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The Burnout Myth
An archetypical analysis of exhaustion culture
(This letter is not ideologically inclined. It does not justify any dogmatic narratives, including Marxist or liberal doctrines. Instead, it addresses a peculiar problem encountered by individuals in the present age, doing so in an aesthetically pleasing yet potentially ‘painful’ manner — due to the liveliness of free thought.)
Prologue. The Fatigued Individual
What is wrong with the modern individual? Why are they so exhausted, unworthy, and miserable, their actions and life so imbued with depressing emptiness?
If our age is believed to be one of extreme opportunities, invigorating challenges, and possibilities for freedom, why is most of the population so unhappy, poor both in heart and estate, and distant to an inner, self-sufficient sense of guidance, like lost sheep easily manipulated by shepherds and butchers? This condition is now often accompanied by the term Burnout.
Burnout refers to an excess of labor with a deficit of meaning, leading to a state of drained and exhausted being. It emerged from obsessive, futile effort directed toward nothingness. This nothingness is generally concealed by a facade of false, popularized, enforced and unjustified purpose.
