save me from the alogorithm
In other words, the superego has its origin in figures external to us, so that, when it tells us what to do, it is as though we are hearing an order from someone else. The achievement society of our time, Han argues, runs not on superego guilt but ego-ideal positivity – not from a ‘you must’ but a ‘you can’. The ego-ideal is that image of our own... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
It is the superego that is making us live in a hamster wheel of doing more. The grind bears down from above, for we see ourselves as having to be more.
It lives in us not as a persecutory other but as a kind of higher version of oneself, a voice of relentless encouragement to do and be more.
To digitalise a painting is to decompose it, to deprive it of ground
For a work of art to have this effect, it must in some sense resist us, cause a disturbance of our familiar modes of language and perception. To be receptive to this kind of disturbance requires certain basic experiential conditions; we must be in an environment that permits... See more
For a work of art to have this effect, it must in some sense resist us, cause a disturbance of our familiar modes of language and perception. To be receptive to this kind of disturbance requires certain basic experiential conditions; we must be in an environment that permits... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
The importance of lingering, to be intentional with your presence and understanding what draws you or repulses you from the art, the works, the what-have-yous.
Enter one of these attractions after reading Han, and it will look rather more sinister than an elaborate exercise in kitsch gimmickry, since he believes that the cultural symptoms of digital capitalism effectively degrade the very nature of experience. Han regularly invokes Walter Benjamin’s distinction between the two senses of experience... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
Digital Capitalism Drains Depth: Social media, immersive art, curated positivity—they flatten experience into shallow “events” (Erlebnis) rather than transformative encounters (Erfahrung). Art becomes consumable wallpaper rather than something that cracks you open.
Transcendence and transgression are twin dimensions of the negative: both involve going above and beyond the already known. Just as they are being extirpated from the erotic, so they are also losing their place in the aesthetic. Contemporary art, Han argues in Saving Beauty (2015), has become the expressive organ of a ‘ society of positivity ’, as... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
Under digital capitalism, the Other vanishes, and each of us becomes a flattening “I am seen so I am” construct. Surfaces (think: Jeff Koons, iPhones) get glossy, stripping away traces of labor, resistance, or nuance—what Han calls the “smooth aesthetic.”
An ‘echo chamber’ is a social structure from which other relevant voices have been actively discredited . Where an epistemic bubble merely omits contrary views, an echo chamber brings its members to actively distrust outsiders. In their book Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (2010), Kathleen Hall Jamieson and... See more
C Thi Nguyen • Why it’s as hard to escape an echo chamber as it is to flee a cult | Aeon Essays
echo chambers vs epistemic bubbles.
voices underminded vs voices unheard
With this triumph of positivity, the roughness of the demanding boss gives way to the smoothness (a key Han term) of the relentlessly encouraging coach. On this view, depression is the definitive malaise of the achievement society: the effect of being always made to feel that we’re running hopelessly behind our own ego-ideal, exhausting ourselves... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
Instead of being bossed around (“you must”), we now drive ourselves with “you can” positivity — and collapse under the pressure. Han argues this shift from superego guilt to ego‑ideal positivity fuels burnout and depression, because we’re constantly chasing an unattainable ideal
Ideas related to this collection