Philosopher Byung-Chul Han And The “hell Of Equals”

Byung-Chul Han is a South Korean born philosopher and writer who has achieved great notoriety in the contemporary world. Her reflections were oriented towards different themes, but particularly towards the technology and culture that is a product of it. He also dedicated many of his lines to the way people work and produce today.

To date, Byung-Chul Han has published 16 books. In them, he developed two concepts in particular. One is that of the “society of tiredness” and the other of the “society of transparency”. In his work, he presents very critical approaches to today’s world. He points out that nowadays people explore themselves and are terrified of what is different. That’s where he talks about “the hell of equals”.

Many assert that  Byung-Chul Han’s work is indispensable reading to understand today’s world. Its focus is original and profound, but above all very current. He is one of the few thinkers who have created theories with great depth about phenomena such as social networking, privacy and the society of mental dysfunction.

During a visit the author made to Spain, he gave several interviews that generated great impact. In them, he explained in a summarized way some of the concepts that underlie his work. These are, by and large, the reflections he shared.

The Illusion of Freedom in Byung-Chul Han’s Thought

For Byung-Chul Han, we are in an era where freedom is just a grand illusion. According to this philosopher, what prevails today is consensual slavery. For example, the apparent freedom of expression that exists on social networks has become a practice that allows power to exercise surveillance over us.

Byung-Chul Han points out that people have an almost pornographic desire to show off their privacy. They expose their thoughts, their private moments, their feelings and everything they are, or pretend to be, through social networks. Everyone does it “voluntarily”. Power no longer needs to interfere or infiltrate anyone’s secrets, as these people offer it all spontaneously.

Likewise, people signed up “voluntarily” in a way of producing where self-fulfillment is at the center of everything. Byung-Chul Han indicates that this self-actualization is nothing more than self-exploration. The product of this is the irritable, highly fatigued, or sick in body and mind worker.

Hell of the same and the intolerance of the different

Some reflections by Byung-Chul Han revolve around the same and the different. He extols that people experience individuality as just another fiction. Everyone wants to be different precisely because everyone is the same. This desire is precisely evidence of the homogeneity that is people’s thinking.

The result of this is radical conformism. People humbly accept “to live as everyone else lives”. That is, producing inordinately, showing off uselessly, revolving all the time around the ideals of success that were imposed. On the obverse of this reality, there are different forms of depression and anxiety. The human being mysteriously falls ill for reasons he cannot elucidate. For Byung-Chul Han, this system is very stable and basically unbreakable. He calls this “neoliberalism”.

For this South Korean philosopher based in Germany, there needs to be a revolution in the use of time. Without any hypocrisy, he states that “time worked is time wasted, it is not time for us”. What we need would be free time, in which we stopped producing and that had the character of a festivity. This is not a break or a break to continue producing later. What he talks about is a personal time, which claims the desire not to do anything considered “productive” for neoliberalism.

The thoughts of this philosopher are current and provocative. His critique is acid and direct, but above all, very well-founded and sustained. Several of his books have already been translated into other languages ​​and some of them are even free online. It’s a highly recommended read for those who aren’t comfortable with the current state of affairs.