Spring Reading Group (The Burnout Society, Meeting #1)

The Spring reading group at Lake Ontario Park begins in late April, we will be reading through Byung Chul Han's book The Burnout Society in two sessions, one in April and the other in May.

Here is the book blurb from the publisher:

Our competitive, service-oriented societies are taking a toll on the late-modern individual. Rather than improving life, multitasking, "user-friendly" technology, and the culture of convenience are producing disorders that range from depression to attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. Byung-Chul Han interprets the spreading malaise as an inability to manage negative experiences in an age characterized by excessive positivity and the universal availability of people and goods. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena as well. Denouncing a world in which every against-the-grain response can lead to further disempowerment, he draws on literature, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences to explore the stakes of sacrificing intermittent intellectual reflection for constant neural connection.

You can download the book for free here, and listen to it here.

For the first meeting we will read through the first half of the book, covering chapters titled "Neuronal Power", "Beyond Disciplinary Society", "Profound Boredom" and "Vita Activa".

Depending on the number of people interested, we will either discuss the chapters as one group (if a dozen people or smaller), or break into smaller groups of 6 people, moving chairs around after 45 minutes so you have the opportunity to converse with many people. Please be sure to bring your own lawn chair for sitting on, as that enables us to sit somewhere quiet in the park. Hope to see you there!

Cheers,
Colin