Contemporary pathologies are neuronal, caused by excess positivity rather than foreign negativity
Evidence
Every age has its signature afflictions. Thus, a bacterial age existed; at the latest, it ended with the discovery of antibiotics. Despite widespread fear of an influenza epidemic, we are not living in a viral age. Thanks to immunological technology, we have already left it behind. From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons. Neurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and burnout syndrome mark the landscape of pathology at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They are not infections, but infarctions; they do not follow from the negativity of what is immunologically foreign, but from an excess of positivity. Therefore, they elude all technologies and techniques that seek to combat what is alien. — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 9
Categorization
- QUESTION: Han’s contestable claim that our signature ailments are neuronal rather than immunological — reader explicitly flagged this to stress-test.
- DEFINE: Establishes the core distinction: contemporary illness derives from excess of positivity, so immune-style responses to the foreign are obsolete.
- XREF: Connects to Foucault-era sociology and to reader’s stated test of whether the neuronal-pathology thesis holds against actual daily experience.