The cult of productivity and the point of doing things?

Hii, so this is a bit different from what I usually do on this blog. The events of school starting and consequently, me having to dedicate more time to reading and writing about the Toni Morrisons' or Ansel Adams' of the world I felt like discussing something a little different, plus I'm presently sick. It is not like being severely sick, but enough to where fever dreams are manifested, which inspires this post. While rotting in bed for a few days I had the opportunity to catch up on the tauntingly oppressive number of books I've collected that have taken up the hallway to my bathroom. Not to say that my life is so busy that I can't be bothered to sit and read every now and then but the state of being bedridden kind of forces me to. As I was reading though and my eyes began to glaze over, I started thinking about if I was actually enjoying what I was reading or if I was just doing it to pass the time, that is wait out my cold. Then I started thinking about everything else I do in my day-to-day that could be classified as just "passing the time". Like chewing gum, sitting in the car a little too long after you turn it off, or eating! We spend so much effort passing the time why is that? I guess it's somewhat of a subjective thing because yes I really do enjoy the taste of coffee but the act of getting coffee kind of becomes a habit for habit's sake. How many things do we do just for the sake of doing them and is this what the human experience is really about? You could say I often embrace routine and for the most part, I'm happy in doing so, but does routine inherently limit free will? Does the sensation of free will always relate to the presence of freedom? In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World social stability comes above individualism. You could argue the people of Huxley's dystopian London do have free will in the sense that they're happy they have habits and desires. We often associate self-determination or furthermore authenticity with the pursuit of happiness. Despite that the people in Brave New World know no alternative to happiness and that in and of itself presents a slippery slope. We define our emotions based on what they aren't, if you're happy you must not be sad or angry. Happiness as a concept doesn't exist in this scenario it's just simply the state you're born into. These people are filled with desire but does desire equal free will? These desires weren't choices they were handed down.

Byung-Chul Han, a modern-day philosopher and cultural theorist, discusses in his book The Burnout Society how in the current age we've entered into a state of being where the need to commodify yourself is essential to your right to exist. Compelled by our ambition to constantly improve ourselves in the context of our surroundings, we become lost in self-exploitation. According to Han, we subjugate ourselves to a compulsion of constant optimization to the extent that we lose desire as an active motivator. This compulsion feeds a narcissistic tendency that inherently limits our free will, and due to this, we tend to view ourselves less as a person, as something organic and fundamentally temperamental, and more as a project, as something mechanical and prone to a regular need to be reinvented. This is especially prevalent in the art world as often you're not only advertising your work but marketing yourself as if that should matter more. Reaching a space of contentment is considered ungrateful and very much impossible in this cycle, which will inevitably lead to burnout and isolation. Part of this stems from a model of toxic positivity, the notion that you can be anything you want can lead to a paralyzation of choice. However, you don't want to appear ungrateful for these predetermined opportunities either. Speaking again on authenticity, the pressure placed on someone to define themselves without any help from the outside world can only lead to a negative response. Not to say that self-reflection is by any means a bad habit, but too much time spent in introspection can lead to losing yourself in the context of your environment. Narcissism has a very negative connotation in our society, and I don't believe Han has any intention of rubbing our nose in it as if we should be filled with this immense guilt. Guilt is partially the problem in that if we aren't achieving some arbitrary level of achievement every time we step out our doorstep, we're filled with immense regret. We shouldn't embrace this punishment of the self as if it isn't enough to simply be alive. What do we live for if not to make the world more bearable for each other? Time is one of the greatest things we have to share and I think Han is reinforcing a reminder that we shouldn't solely focus on aspects of life that benefit ourselves. One of the more recent projects by performance artist Marina Abramović that I admire is "The Artist Is Present." In this piece, she positioned herself in the Museum of Modern Art and sat in silence from the museum's opening until closing, inviting visitors to sit across from her and share a moment of solidarity. The project lasted from March till May and was 736 hrs in total. Language is such an important aspect of how we relate to eachother and the most important caveat of her project is that from the point you sat down till you decided to leave no words could be spoken nor physical touch shared. Think about the last time you sat in silence with someone, someone you knew or a complete stranger, think about how natural you felt in that moment. Abramovic is restricting the authority of the ego in human connection. When you can't assert yourself through language or touch what are you left with? Your forced to consider the intricacies of the person sat before you with no more effort in their part on marketing themselves. Some people sat with Abramovic for five minutes some sat for five hours and while nothing was tangibly shared that shouldn't lessen the importance of the event.