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What Hacker News says
- I'd suggest Byung Chul Han.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byung-Chul_Han
Checkout The Burnout Society, The Disappearance of Rituals, and The Palliative Society.
It's difficult to know if the language stems from a "lost in translation" problem, but I enjoy the writing tremendously, especially for its mind-expanding quality. It's like a gateway drug.
The writing is aphoristic - like reading an anti-David Foster Wallace - phenomenological minimalist vs. metafiction maximalist but with similar insights and mind-changing impact.
It took me several hours to read a 12 page chapter because of the need for lookup, learning, references, and reflection.
I'd also read Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
Similar to Han, but a generation earlier, his work was influenced by Foucault.
Finally, I'd have a look at Kazimierz Dabrowski.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_D%C4%85browski
To me, Dabrowski's positive disintegration plays a significant role in helping to frame the discussion here since "dropping out" can be easily mapped onto one of Dabrowski's levels in the positive disintegration framework.
Regardless, the tension between the individual and society plays a significant role in the work of these three authors.
- > The article seems to talk about the "wokeness hypothesis" on this issue in terms of attributes of authors (e.g., their race or gender) rather than of stories. I don't know much about that. But if there's a way that wokeness or something like it has influenced writing, I'd say it's from a different angle: I just get the sense that there's a lot more risk today in writing about characters very unlike the author. It can be perceived as trying to "tell [insert group name here]'s story" without their involvement or consent. I think the severity of this is overstated by right-leaning reactionaries, but it's hard to argue that it's not a genuine shift in societal mood and values.
People in general don't take as much risk anymore. It's been variously documented by Byung-Chul Han in The Palliative Society, Jonathan Haidt in The Coddling of the American Mind, and even The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch. Generally, it's a response to increasing complexity, atomisation and declining social ties, all of which contribute to a state of emotional insecurity. On a related note, Chris Hedges remarks in The World as It Is:
> But in the game of American journalism it is forbidden to feel. Journalists are told they must be clinical observers who interpret human reality through their eyes, not their hearts—and certainly not through their consciences. This is the deadly disease of American journalism. And it is the reason journalism in the United States has lost its moral core and its influence. It is the reason that in a time of crisis the traditional media have so little to say. It is why the traditional media are distrusted. The gross moral and professional failings of the traditional media opened the door for the hate-mongers on Fox News and the news celebrities on commercial networks who fill our heads with trivia and celebrity gossip.
I talk about this more in my essay here, if anyone is interested, although it's quite long: https://jakehpark.substack.com/p/epistemic-telos-god-as-sadi...
