46
" Sennett maintains that the narcissistic individual intentionally avoids achieving goals: closure yields an objectifiable form, which, inasmuch as it possesses independent substance, weakens the self. In fact, precisely the opposite holds. The socially conditioned impossibility of objectively valid, definitive forms of closure drives the subject into narcissistic self-repetition; consequently, it fails to achieve gestalt, stable self-image, or character. Thus, it is not a matter of intentionally “avoiding” the achievement of goals in order to heighten the feeling of self. Instead, the feeling of having achieved a goal never occurs. It is not that the narcissistic subject does not want to achieve closure. Rather, it is incapable of getting there. It loses itself and scatters itself into the open. The absence of forms of closure depends, not least of all, on economic factors: openness and inconclusiveness favor growth. "
― Byung-Chul Han , The Burnout Society
48
" In Zen meditation, for example, one attempts to achieve the pure negativity of not-to—that is, the void—by freeing oneself from rushing, intrusive Something. Such meditation is an extremely active process; that is, it represents anything but passivity. The exercise seeks to attain a point of sovereignty within oneself, to be the middle. If one worked with positive potency, one would stand at the mercy of the object and be completely passive. Paradoxically, hyperactivity represents an extremely passive form of doing, which bars the possibility of free action. It is based on positive potency that has been made absolute to the exclusion of all else. "
― Byung-Chul Han , The Burnout Society
58
" If late-modern achievement society has reduced us all to bare life, then it is not just people at the margins or in a state of exception—that is, the excluded—but all of us, without exception, who are homines sacri. That said, this bare life has the particularity of not being absolutely expendable [tötbar]; rather, it cannot be killed absolutely [absolut untötbar (ist)]. It is undead, so to speak. Here the word sacer does not mean “accursed” but “holy.” Now bare, sheer life itself is holy, and so it must be preserved at any cost. "
― Byung-Chul Han , The Burnout Society