The Consumption of the Soul

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls the world we’ve built the Achievement Society — a civilisation that replaced external discipline with internal compulsion. Nobody forces you to hustle.

You do it to yourself, freely, because you’ve been shaped to believe that relentless production and consumption are the same thing as being alive. We are no longer obedience-subjects, Han writes, but achievement-subjects — entrepreneurs of ourselves, forever optimising, performing, acquiring.