Welcome to Achievement Society (The Age of Self-Exploitation)

Are we actually free, or just trapped in its illusion? Let's explore a fundamental shift in modern society that has impacted our self-concept, relationships with others, and entire way of being.

Jan 12, 2025

Our current way of being says we can have anything, go anywhere, achieve anything, or be anyone we want.

In fact, the pursuit of happiness, individualism and freedom says we should be this way.

But if we aren’t always doing or achieving, how else can we measure our value?

In this letter I explore a fundamental shift that has occurred in modern society.

It is a shift that has impacted our self-concept, relationships with other human beings, and our entire way of being in this world.

Not to mention, it’s also making us sick.

Let’s go.

I. The Shift

Disciplinary Society

"Discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise."

—Michele Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Before the postmodern world, our society was governed by a type of external control and obedience which shapes individuals through surveillance and the threat of punishment—what Michele Foucault called "disciplinary society".

It was Byung-Chul Han that pointed out that Foucault's disciplinary society is characterised by negativity, which imposes restrictions and prohibitions from an external authority. This form of control shapes behaviour by defining what is forbidden or obligatory, relying on negative modal verbs like "may not" and "should", which Han describes as "the negativity of should".

As such, the individual in the disciplinary society is shaped into what Han calls "the obedience subject"—a subject governed by duty, conformity and subjugation—never expressing any individuality, let alone experiencing freedom.

The outcome of this society is a binary divide between those who conform, and those who do not. Those who fail to meet its oppressive standards are excluded and punished—used an example for all to see.

While these overt forms of surveillance and control are indeed outdated in our modern society, they have now evolved into more subtle forms of internalised control where individuals are no longer forced to conform—they instead willingly self-control to ensure they meet the expectations of the society.

Achievement Society

"The achievement society is characterized by a new form of exploitation: self-exploitation. The individual is no longer exploited from the outside, but rather exploits itself from within."

— Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

Byung-Chul Han argues that today's postmodern world is no longer governed by Foucault's society of discipline and obedience, rather it has been replaced by a more contemporary model—achievement society.

This form of control, predicated on positive modal verbs like "can" and "will"—what Han calls "the positivity of can"—replaces the prohibitions of disciplinary society with an imperative to achieve, creating a new commandment: the constant pursuit of improvement, (over)production, optimisation and achievement.

This shift creates what Han calls “the achievement subject”—an individual who is seemingly free from external forms of control and exploitation.

This freedom is paradoxical, however. Instead of the external control and obedience of disciplinary society, achievement society relies on the motivation of the individual's internal desire to self-improve, self-optimise and self-monitor.

Hence, no form of external exploitation is required—the individual operating within the society willingly exploits themselves—becoming both the victim and the perpetrator in a new type of internal self-exploitation.

Now, freedom and constraint collapse into a single system, and the achievement subject becomes trapped in their own never ending self-driven cycle of optimisation and improvement—unable to simply be.

II. The Mechanics

Technologies of the Self

"Technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality."

— Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault

“Technologies of the self”—a term coined by Michele Foucault as part of his broader inquiry into how people are shaped by power structures—refers to the practices, strategies and techniques people use to actively improve, enhance, upgrade and transform themselves.

These practices extend beyond setting simple rules of conduct where individuals seek to fundamentally transform their being to align their lives with certain values, societal ideals, or identity structures.

If one takes any well-considered look at our modern world, these practices are impossible to miss: extreme diets coupled with unforgiving workout routines to optimise your macros and carve out your ninth ab, a rigid morning routine featuring cold showers and cognitive enhancing nootropics so you can hustle harder and make more money, or the obsessive tracking of health biometrics to the point where you know the effect, with precision, a single drink has on your heart rate variability. That, or you're this guy.

Foucault's technologies of the self marks the shift into the achievement society.

It is the essential fuel that enables this society to embed itself deeply into the human psyche, sustaining and perpetuating itself through an all-new type of superego—one that functions on the monitoring, regulation, discipline and domination of the self, by the self.

Technological Attunement

"Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception, to which today we particularly like to pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology."
– Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology

If technologies of the self describes the practices we use to transform ourselves, then technological attunement refers to the capacities and perceptions which enable this reality.

When Martin Heidegger inquired into the nature of being, he noticed that the technology we interact with profoundly shapes our way of being, so much so he identified it as a certain kind of inauthentic attunement, which he called “technological attunement”.

Heidegger speaks of technology not only in the sense of electronic hardware and software, but as the myriad of tools and capacities that are always available and at our disposal in our everyday lives—what he referred to as “standing reserve”. Our phones, computers, cars, tables, chairs and even the utensils in our kitchen are capacities in “standing reserve”, ready to be utilised and exploited.

The effect of having all this technology available at our fingertips is that it creates a profound pull and tendency to reduce everything in our experience to mere objects—resources to be exploited for our consumption and gratification—including other human beings.

Think about the way you interact with others whilst you’re fulfilling simple day-to-day tasks. A couple days ago, I had to call up my electricity provider because they accidentally double charged me. It was another thing added to the to-do list and I'll admit, I was a little frustrated. While the customer service rep and I exchanged common pleasantries, we were each using each other to effectively tick a box or meet a goal—me to sort my billing issues out, and them to get paid and make a living.

We are no longer attuning to the world, or those around us, with a sense of wonder, awe, curiosity and excitement for this incredible experience that we call life.

We're not seeing others for the alive and unique organism they are, along with their inherent Truth, Beauty or Goodness. We simply don't have the time, nor the patience.

Instead, this way of attuning becomes like a distorted and unclear filter through which we perceive and interact with the world, ultimately altering our fundamental humanity and entire way of being.

III. The Fallout

Where the excess negativity of the disciplinary society produced madmen, criminals, and the suppression of the self, the achievement society produces something much more overtly difficult to see, and therefore much more sinister.

This type of imbalance produces afflictions not of the physical—the body or material items we possess—rather it produces those of the psychological—burnout, stress, anxiety, depression and narcissism.

Whilst Heidegger wasn’t specifically referring to the way we attune to our children, the effects of this mode of attunement coupled with the effects from our achievement-based society perhaps points to the uncomfortable truth behind why we're facing so much unresolved trauma, and why we keep transmitting it from generation to generation.

If everyone is in a rush, stressed, inundated with tasks and overworked whilst trying to make ends meet, it is no wonder why we're technologically attuned—we're living in straight up survival mode.

Driven by our own demands to self-monitor, self-optimise and achieve, we’ve lost our capacity for inactivity, contemplation and natural expression.

Amongst all the achieving and doing, we’ve completely lost our innate and very human capacity for simply being.

So then, I will leave you with some heavy hitting questions to contemplate as we wrap this up:

Can you say you’re aware of your own inherent value, irrespective of any achievement?
Is there any achievement that is worth your own self-exploitation (and health)?
At what point does achievement stop serving the desires of your truest self, and instead begin masking your disconnection from it?
How often do you find yourself technologically attuned to others in your daily life?
What would it look like to notice this and instead attune with openness, curiosity, and a sense of joy?

⬅️ Last Letter: December 2024 — A New Place To Call Home

🔤 This Post in Notes on The Book of Being: