“A Documentary about how Hustle Culture, Workaholism, Toxic Productivity, Self Improvement, and Self-Help gurus like Gary Vaynerchuk function as a form of Social Control which the Philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls Psychopolitics. Psychopolitics is a form of smart power that governs our Neoliberal Society of Control and Hustle Culture and Positive Psychology (Toxic Positivity) are just some of its many manifestations. It is leading to burnout, depression, and anxiety.” (1Dime channel)
Honestly sometimes I find the concepts used by Byung-Chul Han a bit simplistic, and also a bit redundant, considering that others have been using nearly the same terms. For me it is a bit unclear why psychopolitics is better than neuropolitics, or why smart power is somehow better than soft power. Some of these terms feel a bit too fancy or just slightly upgraded versions of something else. When calling something ‘smart’, just because everything tend to be called ‘smart’ nowadays, there is always the pitfall of reinforcing or even unwittingly hyping up the very things one tries to warn against.
That being said, this documentary is voicing out a general dissatisfaction and sense of doom regarding work – bullshit jobs and the whole protestant ethic, as well as the entire self help industry that is trying hard to re-educate and optimize everything in times of climate crisis, dwindling opportunities and general burnout. There also more and more the feeling that the so-called CEO mindset is being sold and advertised to everyone. This is not anymore the get rich quick scams online but an inescapable reality of theological proportions, of insanely rich CEOs (what the Chinese are already calling their own rich as crazy rich) acting like everybody else is disposable.
TimeSpace Warps 