In previous generations, depression was likely to result from internal conflicts between what we want to do and what authority figures – parents, teachers, institutions – wish to prevent us from doing. But in our high-performance society, it’s feelings of inadequacy, not conflict, that bring on depression. The pressure to be the best workers, lovers, parents and consumers possible leaves us vulnerable to feeling empty and exhausted when we fail to live up to these ideals. In “The Weariness of the Self” (1998), an influential study of modern depression, the French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg argues that in the liberated society which emerged during the 1960s, guilt and obedience play less of a role in the formation of the self than the drive to achieve. The slogan of the “attainment society” is “I can” rather than “I must”.

A more prohibitive society, which tells us we can’t have everything, sets limits on our sense of self. Choose to be a bus conductor and you can’t be a concert pianist; a full-time parent will never be chairman of the board. In our attainment society, we are constantly told that we can be, do and have anyone or anything we want. But, as anyone who’s tried to decide between 22 nearly identical brands of yoghurt in an American organic hypermarket can confirm, limitless choice debilitates far more than it liberates.

The depressive burnout, Ehrenberg suggests, feels incapable of making meaningful choices.

“Genuine force of habit”, suggested the great philosophical misanthrope Arthur Schopenhauer in 1851, might appear to be an expression of our innate character, but “really derives from the inertia which wants to spare the intellect the will, the labour, difficulty and sometimes the danger involved in making a fresh choice.” Schopenhauer has a point.

Is there more to burnout than working too hard?

https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/06/29/is-there-more-to-burnout-than-working-too-hard

Jun 29th 2016

By Josh Cohen

Workism Is Making Americans Miserable

The Burnout Society