Capitalism and the Death Drive
Philosophy for Tricking and Treating
Capitalism and the Death Drive 🔍
Byung-Chul Han 🔍
What we call growth today is in fact a tumorous growth, a cancerous proliferation which is disrupting the social organism. These tumours endlessly metastasize and grow with an inexplicable, deadly vitality. At a certain point this growth is no longer productive, but rather destructive. Capitalism passed this point long ago. Its destructive forces cause not only ecological and social catastrophes but also mental collapse. The destructive compulsion to perform combines self-affirmation and self-destruction in one. We optimize ourselves to death. Brutal competition ends in destruction. It produces an emotional coldness and indifference towards others as well as towards one’s own self.
The devastating consequences of capitalism suggest that a death drive is at work. Freud initially introduced the death drive hesitantly, but later admitted that he ‘couldn’t think beyond it’ as the idea of the death drive became increasingly central to his thought. Today, it is impossible to think about capitalism without considering the death drive.
Capitalism and the Death Drive
Why Revolution Is Impossible Today
The Total Exploitation of the Human Being
Inside the Digital Panopticon
Only What Is Dead Is Transparent
Dataism and Nihilism
Torturous Emptiness
Jumping Humans
Where Do the Refugees Come From?
Where the Wild Things Are
Who Is a Refugee?
Beauty Lies Yonder, in the Foreign1
The Big Rush
In Your Face: How the Arts are Turning into Pornography. Or: On the Compulsion to Get Down to it, Without Seduction
The End of Liberalism: The Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Consequences
It Is Eros That Defeats Depression
Capitalism Dislikes Silence
COVID-19 Has Reduced Us to a ‘Society of Survival’
‘I Am Sorry, But These Are the Facts’
Ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity
DISCLAIMER: The Journal of Lingering Sanity is a reader-supported publication from Old Gold Mountain.
You can either try to change the world or you can try to change yourself. They work in opposite directions.
What use the constant, bitter, conceptual critiques of our society, economy, polity...to rail against the dying of the sun? The state engendered by these preoccupations is itself deadly. I am in this field of confusion, where ignorant armies clash by night. My task is to save myself and those I love who are willing to come with me. This task requires self knowledge, a keen wit and the ability to suffer without complaint. There is no point in wishing the world were different. No point in noting its deviltry...unless it is to use this knowledge to help save my little band of fellow refugees as we cross the waterless desert.
What does it mean to save myself? It means to retain my humaness, compassion, sense of humor, friendship with God.