Andreas Vlach

In the achievement society, we suffer from an internalised pressure to achieve – to do more, to be more, to have more. Whether we are aware of it or not, we have internalised the capitalist work ethic to the degree that our successes and failures weigh heavily on our individual shoulders. The primary result of the achievement society is burnout –

Our story arcs are a legacy from the Greeks, who gave us tragedy, a genre built on rises and falls that peak with a climax. Aristotle called the moment of maximum intensity peripeteia — which translates to reversal — and named the aftermath catharsis, the release of emotional energy. That’s how we all know pride comes before fall and that the

In his book Anti-Time Management, Richie Norton boils this philosophy down to two steps. One: ‘Decide who you want to be.’ Two: ‘Act from that identity immediately.’

“Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.” — Mahatma Gandhi

Of course, things have not quite worked out this way. As the late nineteenth-century French sociologist Émile Durkheim perceived, the flipside of free-floating autonomy is anomie — a society without any authoritative norms. Pried from closed communities, many people suffer from pathologies of isolation and purposelessness. Family breakdown, drug

Autorität und Autoritarismus ist ein erwartungsstabilisierender Kurzschluss. Auf der anderen Seite ist dieses Geschenk natürlich vergiftet und in gewisser Hinsicht prekär, da die Erwartungssicherheit auf reduktionistischen, meist falschen und oft gefährlichen Ideologien basiert, die einen in der komplexen Welt nicht sehr weit tragen.

Es gibt

First, decide who you want to be. This holds at any level—as an individual, as a team, as a community, as a nation. What do you want to stand for? What are your principles and values? Who do you wish to become?