The modern laboring subject is hyperactive and hyperneurotic, not passive.

Evidence

Arendt’s descriptions of the modern animal laborans do not correspond to what we can observe in today’s achievement society. The late-modern animal laborans does not give up its individuality or ego in order to merge, through the work it performs, with the anonymous life process of the species. Rather, contemporary labor society, as a society of achievement and business, fosters individuality [Die Arbeitsgesellschaft hat sich individualisiert zur Leistungsund Aktivgesellschaft]. The late-modern animal laborans is equipped with an ego just short of bursting. And it is anything but passive. If one abandoned one’s individuality and dissolved into the life process of the species entirely, one would at least have the serenity [Gelassenheit] of an animal. But the late-modern animal laborans is anything but animalian. It is hyperactive and hyperneurotic. There must be another answer to why all human activities in late modernity are sinking to the level of mere laboring—and, more still, why such hectic nervousness prevails. — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 48

Categorization

• XREF: Directly overturns Arendt’s animal laborans passivity thesis from The Human Condition; connects to the reader’s core task of explaining why disciplinary (Foucault) society is obsolete.