feeling of being run ragged of being burnt out

00:10:41.020 and he ascribes it to what he calls this achievement culture where we have this sense of un open-ended

00:10:49.120 possibility there are all these things we could do so therefore we try to do as many of them as we can

00:10:55.860 and we get hooked on these little doses of dopamine on these little often quantified metrics of

00:11:04.740 achievement so this might play out in social media where you're looking for a certain number of

00:11:10.120 friends or a certain number of likes you post something and then you wait for the notifications

00:11:14.160 to roll in and you get your little hit but quickly it diminishes and you feel like you need to post

00:11:18.620 something else and it goes on and on and on and before you know it how much time have you spent

00:11:23.540 in that sort of strange little dynamic it might play out in sort of being a workaholic at the office

00:11:31.300 where you're checking your email even when your boss doesn't expect you to you're answering emails

00:11:36.480 you're impatient when other people aren't answering emails outside the usual business hours it could play

00:11:42.380 out even at the gym he says where you become super fixated on numbers and on sort of micromanaging

00:11:49.880 your achievement there so he sees it playing out in all these different areas and i think it's

00:11:56.740 particularly interesting how he talks about how it plays out not just in those meridocratic spaces

00:12:01.320 like being a super high achiever at work but it infiltrates our entertainment so you feel like

00:12:09.000 you're just sitting down to watch a video you know to relax at evening and you end up absolutely

00:12:14.820 vegging out on the couch and autoplay binging half a series in one night this is a pretty common

00:12:20.860 experience now and certainly the technology itself facilitates it with autoplay but he sees it too as

00:12:28.480 as this sense of well i you know we we could watch just this next one it's all there to stream right

00:12:33.460 now and so we end up doing it so there's a way in which in pursuing more and more and more we burn

00:12:39.580 ourselves out and in all this pursuit of more and more and more what's missing is a sense of

00:12:44.560 okay what's a good healthy balanced life looks like what is a good sense of limits when it comes

00:12:50.880 to these things the open-ended injunction to achieve doesn't give us any places to rest doesn't give us a

00:12:58.080 sense of when we've accomplished something doesn't give us this robust telos to pursue and of course who

00:13:04.920 benefits from this well certainly advertisers do right on the internet clicks are money attention

00:13:10.460 is money but he's very astute about how we have this what he calls auto exploitation yeah let's talk

00:13:17.520 about that so auto exploitation or sometimes it's translated self-exploitation yeah then he talks about

00:13:22.820 this idea of positive violence i think they're kind of connected what does he mean by self-exploitation

00:13:28.640 and positive violence and how does that connect with this idea of the achievement society

00:13:32.780 yeah what he means by positive violence and that's a strange little term in some ways

00:13:37.700 so negative violence would be coercion by outside forces right someone forcing you to do something

00:13:42.920 someone threatening you so that you do something check your email at work uh at these hours or you'll

00:13:48.060 be fired right that would be kind of a negative pressure han would say that positive violence is stuff

00:13:54.440 that we do to ourselves so it's when we in the pursuit of achievement we just go and go and go and go and go

00:14:01.280 that's what he means by positive violence and he sees this move happening with kind of the dawn of

00:14:07.400 the digital age from what he calls a disciplinary society that's about rules and injunctions and

00:14:14.560 negative discipline he sees that giving way in a lot of senses to this positive exploitation more and

00:14:22.520 more instead of telling us what not to do powers that be economic powers political powers are going to

00:14:28.940 encourage us to do more and often it's framed as this is good for you why wouldn't you want to do

00:14:35.420 more but of course this just serves some institutions some companies really really well but it can have a

00:14:44.160 big toll on society and on individuals in the society that suffer burnout fragmentation feelings of

00:14:51.300 isolation all these things that can come as negative consequences of the achievement society according to han

00:14:57.400 okay this actually reminds me of this idea of positive violence and self-exploitation and

00:15:03.940 achievement society and how we're doing this to ourselves you know trying to improve ourselves

00:15:08.940 because we feel like we should because we can there's those are potentials that we can pursue

00:15:12.780 but then they can be used by other people or other businesses or you know governments for their own

00:15:20.580 ends we did a podcast a really long time ago about the happiness industry about these consultants that

00:15:26.100 come into companies and say hey we're gonna develop a wellness program for your employees where we're

00:15:31.880 gonna have meditation sessions and you can have a nap room and it sounds like oh it's great it's for

00:15:37.260 the employees it'll improve morale but really it's like well we want to do that so we can get more out

00:15:41.820 of our employees yeah precisely and in the book the critical introduction that i co-authored we talk about

00:15:47.800 office space right and if you remember that movie great movie with with jennifer aniston's character

00:15:52.220 where she works at this restaurant where they have to wear these flare like these buttons all over 1.00

00:15:57.140 their uniform and be really bubbly and excited as they go about their job and her manager at one point

00:16:02.980 says to her you know you're only wearing the minimum allowed amount of flare don't you want to wear more

00:16:08.200 don't you want to wear more and it's pitched as you know why wouldn't you want to do this but it's so

00:16:13.380 clearly kind of degrading and coercive underneath the surface so that's maybe an extreme example

00:16:18.940 but i think it's a pretty good example of something that was already going on way back

00:16:23.960 when office space was produced but i think it's become much more prevalent in the time since then

00:16:28.860 yeah because of the digital technologies you see social media influencers like hey i'm living my best

00:16:34.520 life and here's what i do here's the routine i follow to live my best life and you can do this too

00:16:39.720 and it's like man that's a lot to do when i've got a job and kids and other responsibilities but

00:16:47.100 you try to do it because you're living in that achievement society yeah and i think that one

00:16:51.580 thing i would like to specify and i wish that han would do more of this in his own writing but i don't

00:16:56.820 think that the problem at least from my view maybe he would disagree with this i don't think the problem

00:17:01.120 is wanting to have a set of disciplines that pursue a goal you know like fitness working out or trying

00:17:10.560 to learn learn something new i mean all these can be good things but what makes them pernicious

00:17:16.120 in han's view is when you don't have this ideal that you're that you're aiming at which will sort

00:17:21.920 of let you know when you've got there you don't have this sense of direction you don't have this

00:17:26.480 sense that you're aiming at flourishing you are just sort of going from hit to hit to hit on these

00:17:32.280 mini achievement rubrics and you know what gets lost is like this rich notion of flourishing or this

00:17:39.060 balanced life so i mean i think that's what art of manliness is really good about certainly you know

00:17:44.020 you give people fitness tips and you give people time management tips but again and again you come

00:17:49.200 back to this robust notion of what flourishing should look like and i think that if you take

00:17:53.580 that seriously that actually counteracts the achievement society yeah maybe you can put it this

00:17:59.940 way in the achievement society we tend to treat means as ends because we don't have an ultimate end

00:18:06.180 really i think that's a fantastic way of putting it yeah yeah i've seen this in my own life i mean

00:18:12.340 perfect example i've talked about this before on the podcast and in my writing you know i was a

00:18:16.480 power lifter for a while really got into it and i was always chasing the next pr and it was fine for

00:18:23.660 a while but then a couple years ago you know i was getting to the point where in order to increase the

00:18:28.500 weight on the bar i was just having to train harder and harder and it was just you know just causing a

00:18:33.740 lot of stress physical it beat me down and i got to the point like i can't do this anymore this is no

00:18:39.340 longer enjoyable so i still train but i'm not chasing numbers i'm just training so i just feel

00:18:44.820 good and because i enjoy it yeah and one thing that han emphasizes elsewhere in his works i mean so far

00:18:50.740 we've talked about his diagnosis of our society's problems but his books are kind of split between

00:18:56.780 those more diagnostic works and works where he's recommending some practices that will help counter

00:19:04.100 this and he's written a lot about ritual and the importance of ritual ritual trains our attention

00:19:09.440 it allows our attention to be more robust it gives time a shape and you think about how traditional

00:19:14.140 practices of exercise you know we might think about like say martial arts how there's this ritualistic

00:19:20.300 dimension to it and this communal dimension to it and i think that's the antidote right that's not part

00:19:26.360 of the problem but there is this tendency for achievement society if we use han's terms to take even good

00:19:33.660 things and kind of twist them away from substantive ends to means means means means means or many many

00:19:42.780 goals that don't provide sort of lasting satisfaction or a sense of closure or pacing but you just chase

00:19:51.740 one after another after another an example i just thought of as you're mentioning that we where we take

00:19:55.900 something that we maybe enjoyed for the thing itself and then turn it into achievement society thing

00:20:01.580 like a hobby you see this happen all the time where someone has this hobby that they're really

00:20:06.240 passionate about and then they start sharing it on social media because they're just they love it but

00:20:11.680 then it turns into a business for them and then their hobby becomes this means to gain influence and

00:20:20.320 money and it kind of kills the joy of the hobby yeah i think that's spot on and we might think about

00:20:25.660 other things too so han recommends contemplative practices as something that are especially

00:20:31.560 important in our distracted attention divided present day but you know you think about how like a certain

00:20:38.600 practice of something like yoga or or even daily prayer can be just another thing on the to-do list

00:20:44.860 that you're using as like a band-aid to to sort of manage the worst feelings of being burnt out or stressed

00:20:50.900 or to allow you to just squeeze out a little more achievement and that's not sort of the

00:20:55.680 transformative practice that han's recommending to really counteract this achievement society but it

00:21:00.960 can be sort of co-opted as as part of the regimen right something there's this great phrase that han

00:21:06.680 has i think it's in the burnout society he says that people today are tired from not being able to be

00:21:14.720 themselves what does he mean by that how does the achievement society contribute to that tiredness

00:21:20.180 yeah i think that there's many ways you could approach that but i think that han has had this

00:21:26.400 this qualm about present-day society and the achievement society but he also sees some tendencies

00:21:32.080 towards this in western philosophy and western society for a long time he thinks that there's

00:21:36.920 often this unconscious kind of egotism to it where you're focused on being the best you and you know

00:21:44.020 for a lot of people to even question that just sounds insane right this is the mantra by which they live

00:21:49.600 and by which they exhort others but one of the dangers with that is that you you never really know like

00:21:55.440 when you've reached prime you and also often by sort of being so focused on you you don't open

00:22:02.420 yourself up to other people or to the world or to great works of art or literature or ideas you know

00:22:09.080 everything's about self-maximization or it's about that next little bit of achievement and not only is

00:22:17.400 that really bad ethically right because we need to be attentive to others uh han doesn't quote as far

00:22:23.380 as i know iris murdoch the great british novelist and philosopher but he would agree with her that in

00:22:29.700 some ways ethics begins with attention right we got to be able to sort of give people our attention in

00:22:34.580 order to treat them well so there's this ethical downside but there's also this paradox in which the

00:22:39.720 achievement society it seems like you're doing this all for your own benefit but it feels so thin and

00:22:44.460 you feel like you're burning out whereas really if you open yourself up to others and you have

00:22:48.820 substantive relationships with other people or if you pursue kind of a disciplined practice that gives

00:22:54.840 your life shape or you know religious practice those things open up a depth of meaning and a depth of

00:23:02.300 satisfaction but you only can access those if you let go of the ego if you die like the ego if you make

00:23:09.780 yourself receptive to them when you get out of the way then meaning can be discovered yeah when i read

00:23:15.700 that phrase tired from not being able to be themselves made me think of kierkegaard and his

00:23:19.600 notion of despair yeah and he had this idea that we have this idea of ourself as it should be and i think

00:23:27.020 he talks about someone who's really ambitious and it's either you got to be caesar or nothing yeah so

00:23:33.240 it's like if you can't be caesar then it's just you're worthless and i think han would agree with that we

00:23:38.200 have this idea in our modern world like we got to be the absolute best and if we can't do that we're

00:23:43.220 worthless and then we just fall into this funk and we're depressed and yet han i think he argues in the

00:23:48.720 burnout society a lot of the depression that we see in the modern world yes he would agree that maybe

00:23:54.360 there's some biological component some people are just depressed because of something you know

00:23:59.020 biological going on in themselves but he argues that a lot of depression people just feeling down

00:24:04.080 and just in a funk it's because we are striving so hard to be this awesome thing that we think we

00:24:11.220 should be because the achievement society tells us we need to be and we're not reaching that even

00:24:15.660 though we're trying really hard we just get burnt out and we're just like okay i'm just going to give

00:24:18.940 up yeah i think that's exactly right and my co-author rob wiley he's a great kierkegaard scholar and i

00:24:25.620 think part of what drew him to han is that even though han doesn't quote kierkegaard that much

00:24:30.140 there's a lot of shared sensibility and i think one of the things is this notion of perhaps the

00:24:36.000 most dangerous kind of despair is the despair that you're not aware of you're not aware you're in it

00:24:40.520 and i think he sees that as plaguing a lot of us that are caught up in this achievement society

00:24:47.080 so we mentioned that technology plays a major role in han's critique of modern life

00:24:52.080 how does he see digital technology especially smartphones and social media contributing to the

00:24:58.380 burnout society yeah that's a great question and my other co-author ethan stoneman this is really his

00:25:05.100 wheelhouse and one of the things that he points out is that really han doesn't turn to engaging 0.88

00:25:11.620 digital technology fully until after the burnout society that's when you see him start referencing

00:25:17.400 thinkers like marshall mccluhan that's when you see him really giving attention to how smartphones

00:25:21.840 have reshaped our experience of the world so i think the burnout society is still a great place to start

00:25:27.100 with han but if you're interested in the technology you want to look at some of those later works where

00:25:31.260 he really goes in depth on how technology is feeding into this achievement society mentality but even in

00:25:38.140 the burnout society he's already talking about how the smartphone can be kind of like a a portable a

00:25:43.320 mobile labor camp where we are just always pulling it out in any down moment and clicking clicking

00:25:50.500 i think too on social media one of the things that he is insightful about is that there's this drive to

00:25:58.160 make yourself transparent on it to sort of share everything about your life everything that's going

00:26:03.260 on and certainly that's really good for marketers because behind the scenes they're creating intricate

00:26:10.100 profiles for each user that they can then sell to other companies but also it accumulatively it creates

00:26:17.300 the sense that humans are really these thin things that an online profile captures who we are as a

00:26:23.440 person and sort of the depth and mystery of the individual gets lost you might think about something

00:26:28.360 like dating apps which you know i know lots of people that have you know met the love of life on

00:26:33.220 these so i'm not trying to sort of just categorically dismiss them but there's this real danger with them

00:26:38.500 that you think that if you match with some preferences online that when you meet the person that you

00:26:44.200 already know them right or that you know there's a compatibility there right you can lose track of

00:26:48.560 that mystery of the other person and of course too you know when we create online personas we can

00:26:54.700 either be consciously or unconsciously performing a persona that's not really us so han worries about

00:27:00.080 how it creates this thinned out version of self and other and you know he's a big proponent of

00:27:06.000 recovering real world relationships real world friendships where you can't just sort of ghost each other

00:27:10.960 if you don't like how the conversation's going or where you might have to dwell in silence for a few

00:27:17.420 moments when you're sitting together at the restaurant and where there might be this real

00:27:22.480 tension right where the other person might call you out or you might sort of need to stick with each

00:27:26.620 other through hard times all of these he thinks awaken us to a richer sense of ourselves and others

00:27:34.340 as having this unfathomable dimension of otherness or mystery he thinks we hunger for that yeah i do

00:27:41.640 too for sure yeah han's critique about transparency i thought was really interesting because yeah you see

00:27:46.920 this ethos particularly online and social media where you got to be transparent so yeah it benefits

00:27:52.340 the social media companies they get more information about you they can sell ads to you but also you see

00:27:57.380 this ethos from the people themselves taking part in social media there's this idea that if you have a

00:28:03.360 following like your followers demand transparency from you you got to let them know everything about

00:28:08.720 you like what are your thoughts about this issue and tell me about your family life and your problems

00:28:13.740 and you get rewarded if you reveal things about yourself oh thanks for being real man you're just so

00:28:19.440 authentic and kicker guard makes this argument too in the present age he makes this comment how people

00:28:27.840 he was writing in the 1800s and he was writing about how people would talk about their personal lives

00:28:33.300 very freely in the public like in newspapers and essays and things like that but then when they were

00:28:39.440 actually with people face to face they wouldn't reveal those things like they would just suddenly

00:28:44.260 become very reticent and they wouldn't talk about those deep personal things but they had no problem

00:28:49.460 sharing it with the mass audience and kicker guard said somehow that that hurts being a self like you can't

00:28:55.480 become a self and an individual unless you have he calls it a sanctum sanctorum like a holy of holies that

00:29:01.880 only you can go into because if you're just living your life out in public you're constantly shaping

00:29:07.740 yourself to fit what the public wants so you can get the followers and the likes etc yeah i think that's

00:29:15.440 spot on so it's it's kind of interesting this might feel like a bit of a digression but uh there's this

00:29:21.140 emily dickinson poem that i teach most semesters it's very short it's called i'm nobody who are you

00:29:25.860 actually it's not the title it's just the the first line that's taken as the title but it goes

00:29:30.340 i'm nobody who are you are you nobody too then there's a pair of us don't tell they'd advertise

00:29:36.420 you know how dreary to be somebody how public like a frog to tell one's name to live long june

00:29:43.040 to an admiring bog it's a great poem right yeah you know especially today students on their own

00:29:49.840 immediately go to social media but you know with that idea of transparency in mind what does the frog

00:29:55.060 do again and again again they say their same name over and over but in this poem dickinson suggests

00:30:00.980 that the nobodies that are behind the scenes that have a sense of of privacy they're the ones that

00:30:07.300 actually have mystery depth something interesting and new to say so i think that that poem like way

00:30:13.500 before we have digital technology is on to something about how always making yourself transparent

00:30:19.520 kind of thins you out and loses something important another thing that han explores is the role of

00:30:27.720 boredom in modern life what role does boredom play in han's critique of modern life and what does he

00:30:32.640 mean by boredom yeah that's a fantastic question because there's a couple different types of boredom at

00:30:37.660 play one type of boredom is this restlessness that we have no patience for whatsoever that so if you're

00:30:45.320 waiting at the bus stop and you have a down moment probably you're going to feel an itch to pull out

00:30:50.760 of your phone if you're like most people so we want to fill up every moment with something and we have

00:30:57.700 no tolerance for that restless boredom but han actually is a big advocate of this deeper sense of

00:31:04.460 boredom profound boredom where you let go of the restlessness and you sink into the moment and you just

00:31:11.100 open yourself up and he thinks that that kind of state is really important today because that's the

00:31:18.420 kind of state where new ideas might come from you or where you might notice stuff around you certainly

00:31:24.460 if you're an artist that's where inspiration might strike so he thinks that this kind of profound

00:31:30.060 boredom that a lot of us that were lucky enough to grow up pre-digital you know as kids i think we reach

00:31:35.680 this state often because you go through the restless boredom like oh man i've got all day i don't know

00:31:39.760 what i'm gonna do i'm tired of all my toys and you know you don't have anything any recourse so over

00:31:46.660 time you know you might come up with like an imaginative game or you might go out on a walk

00:31:51.000 and you sort of sink into this more receptive open state so those are the two states of boredom in han

00:31:57.520 now i'm not sure this is exactly everything that's going on and this this might be only a partial answer

00:32:03.360 to why he's interested in that profound boredom but i think han since he's such a great

00:32:08.040 diagnostician of what's wrong with society one of the things that he's aware of is that okay if

00:32:14.560 we're already feeling really burnt out because it's achievement society what if we just let go

00:32:20.340 of that compulsion to achieve in the midst of the burnout maybe there's not that big of a gap

00:32:26.160 between feeling exhausted and that profound boredom and if we could just allow ourselves to sink into that

00:32:32.220 then maybe the antidote is much closer to our the state of our problem than we think so i think

00:32:39.300 that's maybe part of the reason why he's so interested in profound boredom there's a qualitative

00:32:43.260 leap between the burnout state and profound boredom but maybe the divide in another sense isn't that far

00:32:52.300 apart maybe it's kind of like hair of the dog where you have to kind of lean into it a little bit more to

00:32:57.780 figure out what it is you lack and really need yeah i think so and you you can see him sort of

00:33:03.960 trying out different approaches to our problems so post burnout society he also starts to talk a lot

00:33:09.640 more about openness to the other and eros is this thing that draws us out of ourself towards the other

00:33:15.620 or towards the world so here too i mean i think he thinks that okay we're seeking all this fake

00:33:21.520 community online and you you'll talk about online community is often seeming like you're encountering

00:33:26.620 other people but really because of algorithms and really because you still kind of mediate that

00:33:32.360 encounter he says you're actually trapped in kind of a mirror world you're trapped in what he calls the

00:33:38.120 hell of the same where if you really want to encounter other people you often have to go into the real

00:33:43.820 world where there's a little more risk and uncertainty in the encounter but there's also this sense of depth

00:33:50.540 and a richer possibility of a relationship you know martin buber is another thinker that's important

00:33:57.080 to him and martin buber will say things like when you enter into a real relationship with the other

00:34:03.420 person the relationship itself is bigger than the sum of its parts it's not just you and me there's now a

00:34:10.260 we and han will say similar things but you have to sort of open yourself up to that for that to happen

00:34:16.740 and he thinks a lot of people are seeking that on the internet but it's pretty hard to find on the

00:34:21.080 internet we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:34:24.660 and now back to the show okay so we've talked about the burnout society so we're all feeling

00:34:31.920 kind of burnt out according to han because we live in this achievement society that has this

00:34:37.200 we call it ethic of self-exploitation or auto-exploitation where we're pursuing things

00:34:42.560 not because we have to but it's this idea well you could do it so you need to do it and we have

00:34:47.740 these tools that allow us to measure ourselves and make progress but you can never know when you

00:34:55.260 actually reach that best self and so you just get tired and burnt out and it can cause boredom too

00:35:01.080 because some of that stuff that you're constantly doing can just wear you down and it can be boring

00:35:05.600 i want to talk about another book that he wrote it's a short one called the palliative society

00:35:10.980 yeah this is another critique he makes of modern culture what does he mean by the palliative society

00:35:15.700 so in this book his main argument is that there's something seriously out of whack about our

00:35:23.260 relationship to pain as a society he sees our society as not just an achievement society but one

00:35:29.280 that tries to avoid pain and suffering at all costs and of course han thinks that in many cases

00:35:36.060 yeah you know we want to try to reduce pain in disease we want to try to reduce pain in all

00:35:42.080 all kinds of areas of life but one of the dangers here is that to be human means you're going to

00:35:47.760 undergo pain right so if we get to the point where we think pain is always a problem a problem to be

00:35:53.280 be solved with a technical solution then what happens when you run to a situation where the pain

00:35:58.120 can't be solved maybe someone's dying and he thinks we're really bad at accompanying people through

00:36:03.080 painful situations i think that's probably true but then han would also say that many areas of life

00:36:09.720 require pain in order to reach a higher level so you think again about physical fitness right this is

00:36:17.200 one of the few areas in our society where i think that you still see some embrace of pain as a necessary

00:36:25.760 step in order to become a better athlete you got to train hard you got to suffer but han points out too

00:36:31.120 that in education you know he's a philosopher to be a good philosopher he says you've got to confront

00:36:36.740 ideas that challenge your own you've got to wrestle with difficult ideas that make you uncomfortable

00:36:42.520 and it's hard work and it's painful i would say the same is true i'm a words guy i'm an english

00:36:48.720 professor through and through but mathematics you know mathematics at a certain level becomes really

00:36:54.040 tough and in order to get through it you've got to be willing to sort of suffer through

00:36:58.140 the hard work to get there and then maybe most importantly think about relationships think

00:37:04.820 about a good marriage or a good friendship or with kids those relationships there's going to be time

00:37:10.720 when that loved one is suffering and they need you and it's going to be unpleasant to go through that

00:37:15.680 with them so any kind of real love entails suffering and that's ancient wisdom that a lot of people

00:37:23.800 would pay lip service to but actually our vocabulary and our practices for dealing with that have gotten

00:37:30.600 really thinned out and he thinks that we basically live in a society that avoids pain for him the

00:37:35.980 covid pandemic really revealed that because you know after the the opening stages when we got a better

00:37:42.440 sense of what's going on with this disease he saw kind of an overreaction in all kinds of areas you know

00:37:48.880 might think about schools shut down for kids long after we knew that this disease thankfully for the 1.00

00:37:55.100 most part wasn't that threatening to children and this strange way in which we couldn't sort of balance

00:38:00.820 that this is a tragic situation that there's going to be negative outcomes no matter which way we go

00:38:06.300 he saw us as kind of failing the test in a pretty profound way and he traces it back at least in part

00:38:14.060 to this inability to deal with suffering and just sort of think about pain in an adjusted way

00:38:21.340 you mentioned that you think our vocabulary around pain and suffering has been thinned out

00:38:26.580 what are some examples of that off the top of your head yeah so i mean i think we see it in all kinds of

00:38:33.340 areas and there have been some some really good contrary trends to this but i think that when you think

00:38:39.580 about parenting and how for a few decades now we've had the phenomenon of like helicopter parents

00:38:46.540 right whenever your kid has problems there's a real not even just temptation but almost expectation

00:38:53.980 from other parents you might think to jump in there and smooth it out for your kid and sometimes that's

00:38:59.540 the right thing to do right sometimes there's situations the kids are in that they can't deal with

00:39:03.580 and they need adults to step in but also there's a way in which if you want your kid to be an

00:39:07.380 adjusted adult they've got to learn how to suffer through some situations they've got to grow in

00:39:13.000 toughness and courage and i think we're pretty poor at that kind of vocabulary i think too you know

00:39:20.880 it's really tough it's tough for me and you know i'm a religious guy from a tradition that keeps some

00:39:26.400 of these things more alive but you know it's really hard to accompany family members that are in deep

00:39:33.480 sickness and on their way to death it's hard to know how to talk to them it's probably always been

00:39:38.000 hard but i think it's become especially hard in our day where we you know tend to close that away in

00:39:44.320 retirement homes and hospitals so you know those are those are some examples yeah another one that

00:39:49.160 came to the top of my head was you saw this a couple years ago i think you're seeing a trend

00:39:53.660 away from it but the idea of trigger warnings in classrooms when you're discussing heavy topics like

00:39:59.420 sexual assault or crime or whatever you know you got to give a trigger warning to people i think that

00:40:05.040 might be another example of like han would say this is an example of the palliative society we want to

00:40:09.200 reduce and eliminate pain as much as possible even though to really understand an experience you have

00:40:15.220 to confront everything even the terrible parts of it yeah and han would say you know life itself is

00:40:20.860 going to throw up these really hard situations so certainly in classrooms you know you shouldn't handle

00:40:26.180 difficult material flippantly or uh you know brusquely you should try to be sort of sensitive

00:40:31.740 about it but one of the ways the reasons to study the humanities is to study the tragic and help you

00:40:38.120 then process it when you have to encounter it in your own life so if you just sort of immediately

00:40:43.040 bracket that off then one of the main reasons that the humanities is important goes away and people end up

00:40:49.780 suffering more as a result for that i'd say yeah i become fragilized we had the guy who wrote the

00:40:54.500 the coddling of the american mind or something like that yeah he writes about that i would like to

00:40:59.180 talk about this and i think it's in the palliative society han has this kind of throwaway line he didn't

00:41:04.420 really explain it or follow and i wish he did because like that's actually really interesting

00:41:08.180 he talks about this idea of the palliative society and wanting to eliminate pain he likens it to the

00:41:15.560 last man from frederick nietzsche's thus spoke zarisutra and he said that the last man is actually

00:41:21.920 obsessed with their health do you know i'm talking about when he wrote this can you flesh

00:41:26.680 that because i think that's really interesting yeah and and you know just a sort of a broader

00:41:31.760 point i think that um one one legit frustration that people can have with han is that since he

00:41:36.780 writes these shorter extended essay like books sometimes there will be these lines that he almost

00:41:43.600 feel like throwaway lines you're like oh i wish he would have just fleshed that out i think that's a

00:41:47.820 pretty common experience his relationship to nietzsche is a really interesting and complex one

00:41:52.700 because you know when there's one way of thinking about nietzsche and there's certainly abundant textual

00:41:57.820 evidence to think about this is as this great philosopher of the will and of action but he brings

00:42:04.100 out a more contemplative side to nietzsche and he pulls out these passages that show him emphasizing

00:42:11.280 the importance of contemplation of being able to have like real repose so that's an interesting

00:42:16.680 thing but yeah i think that he thinks that the last man is obsessed with health and obsessed with

00:42:23.320 their own happiness in such a way that it has that unconscious egotism about it and also becomes very

00:42:30.540 fragile and can't face up to the tragic side of life the suffering of life and the suffering of others

00:42:38.300 yeah when i read that it made me think of you know we live in this world of like wellness culture

00:42:43.380 where we have all these devices and supplements we can take and just talk about we got to you know

00:42:48.700 extend our lifespan and i'm thinking like why like what are we doing with that i mean health is

00:42:56.240 important i'm not trying to dismiss health but it seems like we've made health an end rather than a

00:43:02.080 means to a higher telos i think that's exactly exactly correct and yeah i don't think the problem is that

00:43:09.680 you want to be healthy or that you want to reduce suffering from disease or unjust circumstances

00:43:15.800 or things like that i think that's all to the good and you know important but i do think that uh

00:43:20.220 one danger of sort of fetishizing health too much is that any risk becomes unacceptable or any

00:43:28.340 difficulty becomes something to avoid and that just really thins out life because so many of the things

00:43:33.960 that make life most meaningful and i think too it's important you know to make that distinction

00:43:39.300 between kind of pleasantness and meaning often deep meaning you know you think about like a buddhist monk

00:43:47.040 or a saint you know deeply meaningful life but one that's full of asceticism and you know challenge

00:43:55.180 so we've been talking about some of han's critiques and sort of diagnoses of um modern life and that's what

00:44:01.700 he's most famous for he's a diagnostician but as you said we've been talking about throughout the

00:44:04.640 conversation he does offer some potential antidotes to this feeling of burnout this feeling of boredom

00:44:12.160 this feeling of flatness in modern life and one of those things you mentioned was this idea of eros

00:44:18.300 and that we need to return to this idea of eros i think a lot of people lay people when they hear

00:44:24.000 the word eros they think oh sex but that's not what han means what does han mean by eros and how can

00:44:29.840 that help us out of the burnout society yeah so his his notion of eros goes back to plato but i think

00:44:37.900 he definitely puts his own spin on it but it's this notion of eros is this desire that draws us

00:44:43.000 out of ourself towards some other good so he would distinguish that from the kind of uh lower level

00:44:53.280 base desire gratification that often the internet trades on right you want to get those likes 0.93

00:44:59.020 or yeah if we want to talk about sex you know pornography you know literally masturbatory

00:45:06.020 interaction with the internet whereas real eros yeah you're drawn outside of yourself towards the

00:45:11.080 other and when you really encounter another person or encounter the world you realize that it's bigger

00:45:16.920 than your project it doesn't exist just for you you discover this depth and richness and mystery

00:45:23.860 and so yeah when it comes to erotic relationships you know sexual relationships relationships of

00:45:32.000 erotic love he'd say that yeah there's a big difference between that transactional kind of

00:45:39.820 pornographic interaction and one where you're attracted to the other person as a three-dimensional

00:45:45.500 person and as a mystery but you know he would also use eros broadly as well we're you know

00:45:51.380 attracted to the beauties of the world or we're drawn out of ourself into friendship so it's much

00:45:58.120 much bigger than than sex for sure all right so yeah eros takes us out of ourselves so yeah this

00:46:03.520 kind of goes back to matthew crawford's idea of the world beyond your head if you really want to

00:46:06.620 become a self you have to get outside of yourself and for crawford he talks a lot about the you know

00:46:12.900 the role craft can play in drawing you out of yourself kind of get out of this morbid self-consciousness

00:46:18.440 but that can also happen through relationships can come from looking at art can come from spending

00:46:23.860 time in nature and another concept related to eros that i thought was really interesting from han

00:46:29.340 was that if we want to open ourselves to those erotic encounters where we're drawn out of ourselves

00:46:35.120 we have to have this stance of friendliness to the world i really like this idea what does he mean by

00:46:40.280 friendliness yeah so uh this is an idea that runs from his thinking from the very early

00:46:45.900 untranslated works in german right through his most recent work and what he means by friendliness

00:46:51.660 is kind of this intent of openness to the world and to other people so sometimes he'll use this

00:46:58.080 language especially when he's drawing resources from zen buddhism he'll talk about becoming a guest

00:47:03.760 house to the world where you're just kind of open to the world and he sees this as a friendly stance

00:47:10.040 i think he's really good at drawing attention to all these ways that when we're in our phone we're

00:47:14.680 literally closed off from other people in the world or when we're all up in our head again coming

00:47:19.960 back to matthew crawford you know you can be walking down the street and maybe you're not looking at your

00:47:24.500 phone maybe you don't have headphones on but you're you're so wrapped up in your head you're not aware

00:47:28.700 of anything that's going around you or uh aware of anyone around you so to have this friendly

00:47:35.360 disposition towards the world is the stance of openness yeah this made me think of hartmut rosa

00:47:42.720 yeah he's on my mind because we've we've talked about him on the podcast before but i also did an

00:47:47.480 another article for my substack dying breed about his idea of resonance and he had this idea of

00:47:53.580 resonance being like you're open to the world or the outside world talking to you and it kind of

00:48:00.000 transforms you and he makes the case that we have a hard time feeling that that sense of resonance

00:48:06.740 because we see the world as just aggression points right there's things we got to do

00:48:13.040 so the example i gave when i'm in my house i'm constantly looking around like we need to fix that

00:48:18.680 thing this thing needs to be painted we need to declutter that i'm hardly ever just thinking i'm just

00:48:24.280 going to be in my home and just enjoy my home we can even see other people as aggression points things

00:48:30.240 we got to do things with like what can this person do for me or if someone's having a hard time

00:48:35.460 when they open up to you we think like well okay i got a lot to do what what can i do just to get

00:48:41.640 through this as quickly as possible so i can get on with my life so we're like oh they're there okay

00:48:45.740 you'll be all right and we just you know send the person on their way and rosa would say like

00:48:50.220 no you have to actually kind of have a stance where you open to like okay just let this person who's

00:48:54.920 saying they're sad just be there with them you don't have to fix anything just be there and you

00:49:00.940 might have this moment where like both of you feel like you're edified in some way and i think maybe

00:49:05.900 han would agree with that like instead of seeing the world as points of aggression you're just open

00:49:10.120 to the thing or the person as they are yeah i think that's exactly right and rose is a thinker

00:49:17.600 that's become much more important to me too or that i should say that i've just discovered more fully

00:49:22.100 even after writing this book even though rosa you know gets cited in here and i think that as you

00:49:27.820 suggest rosa and han are approaching some similar things from you know somewhat different angles and

00:49:34.520 i think that's useful because you know just like anything if you look at it from one angle and then

00:49:38.620 look at it from another angle you're going to get richer picture but i think rosa he has this great

00:49:43.340 insight that as moderns we really like control we want to eliminate as much contingency

00:49:49.180 or risk from our lives as possible we want more and more things to be under our control

00:49:55.120 and there's something that's you know understandable about that but there's a real danger when it becomes

00:50:00.140 as exaggerated as it has become for us in that to have a really rich relationship with something

00:50:06.200 to have a true relationship that has a back and forth right a resonant relationship as rosa would say

00:50:12.240 then you've got to relinquish control in order to have that sense of a meaningful relationship with a

00:50:17.460 friend you can't be all about controlling everything about the friendship and manipulating it or that's

00:50:22.440 just going to be a disaster in addition to being unethical to the friend but also we have this deep

00:50:27.720 hunger to connect with nature but at the same time we struggle to operate on any level other than

00:50:33.960 yeah controlling it so yeah so rosa thinks that we have to let go of this modern urge for control 0.99

00:50:42.200 in order to see problems and fix them in order to open up these richer spaces these resonant spaces

00:50:49.060 in your example of someone that's suffering you don't always need to fix the problem you just need

00:50:53.660 to be with them that's a good example of that does han offer any sort of practical

00:50:59.840 i hear maybe han would be like you can't reduce my philosophy to like a list of things to do because he's

00:51:07.180 like that's that's kind of counter to what i want to say but are there like some practical ways people

00:51:10.660 can start countering this burnout society this feeling of tiredness for just the everyday person

00:51:19.440 we've got jobs families and phones that never stop pinging us yeah i think so and i think there

00:51:25.540 are actually a lot of different practicalities and possibilities that he offers throughout his

00:51:31.060 works i think that he would bristle against the idea that he's you know some kind of high theory

00:51:36.040 self-help in part because he's challenging you to not just sort of make these small adjustments in

00:51:42.220 order to achieve better in the achievement societies calling for these more radical transformations and

00:51:46.640 he thinks that's where you'll find deeper solutions and certainly too he'd like to see some more

00:51:52.080 widespread changes in society to cultivate these things but that said one thing i love about han is

00:51:58.060 that you know he writes like editorials about the problems that teenagers in schools are facing in

00:52:03.000 germany and one of the reasons he writes these short books is that he really does want to speak to

00:52:07.340 non-academics about their their problems and i think that's another reason why he's become so

00:52:12.740 popular so yeah some of these possible remedies to achievement to burnout i think one is just cultivating

00:52:20.220 that sense of openness when you're at the bus stop or you're walking down the street or whatever

00:52:25.180 and you have this urge or there's a lull in the conversation and you have this temptation to pull out the

00:52:30.040 phone don't pull it out and if you really struggle with those things you know han doesn't say this but

00:52:34.940 i think it's a corollary of his positions yeah go with a dumb phone or leave the phone at home i think

00:52:40.960 too you know he has like long sections about how to be a good listener in his book the expulsion of the

00:52:46.820 other i think too you know things like okay maybe you got a friend that's going through a hard hard time

00:52:54.520 put yourself in that situation where you're accompanying them through it so these are all

00:52:59.580 some some things that come through one we haven't touched on much that i'll add is that han talks a

00:53:05.860 lot about ritual and certainly talks about religious ritual and how one of the advantages of that is that

00:53:12.520 it gives time a shape so every day isn't just the same empty box in which you fill it up with

00:53:18.780 achievement but you have things like the sabbath where you have festivals that give time a shape

00:53:25.380 and even if you're not religious you can try to recover a more variegated sense of time so those

00:53:33.900 are are some practical possibilities yeah he talks about meditation could potentially be one but like

00:53:39.300 he said well don't use a meditation app where it tracks your streak of how many days in a row you've

00:53:43.120 meditated you're you're in achievement society mode if you do that but just take a few minutes where you

00:53:47.660 just sit there and contemplate something i think looking at art going to the museum just to stare

00:53:54.180 at something for half an hour that could do it being out in nature can be another another source of that

00:53:59.260 as well learn how to tolerate silence learn how to be alone and not on technology and just be and observe

00:54:07.580 how has engaging with han's work changed the way you live personally yeah so i'm certainly someone

00:54:14.700 that struggles with screens and i have my periods where i do really well with it and others that i

00:54:20.020 don't do so well so yeah i think that studying han is is for me too it's become a way of trying to to

00:54:26.220 get a better grasp of some of these things in my own life and yeah you know i can remember times like uh

00:54:33.220 you know it'll be a beautiful evening and my my kids are in at ballet practice and i'm outside here in

00:54:39.960 blue ridge mountains which are absolutely gorgeous and there's this great sunset and i'm i'm on my

00:54:45.600 phone like doing what that was one of the moments that just got to me and it's like yeah you know

00:54:50.560 this is bad changes need to be made changes need to be made for the sake of other people in my life

00:54:55.660 but also for my own sake and having this richer experience of the world so han's been a really

00:55:01.820 important philosopher to me and i i probably got into him in some ways via matthew crawford i i knew

00:55:07.380 crawford's worked first that really spoke to me and i could see han picking up on some similar themes

00:55:14.240 yeah i think that's interesting han started off in metal work and then he became philosopher and

00:55:19.720 crawford he's like a motorcycle guy motorcycle mechanic and then he went into philosophy so

00:55:24.420 yeah they're similar in that way if someone wanted to dive into han's philosophy for the first time

00:55:28.380 where should they begin yeah so the burnout society still is a pretty good place to begin

00:55:33.300 but i think some of these more recent works are great entry points too i wouldn't be surprised if

00:55:38.620 many art of manliness listeners liked the the palliative society i think that's a good book

00:55:44.140 another recent one called vita contemplativa which focuses on contemplation as an antidote to bird out

00:55:50.820 i think that's another good place to start and certainly you know i'd put in a plug for our

00:55:55.280 critical introduction han's written over 30 books and some of those aren't even translated into english yet

00:56:00.920 so what our critical introduction tries to do is give some through lines across han's body of work

00:56:07.240 situate him in among some other thinkers show how he speaks to contemporary problems both in the ones

00:56:13.300 that he addresses in his book and some others that we identify so it's an academic book but it's one

00:56:18.980 that's definitely pitched at the general reader with with a little bit of background and philosophy

00:56:23.240 should be able to navigate well steven this has been a great conversation besides your book

00:56:28.080 that listeners can find on amazon is there someplace they can go to learn more about your work in general

00:56:32.500 yeah so i'm working on an author website but i don't have that up yet but two places they might

00:56:36.380 go one is i edit this online poetry journal new verse review which has kind of an eclectic focus so

00:56:41.720 it touches on some of these questions about attention and contemplation for sure but then the other place

00:56:46.440 that you might look is i've written a few pieces for the lamp magazine that touches on similar themes

00:56:51.340 including i have an overview of han that i wrote for that magazine so if you go there and

00:56:56.440 just search my pieces that's another i think good place great yeah we'll link to those in the show

00:57:00.920 notes well steven nepper thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thank you very much it's an honor

00:57:04.560 my guest is steven nepper he's the co-author of a critical introduction of byong chul han it's

00:57:10.100 available on amazon.com you can check out our show notes at awim.is slash han where you find links

00:57:14.460 or resources we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast

00:57:26.740 make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well

00:57:30.760 as thousands of articles they've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of

00:57:33.900 and make sure to check out our new newsletter it's called dying breed it's for both men and women alike

00:57:38.200 you can sign up at dyingbreed.net it's a great way to support the show directly

00:57:42.160 as always thank you for the continued support until next time's brett mckay

00:57:45.840 reminding you to listen to anyone podcast but put what you've heard into action

00:57:49.540 you

The Art of Manliness - April 29, 2025

Auto-Exploitation, Positive Violence, and the Palliative Society： A Modern Philosopher’s Ideas for Making Sense of the Present Age

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