‘Because we look at life exclusively from the perspective of work and performance, we view inactivity as a deficiency that must be overcome as quickly as possible’ -Byung Chul Han
Having bought three Byung-Chul Han books in one go, I had to make a decision to figure out which books I would read first. As the previous blog post shows, I went for his more well known publication. However, out of all three, Vita contemplativa brought me a level of excitement I rarely get with books. It is one of those topics which I have thought about for an incredibly long time but it always seemed like something most people would violently disagree with, especially in Western society.
Vita contemplativa provides me with some much needed power as an unemployed person. Within the ethos of the achievement society I often feel like by not working I have been wasting my time on this Earth. That by now I should have been able to have more experiences on my CV. The common stigma is that by not having a job you are a lazy individual that wakes up at noon, sits on his couch all day and watches tv. While I sure do love watching movies, I have also felt that during my unemployment I have have grown much wiser about who I am as a person.
In vita contemplativa Han essentially critiques modern Western metaphysics, and I am all for it. Inactivity is the ultimate purpose for all human endeavors. It is the stage in life in which we are free and the most human. On the other hand, Vita activa, the dominant way most people live nowadays, makes us resemble machines.
While everyone is always working and being busy, my relationship to reality has over the years developed into somewhat of a different direction. Many people have asked me how I do not get bored from being unemployed and the answer is: well I do get bored, but I also spend a lot of time per day just contemplating things. This especially increased once I significantly reduced my social media usage. When you have the freedom to be inactive, you get the opportunity to think about events through a different lens. You interact with reality a lot deeper. At its core that is Han’s argument. Of course I will be snobby and also phrase this process as the dialectic of inactivity or as Nietzsche wrote:
‘Inventive people live altogether differently from active ones; they need time, so that purposeless, unregulated activity occurs, experiments can take palace, and new path can be taken; they feel their way, rather than walking just on the old paths, as the usually active people do’
But the crux is that the more inactive one is, the more you start to live. By taking your time, you start to interact more with reality.
The problem for Han is that in today’s consumerist/neoliberal society, inactivity has become obsolete. Everything needs to be satisfied at once. “We are impatient if we are told to wait for something to slowly ripen. All that matters are short-term effects and quick gains. Actions are reduced to reactions’.
Boredom is the one thing that must be avoided at all costs nowadays. But it is precisely boredom which leads to contemplation, which then leads to the creation of something entirely new. Would I really be writing a blog post on a niche philosophical book on a website I entirely created on my own if I was not bored out of my mind? That is the beauty of inactivity.
Increasingly especially among my generation and below. People have become scared to sit in silence. One must always do something and even when a moment of inactivity arises, we shut this off by going on our phone. I have met people who told me they are scared to be on their own because their mind starts going places and then they get stressed out. But doesn’t this mean that you are lying to yourself? That maybe you are unhappy or insecure about certain aspects in your life, but you decide to ignore this for superficial short-term comfort. The problem will persist.
In the age of short-form content, vita contemplativa is drastically shrinking. When everything is instantly available to be consumed, contemplative attention becomes impossible. Han argues that nowadays being is information. But this is problematic because information serves short-term needs. This phenomenon is everywhere. People’s relationship with the news has transformed into being is information. A large percentage of people seem to care more about being able to name all of the news headlines but have no deeper contemplative relationship with what actually happened. There is a Dutch radio channel which hosts news quizzes on a daily basis where people showcase how much they know about the news. But my annoyance with this show is that it is nothing more than a memorization game, it is a surface level interaction with an event. Daily conversations about the news have turned into a repetition of headlines and that is it. I therefore found it thrilling to see Han reference Guy DeBord’s The Society of the Spectacle as their arguments align on this phenomenon.
Similarly, the movie watching experience has been affected by this phenomenon as well. There have been many instances where I would be watching a movie with someone just for them to be on Wikipedia for the entirety of the movie and list useless facts. Then because they didn’t pay attention they had to look up what the movie was about and then conclude that the movie “wasn’t that good”.
Contemplation on the other hand ‘engages with what is unavailable yet already given’. Through my own inactivity I started to actually romanticize pondering. I try to not immediately find an answer to something, I try to sit with it for a while. There is a deep beauty to such existence because it rests a lot more on my own critical thinking skills and I feel a stronger connection to it. I could have easily read a summary of what this book was about, but it is exactly that short term thinking that would lead me to forget the main point of vita contemplativa in two month’s time. Pondering, lingering, contemplating all lead to a deeper interaction with the subject of interest. In the age of Information this has disappeared. It is just fluff. We do not deeply interact with something anymore.
The age of information is the kryptonite to vita contemplativa. But when faced with prolonged inactivity the banality of the age of information gradually comes to light. Social media, dating apps, jogging apps, the moment you really start thinking about it, it feels incredibly absurd that people do this. As Han writes: “being connected is not the same as being together…a consumable object that satisfies our needs is not something with which we can form a proper tie. Despite the growth of digital connectivity, then, we are lonelier than ever before.”
LACK OF BEING
Building on the previous arguments, a major theme in this book is the crisis of being in the 21st Century. Our short-term, hyperactive, information society has destroyed being. Being formed under conditions of lingering, under vita contemplativa. It grows slowly and gradually. But nowadays because we immediately need to consume everything, we feel disoriented.
Being used to be formed through symbols or narratives (i.e. religion or myths). Communities developed through a symbolically mediated totality. But in today’s symbolic-narrative void, society has fragmented and eroded. Symbols exist because they create shared things that enable an Us. ‘In a symbolic void, society is diffracted into a collection of mutually indifferent individuals, for what unites and creates commitment no longer exists. The loss of common feeling grounded in the symbolic intensifies the lack of being.’
Building on Plato, Han argues that the importance of the symbolic is that it promises a fullness of being, a salvation. Without this salvation, modern life becomes fragmented and enables a lack of being. In this void the only thing we can do is to reduce our life to survival. ‘The mania for health and optimization is a reflexive response to the lack of being’. He calls it forms of survival. Optimization leads you to become a better worker and earn more money, but this still falls within the bracket of survival, while for Han, being occurs in the inactive. Moreover, isolation and loneliness are direct consequences of capitalism, which then further creates this lack of being: ‘The neoliberal regime increases productivity by isolating people and forcing them to compete. It transforms life into a battle for survival, into a hell of unbridled competition’.
“The zenith of productivity probably comes as being reaches its nadir. Capital is a form of survival. Capitalism is nurtured by the illusion that more capital creates more life, increasing the capacity to live. But this life is a bare life, a survival.”
This lack of being then creates the desire to act. And as we know to act is the polar opposite of vita contemplativa and hence being.
What does it mean nowadays to be Dutch? The feeling of community has disappeared. Everyone speaks English in Amsterdam. We consume content from all over the world. Every store can be found in every other major city around the world. I do not know anyone in my neighborhood. I am not religious. That is why I feel a lack of being. As a result, the symbolic void makes us then want to seek meaning through a job (to act). But it turns out this, according to Han, is just a form of survival, not a form of being.
Connecting it to Burnout society
In The Burnout Society Han argues that the reason why there has been a massive rise in burnouts and depression is because we live in an achievement society. The general logic has become: by working hard enough you can become whatever you want. This constant positive mindset results in us putting all of the blame on ourselves when something does not go the way we hoped for. In vita contemplativa, Han casts the net even wider and argues the reason why we started thinking like this is because we live in an age of symbolic void. Our lack of meaning due to, among others, the loss of religion and communities, the effects of globalization, and the digital society has resulted in a crisis of being. Ergo, with the loss of symbolic meaning in our lives, our ‘religion’ became our work. But for Han, this is precisely why people remain feeling lost in their existence: working is vita activa, it does not create the essence of being. The itch for meaning cannot be itched through working.
Conclusion
There is a lot more Han discussed throughout this book and I definitely will have to go back to this. His part on Romanticism intrigued me deeply but at the same time, for now I am satisfied with my analysis. The thing with Han is that he effortlessly blends disciplines with one another. He goes from critiquing neoliberalism and the digital age, to the symbolic importance of religion, analyzes Greek mythology, the dialectical logic behind boredom, the power of poetry, and critiques multiple philosophers (such as Hannah Arendt’s perspective on vita activa). In other words, his work is incredibly dense yet surprisingly approachable and there are many different interpretations one can apply.
For instance, I have always found the most beautiful part of existence is when you do nothing, e.g., laying on a beach on a holiday or just hanging out with friends at a square having some drinks. Not being productive, just having a great inactive experience. Han does not directly mention this but I do think this is related to his example of the importance of festivals and how that creates culture and a sense of being. For me a holiday means bringing a book, a towel, and a bottle of water. You take a nap on the beach, go for a swim, and then go home for another nap, just to then go to the beach again. This is the pinnacle of existence for me. On the other hand, an average Dutch person’s holiday is characterized with going on hikes, mountain biking, museum visits, paddle boarding, bringing the camper, putting everything on their Instagram stories. While yes such trips are fun, it is not really a holiday. The active work mind remains active. I think many people, especially in North Western Europe have completely lost this sense of living Han calls for.
For me, I more or less fell into the ‘vita contemplativa way of life’ because I had nothing to do and it therefore feels great to have someone tell me that I am not insane. Then again, while I do overall agree with Han’s argument, contemplative thinking does not necessarily equate to a more enjoyable existence. Sure it is good that I see the world through a ‘deeper’ lens but at times I have been envious of a more ‘naive’ and ‘normal’ existence in which I am not constantly tormented by the effects of a fragmenting postmodern society.