Burnout Society

Burnout Society

Dr. R.J. Snell

Adapted for Sed Contra from the latest version of a lecture developed for chapters of the Thomistic Institute.

A few years ago, Yale professor William Deresiewicz warned that the nation’s top colleges were turning students into “zombies.” While many of his students were bright, thoughtful, and creative, most of them seemed all too content to color within the lines. Very few were passionate about ideas. Very few saw college as part of intellectual discovery. They all dressed as if they were ready for a job interview at a moment’s notice. They were driven, accomplished, talented, disciplined, successful, and capable. Yet, if you looked beneath their facade of seamless well-adjustment, what you found were toxic levels of fear, anxiety, emptiness, aimlessness, and isolation. Ultimately, the prospect of not being successful terrified and disoriented them.

This sentiment was echoed by Mark Shiffman, then chair of humanities at Villanova, who suggested that contemporary students are not majoring in physics, law, or philosophy; they are instead “majoring in fear.” Shiffman pointed to The Hunger Games as a defining novel of this generation, depicting adolescents rigorously trained for meaningless, life-or-death competitions, afflicted by a desperate compulsion for competitive advantage. Students today rack up majors, minors, certificates, and internships just to stay in the running for an ever-more-elusive success.

These observations do not merely apply to elite college students; they describe the lives of many in the West today: hurried, hasty, anxious, and uncertain of purpose. We mirror our mentors and parents, unsure of our purpose or what makes a life well-lived. In the absence of clear purpose, we opt for accomplishment and visible rewards — marks that we are doing well, even if we are not well in our souls.

A DISENCHANTED WORLD

One reason for this pervasive anxiety is that we live in what Charles Taylor calls a “disenchanted world.” For moderns, the cosmos is no longer full of spirits, forms, or a vertical order; it is a collection of causal forces to be harnessed for our own desires. While this has led to unprecedented technical and economic progress, it also results in a sense of life as “flat,” lacking goals beyond mere human satisfaction.

In this world, meaning is often reduced to the next iPhone, a rising GDP, or a larger corner office. But these technical benchmarks cannot bear the weight of ultimate meaning. There is always a newer iPhone, and someone will always have a bigger office. If we seek meaning through relentless competition, life becomes a cycle of “perform and repeat” to no end. We turn our freedom toward accomplishment to prove that we matter, but it is never enough.

FROM DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY TO ACHIEVEMENT SOCIETY

To understand this condition, I draw upon Korean theorist Byung-Chul Han, who argues in Burnout Society that we have moved past what Michel Foucault called “disciplinary society.” A disciplinary society — composed of hospitals, factories, barracks, and prisons — is a negative society governed by “No” or “Thou shalt not.” It treats those who are not productive as economic misfits or criminals.

Today, however, we live in an “achievement society.” Its inhabitants are not “obedience-subjects” but “achievement-subjects” — entrepreneurs of themselves. While a disciplinary society maximizes productivity through rules, it eventually hits a limit. For instance, if the factory manager in the disciplinary society orders you to produce a certain number of widgets, you can finish your task, stamp the timecard, then go home. Problems only happen when you fail to meet his quota. By contrast, in an achievement society, the “Thou shalt” is replaced by a far more potent “You can.” This shift is massive, as the compulsion of “You can” appears to be freedom yet demands further productivity.

Han’s most piercing insight is that “auto-compulsion” — compelling ourselves — proves far more effective than “allo-compulsion,” or being compelled by others. In the old, disciplinary world, there was a natural limit to the boss’s reach; at some point, the boss goes home. In the achievement society, you are the boss, and the boss never goes home. When you leave the office, you remain “on,” checking email as the last act before sleep or listening to a productivity podcast while making dinner. Because this compulsion is self-generated, it is not recognized as a burden but as an exercise of liberty.

This creates a permanent crisis of gratification. When a duty is imposed from without, its completion brings relief; but when the demand is “You can,” there is no possibility for atonement or mitigation. Failure is no longer a violation of a rule, but a failure of the self, leading to a “psychic insolvency” — the inability to pay the infinite debt of potentiality we owe to ourselves. We are not merely tired; we are existentially bankrupt. We cannot convince ourselves we have done enough. This is the root of burnout and depression: an irredeemable failure of ability.

"SERIAL PERCEPTION" IN THE DIGITAL AGE

This state of exhaustion is exacerbated by the way we process information. When attending lectures at Princeton, I often sit in the back and watch students act as “information processing machines.” One student might be day-trading stocks, another betting on FanDuel, and another buying and selling classic ASICS sneakers — all during class. When the professor says something that sounds like it might be on the exam, they momentarily toggle to Wikipedia, cut and paste any relevant information into their notes, then return to their trading, scrolling, and online commerce. They have what Han calls “serial perception” — a fragmented, fast-paced way of consuming information and experience.

On the internet, one link leads to fifteen others, cascading indefinitely. This information only holds passing relevance; it lives off the appeal of surprise, lacking temporal stability. Because it is fleeting, it fragments our perception. We never linger with information as we might with a poem or friend; we simply move on to the next thing.

Serial perception pulverizes time. Instead of intensive experiences where time seems to disappear — like a date that goes until 3:00am because the conversation is so rich — time disintegrates into a mere sequence of horizontal processes. This lack of depth makes it nearly impossible to pray or contemplate. We are endlessly working with fragmented attention in a world that offers no closure.

The consequence of serial perception is a “permanent frenzy of actuality” where we lack the stability to truly know anything. We swap intensive cognitive practices that lead to insight and wisdom for the fleeting appeal of surprise. In this mode, the soul no longer prays; it simply produces itself. Prayer, like art or deep friendship, requires a negative stillness — an exclusion of horizontal noise to allow for vertical encounter. Without the capacity to linger, our attention remains shallow, wandering like a hunter who never stops to behold the beauty of the field. We have traded the good life — a life with telos — for the bare life, a biological survival optimized for efficiency but stripped of narrative meaning.

COUNTING AND RECOUNTING

In our achievement society, we have become obsessed with things that can be counted: SAT scores, pay scales, zip codes, and number of publications. If the point of life is to have a life that counts, it will never stop; there will never be enough money or accolades.

Contrast this with a life that is recountable — a life with a story. My grandmother, a simple farmer from Western Canada who only finished the eighth grade, died with very little property and even fewer accolades. By every modern metric, her life did not count for much; her obituary would never grace the New York Times; she possessed no professional brand to speak of. Yet, at her funeral, the narrative of her life was revealed in its vertical depth.

A woman from the local clothing store, someone our family hardly knew, recounted how my grandmother would visit her shop twice a week carrying an extra lunch. She would claim, with a carefully maintained forgetfulness, that she had prepared too much food and simply was not hungry, insisting the woman eat it. My grandmother knew what the rest of the town did not: the woman had been abandoned by her husband and lacked the means to feed her children. This pretext allowed her to perform an act of profound charity without the cost of the recipient’s embarrassment.

That is a life to recount — a story of hidden virtue and radical generosity that flows from an existentially rich soul. In the achievement society, however, such stories are subsumed by the relentless pressure to perform. Achievement has no natural terminus; it lacks the punctuation mark of a life well-lived because there is always a subsequent “next” to be conquered. We have become a “thin-souled” people, suffering from a profound existential poverty that even the fattest wallet cannot alleviate, for we have forgotten how to live a life that is worth recounting.

THE MEANING OF LEISURE

The traditional remedy for this condition is not “rest” as we moderns understand it — taking a break to “recharge our batteries” like a machine — but leisure. Leisure is not downtime or simple non-activity; it is a mental and spiritual attitude of attunement to the goodness of reality. Note that the Greek word for school is schole, which means leisure. Leisure is an act of receptivity and radical openness to the real. At its root is contemplation, which Josef Pieper describes as “an attitude of celebration.” Contemplation is best understood as doing an activity for its own sake, for no other reason than that it is worth doing.

Consider the difference between a networking event and a genuine friendship. At such events, the relationship is instrumentalized; you are there because the other person has access to a good you want. You are constantly looking over their shoulder to see if someone more important is in the room. By contrast, a genuine meeting between friends or a good date is an experience of being “lost” in the activity because it is good.

Consider also the radical simplicity of play. When a child plays in a cardboard box, they do not justify the activity as “imagination training” for a future career. They play simply because it is fun — an activity done for its own sake. We play, we look at art, and we seek knowledge not to “gas up the engines” for more work, but because these things are intrinsically good. This is the essence of contemplation: an eager, reaching out in delight towards the good. If we are so existentially poor that we can only count results, we lose the capacity for this delight. We must find a way to become existentially rich again.

FIVE STEPS TO BECOMING EXISTENTIALLY RICH

How do we overcome the burnout society? I suggest five practical steps to recover the soul’s marrow:

1. Seek Silence: The first and last things we do in a day should be devoted to God, not to the attention-fragmentation of our phones. God is heard most profoundly in silence. Without silence, our attention remains shallow and horizontal, swiping left and right rather than looking up. Stillness deepens our attention and allows the contemplative gaze to emerge, which has the patience needed to see what is long-lasting.
   
   
2. Work for an Audience of One: We often imagine an enormous audience of judges — teachers, parents, peers — all of whom we fear will see us as losers. Instead, we should practice performing for an “audience of one,” namely, God. When your life is an offering to God, you are free from the judgment of the world.
   
   To find relief from the achievement society, we must shift from a legal perception to a familial one. Many Christians live with a meritocratic anxiety, imagining they must constantly push to impress God. This is often rooted in a forensic model of faith — a legal fiction called “imputation,” where God pretends we are innocent, treating us as if we were righteous while we remain, in ourselves, wretched worms.
   
   In contrast, the Catholic tradition speaks of infused righteousness. This familial model teaches that through baptism, Christ’s own goodness is poured into us, becoming our own. We are not defendants in a courtroom trying to avoid a “loser” label; we are adopted children who already possess the Father's favor. Performing for an audience of one means realizing you have nothing left to earn. When you work for a Father who is already “well-pleased” with you, your labor is no longer a frantic bid to justify your existence, but a joyful participation in His communion of endless generosity.
   
   
3. Tell a Recountable Story: We must frame our lives within a narrative that has a conclusion, rather than an endless list of achievements. When my wife and I were poor in graduate school, we told ourselves we were working “for the babies” we didn't yet have. Now, we say we do it for the “grandbabies.” If you do your work as a mortification for a specific intention — like a sick aunt — it changes the narrative entirely. You are no longer working to prove you aren’t a loser; you are working out of love.
   
   
4. Practice the Presence of God: We need a “plan of life” to remind us that we are in the presence of God throughout the day. Most days at 3:00pm, my alarm goes off with the word “rectification,” prompting me to ask if I am doing my work for the right reasons. We need regular habits — morning offerings, daily Mass, or the Ignatian Examen — to note where God is speaking to us, even in our failures.
   
   
5. Keep the Sabbath: The Sabbath is the ultimate resistance against achievement society. In a world governed by a relentless pressure to optimize the self, the Sabbath reintroduces the lost dimension of the terminus. Following the insight of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, we must recognize that in the Genesis account, the cosmos was not actually finished on the sixth day. Creation remained incomplete until God created menuha — rest.
   
   The Sabbath is not a mere cessation of labor for further productivity — an act that would merely instrumentalize our downtime — but is rather the very crown and intention of creation. As a “tithe of time” rendered back to the Creator, the Sabbath is a day for the inordinate and the unproductive. It is a day of feasting, lingering, and communion with family, friends, and God. On it, we are invited to push back the chairs and dance, to recite poetry, to enjoy the fruits of creation, and to spend time celebrating the radical gift of existence for no other reason than that it is fundamentally good.

A EUCHARISTIC LIFE

In the Christian understanding, God is a communion of love. He creates not out of necessity or internal compulsion, but out of endless generosity. We do not need to “gussy up our resume” for God; He has already declared us His children through the merits of Christ. When we accept that the world is a gift and that God desires our good, we can finally rest from our frantic efforts to justify our own existence.

Overcoming the burnout society is ultimately a work of penitence — not in the sense of regret, but of looking back to find where Christ was hidden in our failures so we can recognize Him in our present. It is a refusal to let the “pea” of minor inconveniences chafe us because we are anchored in a higher purpose. By keeping the Sabbath, we proclaim that the universe is not finished until there is rest. Our worth was never something we had to achieve, but something we were invited to receive. By forming “eyes of love” — eyes of leisure and contemplation — we can overcome the barrenness of achievement society and finally enter the joy for which we were made.

Dr. R.J. Snell serves as the director of academic programs at the Witherspoon Institute based in Princeton, New Jersey, and holds the role of Editor-in-Chief for The Public Discourse. A frequent contributor to both academic and mainstream publications, his recent book credits include Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire, as well as Mind, Heart, and Soul: Intellectuals and the Path to Rome, which he co-authored with Robert P. George.