The writing of Mark Fisher brought me to philosophy and not since I first read/heard Fisher has anything resonated so deeply as Han. Thank you for presenting Han so lucidly.
I was expecting he would quote something from deleuze that perfectly fits with the theme discussed in the last two episodes “The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people from expressing themselves, but rather force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.”
Chul-Han is for me the best philosopher at the moment. His ability to explain everything in such a sharp, clear, simple but intense way is unique. I love him, his ideas have helped me a lot to understand the world and reality where we live now. Congratulations for your podcast and your great lucid ability to talk about Chul-Han philosophy making reference to all his books.
Another fantastic episode. I am now on a mission to get a copy of this guys work. The whole point about it being okay to not want a homogenius global society instead of a beautiful patchwork of diverse cultures and beliefs...amazing. That has been something I have felt for some time.
This reminds me a lot of Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative. Narrative is placed in the same existential category as Being and Time, something fundamental to human life. We create narratives about our existence, placing them in an order that makes sense, so that we can recall and retell them to others. It seems like Han incorporates this and examines the external types of narratives we live by. Perhaps, as he seems to suggest, we have become incredulous to not only metanarratives, per Lyotard, but to all narratives but our own. So we're essentially dealing with a form of solipsism, a predictable outcome of Cartesianism, but reached through the socioeconomic apparatus as well. I like it, it makes me want to write and apply it to anthropology
I wonder how this connects to the anti-narrative movements in literature, starting from modernism. In their case though, it's definitely a form of intellectual, conscious transcendence of the rigid forms of narrative (think of the novels of Cortazar and various forms of experimental fiction). It just makes me think that that idea has been disseminated onto the wider crowd and gone horribly wrong.
@@dereksnyder_4244 the whole "cogito ergo sum" dictum necessitates that the only thing we can know is our mind. Everything else is outside of it, and could potentially be false or not real
I remember finding Byung Chul Han on Wikipedia like two years ago, Thought he seemed more interesting than average, but couldn't find any translations of his work anywhere, only brief commentary on it. Happy to see you going a little more into it!
BTW, I've listened to all your channel's lectures, and I see a recent shift in the content, and it is philosophy in practice (vs. academic navel-gazing). Fantastic move!
Holy Toledo! He is so right. Never heard of him--until today (many thx for that!). Even if one is not a philosopher, the events of the recent past (esp since 2020) make perfect sense if viewed from one specific perspective. This guy called it, we know it, and to shout a collective "no, we won't comply" is really the only answer, IMHO.
I'm here to give you all the likes I can muster and a comment for the algorithm. Your content is a sweet piece of work. Thank you for making so much sense to me, every time. This channel has always proved to be useful in making me understand this plane of existence better.
@@carlyellison8498 Are you serious? I hope you do realize that a single comment can't be considered "gaming the algorithm". Jesus, lighten up, you sound like a bot trying to give me a creepy warning for something innocent I've done.
So happy to see this superinteresting philosopher getting some attention. It is (in my humble opinion) one of the very few writing today who still keeps a very broad perspective while at the same time understanding the inner and outer forces that fundamentally shapes the lives of people. Excellent video btw.
Yes we do not want millions of narcissists screaming their unique religions at each other! And yes I can’t believe I hadn’t discovered Han until about 2 months ago. I consider him a modern genius especially bc his explanations are full of clinical relevance and reflective of our actual reality ! This guy is not just another verbose philosopher
Another terrific podcast and very applicable to our times. Sage advice to critically examine how a loss of rituals and civility fractures our communities, and also what all of this "destructive positivity" and obsessive "optimizing" is actually accomplishing. I'm all for personal improvements as long as it doesn't become dogmatic and a means to flippantly judge others (like how the homeless are judged - harshly, with zero compassion). Dogma has a way of hampering the ability to listen and observe well. Eventually, it forces everyone to "pick a side". God help us if we collectively get to that point. It has never ended well historically.
What a great summary! I just run across the name of Byung Chul Han and I feel you are giving me a great overview of his ideas. Thanks so much for your work!
"be an idiot" is the advice given, you could combine that with being in hermit mode surely. with monk mode, i have no doubt you can combine them as well. but from this video, the conveyed antidote is "be an idiot"
I found it kinda funny that just yesterday I realised that the only way of reducing my anxiety is to be foolish, and now I see a video that confirms my bias, lol. Fool in Tarot means something like 'new beginning', it's about being open-minded. And anxiety comes from the opposite of that. It comes from belief that you know everything. You *know* that the person you like wouldn't like you, you *know* that your boss would fire you if you dare to speak up, you *know* how things are supposed to be done. But what if you actually know nothing at all? I got trapped by this praise of my intelligence since I was little, 'gifted child' and everything. But I always envied 'stupid' people. They always have the stuff done while I was just 'too smart' to do anything. Now I look back and regret that I wasn't foolish enough. That I didn't just try to do something I like because 'smart people are above it'. Praise is another form of manipulation. They say you are too smart to believe that society can change. They say that everything is a big conspiracy and you should be an idiot to believe otherwise. They make it seem like only idiots and 'naïve' people can have the true faith in anything. Just relax on a couch, turn on 'Rick and Morty' and feel superior to those idiots. Yeah, It really resonated with me. Being an 'idiot' to people who say stuff like that isn't actually that bad. I regret falling into this trap and caring for whether or not these people think I am smart.
Dear Steven West, My name is Walter and I have been following your podcast for years. I particularly enjoyed and appreciated the last posts about Byung-Chul Han. You just have to imagine a South Korean who thinks and writes in German, in the philosophical tradition of Hegel & Heidegger, among others. Just unbelievable! German as the language it really is: the language of philosophers and engineers. Well, there are two outstanding philosophers who I believe have not yet been translated into English: Konrad Paul Liessmann, his last work "Louder Lies" - "Nothing but lies", as well as the German Rüdiger Safranski, here "Evil or The Drama of Freedom", and "How much truth does man need?". By the way, Safranski's book about Heidegger is unparalleled. Please keep up the good work. Best regards, Walter
I really enjoyed your two episodes about Han, from which I read a book on Zen Buddhism many years ago but I was not aware of his present work since your podcast. I immediately went to the public library and found they have most of his books available and took a load of them home and enjoy reading them. He seems like a kind of philosopher I missed in the days in my academic phase in the philosophical department. He seems to write from a kind of spiritual point without the esoteric language often found there.
I think what Han says about things like the disappearance of rituals is very related to Nietzsche’s ideas about no-saying and yes-saying. I suspect a yes-saying child-like person would be someone who does not fall to the desolation that comes from the lack of stability and tradition, and instead is able to create their own rituals.
There is a good long Veritas Forum talk called “The Closing of the American Mind” with Johnathan Haidt (atheist social psychologist and author) and Tim Keller (Presbyterian pastor and author) where they discuss this cultural anxiety. Haidt specifically mentions that there are increasingly fewer centripetal forces, things that hold different people together in society, especially since the 60s-70s Civil Rights era. Their thesis is that shared ritual, religious or otherwise, is essential to avoiding terrible social catastrophe.
(next episode Oct. 9th) That's a good thing for me. I need to hear these more than once to get a better understanding. I also like the concept of, entertaining ideas without having to accept them.
Yeah I am surprised I've never heard of him. I really have tried to learn the parts of philosophy I wasn't taught when studying it. This guy seems interesting. And I do find myself too melancholic for most people around me. But I thought this unrelenting positivity might also be a particularly American thing (btw I know I have St. George's flag on my profile: I'm not English though :P). Bookclubs and things are really helpful for reforming communities though. And I have found a certain community online as well, in a way people couldn't in the past. Nietzsche, for example, never found his group of people that could truly relate to him. He calls out to an audience without knowing whether it existed. Maybe he would've found them if he lived now.
No, I am an Idiot!!! My shirt has the coyote silhouette smashing into my chest!!! LoL 😵💫 I agree with your presentation, as we are losing the ability to be different while we are remaining exactly the same!!!
Byung Chui Han is the necessary voice in the modern world saying that everyone needs to shut the fuck up for a few minutes because your opinion or whatever deep profound insight you think needs to be shared immediately isn’t actually important.
I think you missed something dramatic about the gnosticism inherent in these groupings like conspiricists are unconscious ways of reestablishing meaning structures or group identity in light of the digital fracturings. i think Death corner pods latest episode explores this in interesting avenues, esp new gods funeral series
“We used to have communities without communication. Now we have communication without communities” This is not necessarily true. It discounts body language as a form of communication. This is also why it is absurd when people reference “online communities”. Communities are physically bound by time and space. This allows for all forms of communication including those that are not audible or written. Hand shake, smile, a nod , just witnessing how a person is walking.
Haven't read Byung-Chul Han, but based on your discussions of his work, he seems to draw from the philosophy/ethics of Emmanuel Levinas -- a remarkable thinker.
So my question is, how can i be an idiot? Your show make me want to learn more, and to get more books, and really it send me deep into the wisdom which as you said, this days it so easy to provide yourself. So tell me, being idiot cant mean to be an ignorant. We need to keep learning how to activate our discretion throughout the wisdom of philosophy. Isn't it?
It sounds insulting, but I think being an idiot in the context of this topic is to do the opposite of what is unhealthy in our society. We live in the information age where we receive and pass around information at a rapid pace. The video describes clearly how this is unhealthy so you can review it again, but in short, people take information and share them in a shallow way. So to be an idiot in this context is to slow down. Take your time taking in information, forming your opinion, and sharing it. Allow yourself to search outside of what is readily available, like going out into the world and observing. From the sound of it, you're already spending time studying and seeking out information so you're doing OK.
The symbolic life, as Carl Jung called it, or the rituals of Byung Chul Han are fully explored in Jungian psychology and the mystery of dreams and the collective unconscious. Rituals are mostly connected with nature and so with the great mother archetype (see Erich Neumann "The Origin of the Consciousness" and "The Great Mother").
Is this stuff not obvious to everyone? What did people think rituals where for before this book? Guys, culture literally has the word cult in it, and cults have rituals. This was the purpose of schools, go to them long enough and you can even become a Doctor, an indoctrinated person. It's extremely obvious that all of civilization depends on everyone being on more or less the same page, believing the same things, consuming the same media, books, movies, music, ideology, language, moral code, values, etc. Ever seen a school of fish? Ever notice how they all swim in the same direction and turn at the same time? Words have meaning, we didn't just randomly name everything. All sports, festivals, celebrations, are to bring people together under one banner, or flag as we like to call it. There is no difference between the a cross, a country's flag, and the MacDonald's logo, it's all symbology meant to unite people under a common belief. The only difference between a church and a school is what you learn, but knowledge was never the point, the point was always that everyone learns the same thing. The point was that everyone was indoctrinated into the same cult, because the cult, or culture, is the foundation of a civilization. Why do we need a book to tell us this? It's written on the walls all over the place. Maybe it sounds like some evil plot and mass conspiracy or something, but it's not, people used to understand this stuff and it was stuff that worked so it persisted. Don't murder, don't steal, don't screw your neighbors girlfriend, do people today really think that this came from some guy going up to a mountain to hallucinate? These are very obvious solutions to solving group dynamics. Don't want your whole tribe to fall apart then write that stuff in stone, and if you have to then tell all the savages that God wrote it and they'll burn in eternal hellfire if they don't go along with it, problem solved. Moses wasn't some messenger of God, he was solution oriented, and his followers where illiterate and superstitious. I can't believe people today acting like civilization is some modern invention when in reality it's been following the same basic recipe for thousands of years just using different spice. The what is happening today is that we're transitioning from multiple dominant cultures into one global culture, due to our relatively new way of communicating using the internet. This is coming with some growing pains, just like it did when many small tribes transitioned into bigger countries. Back in the day when Greece and Egypt met, the wise people tried to join their cultures together by merging their religions, wanting to facilitate a peaceful transition. But of course the savages didn't like them messing with their cults so they instead decided to slaughter each other. And to this day many would still prefer murder and death than to give up their cult in favor of a new global cult. That's why everything seems so chaotic now, because we're losing our old cult and we've yet to agree on a new one to stabilize into. Things like schools, indoctrination, government propaganda, etc, only works at holding a cult together when people can be kept relatively isolated from other cultures. Once people from different cults start influencing each other this falls apart, and once it has deteriorated a new culture forms in it's place and new traditions emerge. There is nothing new about any of this, it has happened many times.
Ignore this, it's just for personal reference when returning to this vid 18:58 Neoliberalism/globalisation undermines the importance of the difference in cultures. Lose identity and senses of meaning. 'Terror of the same'. 8billion narcissists all with their own world views all competing with each other in complete peace is homogenising everyone which is bad. Healthy boundaries between different cultures is what should seek. Differences are healthy in relationships to people, as it is in society. Without questioning self there is no balance and no power to make any changes in a functioning democracy. No reasoning skills/ability. 'We used too have communities without communication, now we have communication without communities.' What is meant by the first part is a lot of what binds communities are norms that don't need to be spoken as everyone has an understanding/agreement of said norms. Nowadays there are no binding norms in communities, but a bunch of individuals spouting their individual perspective on other individuals, each with their with their unique perspectives. Public spaces are disappearing.
Where have you been Stephen? You added advertising so you could make more content, but them slowed down. It's been over a month and I miss that last arc you were on. I want to hear about post-structuralism and whether it is relevant or practical.
We will see where this goes, but it almost seems as if Han (if this is indeed his own framing of Narcissism, not Stephen's interpretation) is calling all of philosophy Narcissistic ....given that the bedrock of philosphical discourse is the questioning of social beliefs and their origins as well as consequences. Maybe it's my own interpretaion that there doesn't seem to be a good delineation between a person acting in their own self-interest regarding social norms, vs that same person legitimately questioning the reasons for, and authenticity of, those social norms and behaviors. Or maybe I'm just a legit Narcissist...who knows?
I live the IPNT life. I prefer not to, stay in my lane, stay hydrated, stay moisturized, live in the moment, chase your inner hobbies and don’t be bothered by the “others” they are mostly hell from my experiences, and don’t worry about others opinions, much like butt holes, we all have them and they stink. 😂❤
Well that varies depending on what is "socially acceptable" and expected culturally though many are taught to be polite agreeable etc. Keep calm carry on, chin up just let all your rights disappear don't complain...
@@annalisavajda252 One can critique what’s wrong until hell freezes over or just focus on what’s good & right & push it. Enough people will follow that which rings true, is adaptive, & effective. People just don’t know. I sought out videos on YT on manners & traditional behaviors, customs, & style. I polished my game & has given me not just competence & confidence, but also measurable social power. I set an example everywhere I go.
Just a quick thing i wanna say again, opening up borders and beeing against them/ saying they are irrelevant is unequal to saying culture doesnt matter. Its useless to say things like "im canadian" when u can say things about ur actual culture (i cant find a good example right now). If you want all of the world to become one state that doesnt mean u are neglecting regional differencies, it means you are against seeing the state a person was born in as a important thing just bc its a state, a label. Its a free label that doesnt say anything and has no real worth. For example when i live at the spain border to france, i am considered as spanish even tho i might have had big french influence in my life. Its just a worthless label like we have it right now, but regional culture isnt worthless, its an actualy difference.
The first point is simply what we have been seeing in English towns on weekend nights for years, people behaving in antisocial and bestial ways in public for the reason that they suppose their freedom to consist solely of offensive defiance, seeing any force that would challenge them as a limitation on freedom, when in fact they have been determined from the outset by basic drives and self disgust at having no grounds of their own for creative free actions.
you need homogeneity within groups and heterogeneity between them. in some real sense, participating in difference is the negation of a thing. you can't become wholly participatory in 'the other' without losing yourself, i.e. homogeneity between groups, or the annihilation of difference. difference in a very real sense is the void.
@@Wille-ti4vy Well, that would take a pretty long explanation, but I will say (a bit metaphorically) that it has to do with recognizing value in what connects us to the ground.
The writing of Mark Fisher brought me to philosophy and not since I first read/heard Fisher has anything resonated so deeply as Han. Thank you for presenting Han so lucidly.
I'm often caught mumbling under my breath 'f##k me, no wonder Mark Fisher killed himself'.
Rest in Power, Mark.
Have you read Rorty?
I have also seen a through line with these commentators and read Mark Fisher before Han as well.
He hasn't. Rorty is irrelevant.
Agree 100%
Byung Chul Han is absoloutly fundemental for these times.
I was expecting he would quote something from deleuze that perfectly fits with the theme discussed in the last two episodes
“The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people from expressing themselves, but rather force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.”
I've been seeing this author all over my UA-cam feed and I finally decided to get his book today. I've never been so hyped to read someone's work!
Han's thesis is the clearest distillation of our current malaise, in my opinion.
Chul-Han is for me the best philosopher at the moment. His ability to explain everything in such a sharp, clear, simple but intense way is unique. I love him, his ideas have helped me a lot to understand the world and reality where we live now.
Congratulations for your podcast and your great lucid ability to talk about Chul-Han philosophy making reference to all his books.
Another fantastic episode. I am now on a mission to get a copy of this guys work.
The whole point about it being okay to not want a homogenius global society instead of a beautiful patchwork of diverse cultures and beliefs...amazing. That has been something I have felt for some time.
This reminds me a lot of Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative. Narrative is placed in the same existential category as Being and Time, something fundamental to human life. We create narratives about our existence, placing them in an order that makes sense, so that we can recall and retell them to others. It seems like Han incorporates this and examines the external types of narratives we live by. Perhaps, as he seems to suggest, we have become incredulous to not only metanarratives, per Lyotard, but to all narratives but our own. So we're essentially dealing with a form of solipsism, a predictable outcome of Cartesianism, but reached through the socioeconomic apparatus as well. I like it, it makes me want to write and apply it to anthropology
I wonder how this connects to the anti-narrative movements in literature, starting from modernism. In their case though, it's definitely a form of intellectual, conscious transcendence of the rigid forms of narrative (think of the novels of Cortazar and various forms of experimental fiction). It just makes me think that that idea has been disseminated onto the wider crowd and gone horribly wrong.
Could you explain how solipsism is a predictable outcome of Cartesianism? I’m unfamiliar. But I like your points
@@dereksnyder_4244 the whole "cogito ergo sum" dictum necessitates that the only thing we can know is our mind. Everything else is outside of it, and could potentially be false or not real
These past two episodes have blown my mind. Thank you.
This channel inspires me to learn more about philosophy.
I remember finding Byung Chul Han on Wikipedia like two years ago, Thought he seemed more interesting than average, but couldn't find any translations of his work anywhere, only brief commentary on it.
Happy to see you going a little more into it!
BTW, I've listened to all your channel's lectures, and I see a recent shift in the content, and it is philosophy in practice (vs. academic navel-gazing). Fantastic move!
Can't wait for your new episode!:)
He said the next episode would be on October 9...
Holy Toledo! He is so right. Never heard of him--until today (many thx for that!). Even if one is not a philosopher, the events of the recent past (esp since 2020) make perfect sense if viewed from one specific perspective. This guy called it, we know it, and to shout a collective "no, we won't comply" is really the only answer, IMHO.
I'm here to give you all the likes I can muster and a comment for the algorithm. Your content is a sweet piece of work. Thank you for making so much sense to me, every time. This channel has always proved to be useful in making me understand this plane of existence better.
@@carlyellison8498 Are you serious? I hope you do realize that a single comment can't be considered "gaming the algorithm". Jesus, lighten up, you sound like a bot trying to give me a creepy warning for something innocent I've done.
This video doesn’t show up in my watch history. I found it again because I gave it a Like. 👍
Where did you go, Stephen? Hope you're doing okay! It's been a while since this episode.
So happy to see this superinteresting philosopher getting some attention. It is (in my humble opinion) one of the very few writing today who still keeps a very broad perspective while at the same time understanding the inner and outer forces that fundamentally shapes the lives of people. Excellent video btw.
Yes we do not want millions of narcissists screaming their unique religions at each other! And yes I can’t believe I hadn’t discovered Han until about 2 months ago. I consider him a modern genius especially bc his explanations are full of clinical relevance and reflective of our actual reality ! This guy is not just another verbose philosopher
Incredible eye opener. Thanks for the intro to Byung Chul Han.
I’ve been listening to you for years, just wanted to write my appreciation :)
We miss u Stephen :(
I had never heard of Byung Chul Han, but his thinking resonates very much with me
Another terrific podcast and very applicable to our times. Sage advice to critically examine how a loss of rituals and civility fractures our communities, and also what all of this "destructive positivity" and obsessive "optimizing" is actually accomplishing. I'm all for personal improvements as long as it doesn't become dogmatic and a means to flippantly judge others (like how the homeless are judged - harshly, with zero compassion). Dogma has a way of hampering the ability to listen and observe well. Eventually, it forces everyone to "pick a side". God help us if we collectively get to that point. It has never ended well historically.
Hi Stephan I'm following you for many years now .your videos are just incredible. I am not English speaker but it helps me to understand from within
What a great summary! I just run across the name of Byung Chul Han and I feel you are giving me a great overview of his ideas. Thanks so much for your work!
So Byung Chul Han's antidote to the achievement society is to go hermit mode or monk mode? That is a well-known ancient solution.
"be an idiot" is the advice given, you could combine that with being in hermit mode surely. with monk mode, i have no doubt you can combine them as well. but from this video, the conveyed antidote is "be an idiot"
I found it kinda funny that just yesterday I realised that the only way of reducing my anxiety is to be foolish, and now I see a video that confirms my bias, lol.
Fool in Tarot means something like 'new beginning', it's about being open-minded. And anxiety comes from the opposite of that. It comes from belief that you know everything. You *know* that the person you like wouldn't like you, you *know* that your boss would fire you if you dare to speak up, you *know* how things are supposed to be done. But what if you actually know nothing at all?
I got trapped by this praise of my intelligence since I was little, 'gifted child' and everything. But I always envied 'stupid' people. They always have the stuff done while I was just 'too smart' to do anything. Now I look back and regret that I wasn't foolish enough. That I didn't just try to do something I like because 'smart people are above it'.
Praise is another form of manipulation. They say you are too smart to believe that society can change. They say that everything is a big conspiracy and you should be an idiot to believe otherwise. They make it seem like only idiots and 'naïve' people can have the true faith in anything. Just relax on a couch, turn on 'Rick and Morty' and feel superior to those idiots.
Yeah, It really resonated with me. Being an 'idiot' to people who say stuff like that isn't actually that bad. I regret falling into this trap and caring for whether or not these people think I am smart.
Dear Steven West,
My name is Walter and I have been following your podcast for years.
I particularly enjoyed and appreciated the last posts about Byung-Chul Han.
You just have to imagine a South Korean who thinks and writes in German, in the philosophical tradition of Hegel & Heidegger, among others.
Just unbelievable!
German as the language it really is: the language of philosophers and engineers.
Well, there are two outstanding philosophers who I believe have not yet been translated into English:
Konrad Paul Liessmann, his last work "Louder Lies" - "Nothing but lies",
as well as the German Rüdiger Safranski, here "Evil or The Drama of Freedom", and "How much truth does man need?".
By the way, Safranski's book about Heidegger is unparalleled.
Please keep up the good work.
Best regards,
Walter
I really enjoyed your two episodes about Han, from which I read a book on Zen Buddhism many years ago but I was not aware of his present work since your podcast. I immediately went to the public library and found they have most of his books available and took a load of them home and enjoy reading them. He seems like a kind of philosopher I missed in the days in my academic phase in the philosophical department. He seems to write from a kind of spiritual point without the esoteric language often found there.
Wonderful work!!
So brilliant and so dark…
Love it. Thank you.
I think what Han says about things like the disappearance of rituals is very related to Nietzsche’s ideas about no-saying and yes-saying. I suspect a yes-saying child-like person would be someone who does not fall to the desolation that comes from the lack of stability and tradition, and instead is able to create their own rituals.
❤ this stuff.
Man, i folllow you for 7 years, i wish i had more money to throw your way, your work is just awesome, please keep it up.
Byung Chul Han is Korean, and his work is originally in German. He's been in Central Europe for two decades. He's Catholic.
He might be catholic but he's written a book about zen buddhism.
@@9000ck interesting, what is the title?
Philosophie des Zen-Buddhismus
There is a good long Veritas Forum talk called “The Closing of the American Mind” with Johnathan Haidt (atheist social psychologist and author) and Tim Keller (Presbyterian pastor and author) where they discuss this cultural anxiety. Haidt specifically mentions that there are increasingly fewer centripetal forces, things that hold different people together in society, especially since the 60s-70s Civil Rights era. Their thesis is that shared ritual, religious or otherwise, is essential to avoiding terrible social catastrophe.
Well done
Chan says in a sentence what most philosophers say in an entire manuscript
Again --- thanks for sharing.... Love 'Be an idiot' .... slow things down and question them.
"be the idiot" that's a hell of an advice. context makes this unironically true
I AM SO HAPPPYYYYY!!!! Thanks for the upload.
Side note: WE HAVE A DYSTOPIAN PRESENT AND ITS OUR JOB TO FIGHT IT AND FASCISM!
So good ! thx!
Great stuff 👍
Arrows --- yeah ... the relation to the holy other .... thanks for sharing.
Hope you are doing well man, we‘d all love a new episode, but that’s way more important :)
(next episode Oct. 9th) That's a good thing for me. I need to hear these more than once to get a better understanding. I also like the concept of, entertaining ideas without having to accept them.
that was amazing. i think u should talk about zizek next especially his woke capitalism take, i think u are onto something.
i wish his books were on audible. I would buy it instantly
The dystopia were in is like Blade Runner.
Finally, some good fucking content
You know it is, every single time, you know what you're getting into before listening.
Find somewhere in your mind the dichotomy between discourse and content and then maintain it like your soul depends on it.
It’s not disappearing, it’s being strangled. The first crime of every tyrant is always regicide.
No tyrant would stand a chance when the general public would have a backbone to sit straight.
Yeah I am surprised I've never heard of him. I really have tried to learn the parts of philosophy I wasn't taught when studying it. This guy seems interesting. And I do find myself too melancholic for most people around me. But I thought this unrelenting positivity might also be a particularly American thing (btw I know I have St. George's flag on my profile: I'm not English though :P). Bookclubs and things are really helpful for reforming communities though. And I have found a certain community online as well, in a way people couldn't in the past. Nietzsche, for example, never found his group of people that could truly relate to him. He calls out to an audience without knowing whether it existed. Maybe he would've found them if he lived now.
so good, thank you 😊
Soma sounds great. I'm in.
Wow I’ll have to take a minute and think about that
This is so brilliant, thank you I'm going to delve deep and love Hans take. I'm glad to be an idiot 😂
Any ideas why the last episode was never released on October 9th??
yep we defo bave nu worl
No, I am an Idiot!!! My shirt has the coyote silhouette smashing into my chest!!! LoL 😵💫 I agree with your presentation, as we are losing the ability to be different while we are remaining exactly the same!!!
Byung Chui Han is the necessary voice in the modern world saying that everyone needs to shut the fuck up for a few minutes because your opinion or whatever deep profound insight you think needs to be shared immediately isn’t actually important.
constructive negativity!
Nice podcast bro 👍
28:24 I wonder who has it worse. The people who grew up never knowing that friction, or some of us who remember it and can see the difference now.
I think you missed something dramatic about the gnosticism inherent in these groupings like conspiricists are unconscious ways of reestablishing meaning structures or group identity in light of the digital fracturings. i think Death corner pods latest episode explores this in interesting avenues, esp new gods funeral series
Excellent!
What the hell this is good!!
“We used to have communities without communication. Now we have communication without communities”
This is not necessarily true. It discounts body language as a form of communication. This is also why it is absurd when people reference “online communities”. Communities are physically bound by time and space. This allows for all forms of communication including those that are not audible or written. Hand shake, smile, a nod , just witnessing how a person is walking.
Awesome channel 🤩
Haven't read Byung-Chul Han, but based on your discussions of his work, he seems to draw from the philosophy/ethics of Emmanuel Levinas -- a remarkable thinker.
I thought of Enrique Ducell at first who was heavily influenced by Levinas. I have never read Levinas but he is on my list!
@@KristinaArriaga Start with Totality and Infinity :)
@@theweekendstead8657 That is exactly what my favorite philosophy professor told me!
@@KristinaArriaga Good luck! :)
So my question is, how can i be an idiot? Your show make me want to learn more, and to get more books, and really it send me deep into the wisdom which as you said, this days it so easy to provide yourself.
So tell me, being idiot cant mean to be an ignorant. We need to keep learning how to activate our discretion throughout the wisdom of philosophy. Isn't it?
It sounds insulting, but I think being an idiot in the context of this topic is to do the opposite of what is unhealthy in our society. We live in the information age where we receive and pass around information at a rapid pace. The video describes clearly how this is unhealthy so you can review it again, but in short, people take information and share them in a shallow way.
So to be an idiot in this context is to slow down. Take your time taking in information, forming your opinion, and sharing it. Allow yourself to search outside of what is readily available, like going out into the world and observing. From the sound of it, you're already spending time studying and seeking out information so you're doing OK.
The symbolic life, as Carl Jung called it, or the rituals of Byung Chul Han are fully explored in Jungian psychology and the mystery of dreams and the collective unconscious. Rituals are mostly connected with nature and so with the great mother archetype (see Erich Neumann "The Origin of the Consciousness" and "The Great Mother").
Everything he said. Yes.
Han writes in German. Unless your German is flawless you might not be able to fully appreciate his genius.
Ok
But for the rest of us are we still allowed to discuss it?
Good thing I'm fluent in not caring, and reading it anyways 😎👍
Philosophical text seems to be largely subjective irregardless of language. It has a tonal quality.
Gustave Thibon said that a long time ago. Nothing new under the sun.
It’s 1984 for some, Brave New World for others. Sometimes a mixture of both.
I aspire to being an idiot as described by Han.
If more people would embrace the positives of being wrong, I think we'd all get much closer to the truth. I could be wrong though ;)
Very nice episode ser! In terms of rituals and slowing down the time, are you planning to do something on Levinas? Thanks for everything you do!
Pluto in Aquarius ♒️ Uranus hehe
I wonder if the writers of the show 'community' were deeply inspired by Byung Chul Han.
Is this stuff not obvious to everyone? What did people think rituals where for before this book? Guys, culture literally has the word cult in it, and cults have rituals. This was the purpose of schools, go to them long enough and you can even become a Doctor, an indoctrinated person. It's extremely obvious that all of civilization depends on everyone being on more or less the same page, believing the same things, consuming the same media, books, movies, music, ideology, language, moral code, values, etc. Ever seen a school of fish? Ever notice how they all swim in the same direction and turn at the same time? Words have meaning, we didn't just randomly name everything. All sports, festivals, celebrations, are to bring people together under one banner, or flag as we like to call it. There is no difference between the a cross, a country's flag, and the MacDonald's logo, it's all symbology meant to unite people under a common belief. The only difference between a church and a school is what you learn, but knowledge was never the point, the point was always that everyone learns the same thing. The point was that everyone was indoctrinated into the same cult, because the cult, or culture, is the foundation of a civilization. Why do we need a book to tell us this? It's written on the walls all over the place. Maybe it sounds like some evil plot and mass conspiracy or something, but it's not, people used to understand this stuff and it was stuff that worked so it persisted. Don't murder, don't steal, don't screw your neighbors girlfriend, do people today really think that this came from some guy going up to a mountain to hallucinate? These are very obvious solutions to solving group dynamics. Don't want your whole tribe to fall apart then write that stuff in stone, and if you have to then tell all the savages that God wrote it and they'll burn in eternal hellfire if they don't go along with it, problem solved. Moses wasn't some messenger of God, he was solution oriented, and his followers where illiterate and superstitious. I can't believe people today acting like civilization is some modern invention when in reality it's been following the same basic recipe for thousands of years just using different spice.
The what is happening today is that we're transitioning from multiple dominant cultures into one global culture, due to our relatively new way of communicating using the internet. This is coming with some growing pains, just like it did when many small tribes transitioned into bigger countries. Back in the day when Greece and Egypt met, the wise people tried to join their cultures together by merging their religions, wanting to facilitate a peaceful transition. But of course the savages didn't like them messing with their cults so they instead decided to slaughter each other. And to this day many would still prefer murder and death than to give up their cult in favor of a new global cult. That's why everything seems so chaotic now, because we're losing our old cult and we've yet to agree on a new one to stabilize into. Things like schools, indoctrination, government propaganda, etc, only works at holding a cult together when people can be kept relatively isolated from other cultures. Once people from different cults start influencing each other this falls apart, and once it has deteriorated a new culture forms in it's place and new traditions emerge. There is nothing new about any of this, it has happened many times.
Ignore this, it's just for personal reference when returning to this vid
18:58 Neoliberalism/globalisation undermines the importance of the difference in cultures. Lose identity and senses of meaning. 'Terror of the same'. 8billion narcissists all with their own world views all competing with each other in complete peace is homogenising everyone which is bad. Healthy boundaries between different cultures is what should seek. Differences are healthy in relationships to people, as it is in society. Without questioning self there is no balance and no power to make any changes in a functioning democracy. No reasoning skills/ability.
'We used too have communities without communication, now we have communication without communities.' What is meant by the first part is a lot of what binds communities are norms that don't need to be spoken as everyone has an understanding/agreement of said norms. Nowadays there are no binding norms in communities, but a bunch of individuals spouting their individual perspective on other individuals, each with their with their unique perspectives.
Public spaces are disappearing.
Where have you been Stephen? You added advertising so you could make more content, but them slowed down. It's been over a month and I miss that last arc you were on. I want to hear about post-structuralism and whether it is relevant or practical.
Hey, I love your podcast but has been a long time, it's all good?
Lao Tsu suggests ritual is the husk of true faith.
so a social ritual rots our genuine interaction to each other and our participation in our society.
Do Mark Fisher :)
We will see where this goes, but it almost seems as if Han (if this is indeed his own framing of Narcissism, not Stephen's interpretation) is calling all of philosophy Narcissistic ....given that the bedrock of philosphical discourse is the questioning of social beliefs and their origins as well as consequences.
Maybe it's my own interpretaion that there doesn't seem to be a good delineation between a person acting in their own self-interest regarding social norms, vs that same person legitimately questioning the reasons for, and authenticity of, those social norms and behaviors.
Or maybe I'm just a legit Narcissist...who knows?
I had the same thoughts about social norms when I listened to this last night. Going to re-listen again now.
I live the IPNT life. I prefer not to, stay in my lane, stay hydrated, stay moisturized, live in the moment, chase your inner hobbies and don’t be bothered by the “others” they are mostly hell from my experiences, and don’t worry about others opinions, much like butt holes, we all have them and they stink. 😂❤
Try rene girard "apocalypse now".
Pessimism could be called a positive negativity…
When it comes to manners & ritual, just promote them through education and people will adopt them.
Well that varies depending on what is "socially acceptable" and expected culturally though many are taught to be polite agreeable etc. Keep calm carry on, chin up just let all your rights disappear don't complain...
@@annalisavajda252 One can critique what’s wrong until hell freezes over or just focus on what’s good & right & push it. Enough people will follow that which rings true, is adaptive, & effective. People just don’t know.
I sought out videos on YT on manners & traditional behaviors, customs, & style. I polished my game & has given me not just competence & confidence, but also measurable social power. I set an example everywhere I go.
sounds like I am listening to a normal intelligent person instead of a turgid philosopher- how very dare he! Great job, will be back.
“Take a shower go to work”
Just a quick thing i wanna say again, opening up borders and beeing against them/ saying they are irrelevant is unequal to saying culture doesnt matter. Its useless to say things like "im canadian" when u can say things about ur actual culture (i cant find a good example right now). If you want all of the world to become one state that doesnt mean u are neglecting regional differencies, it means you are against seeing the state a person was born in as a important thing just bc its a state, a label. Its a free label that doesnt say anything and has no real worth. For example when i live at the spain border to france, i am considered as spanish even tho i might have had big french influence in my life. Its just a worthless label like we have it right now, but regional culture isnt worthless, its an actualy difference.
❤
The first point is simply what we have been seeing in English towns on weekend nights for years, people behaving in antisocial and bestial ways in public for the reason that they suppose their freedom to consist solely of offensive defiance, seeing any force that would challenge them as a limitation on freedom, when in fact they have been determined from the outset by basic drives and self disgust at having no grounds of their own for creative free actions.
you need homogeneity within groups and heterogeneity between them. in some real sense, participating in difference is the negation of a thing. you can't become wholly participatory in 'the other' without losing yourself, i.e. homogeneity between groups, or the annihilation of difference. difference in a very real sense is the void.
Does Han reference Carl Jung? Because many of his ideas flow straight from Jung’s.
How so? Interesting.
@@Wille-ti4vy Well, that would take a pretty long explanation, but I will say (a bit metaphorically) that it has to do with recognizing value in what connects us to the ground.
I think we didn't hear from him, because his thoughts are not very original?
DENIAL is SOMA