"I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back." --Leo Tolstoy
 

The distress of the modern man is uniquely concerning. The modern human has, what is a byproduct of our achievement society, an insatiable, yet perpetually exhausted ego. The modern man considers himself above his peers, above his morals, yet tragically, below himself. Perhaps a consequence of society, he persists in a competition he can not see himself triumphing.

He can not possibly triumph over his incorporeal enemy, he can not fly past what is ahead of him with his meager bit of fuel — his past potential which dictates his future accomplishments. He runs in an erroneous circle, slowly, and repeatedly outlining and carving himself out of this dimension — his ego falls into a chasm of unknown depth. Byung-Chul Han, in his The Burnout Society writes:

Depression — which often culminates in burnout — follows from overexcited, overdriven, excessive self-reference that has assumed destructive traits. The exhausted, depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down, so to speak. It is tired, exhausted by itself, and at war with itself. Entirely incapable of stepping outward, of standing outside itself, of relying on the Other, on the world, it locks its jaws on itself; paradoxically, this leads the self to hollow and empty out. It wears out in a rat race it runs against itself (Han 42).

The cook who keeps eating his own food — and similarly the diner of such produce — may eventually find it tasteless. To satisfy his taste buds, he must consume a new cuisine. He must take a break from his familiar sustenance. He must distance himself from his own depression. He must travel outward from himself and become something else, an other.

The modern man is miserable in that what he chases, he similarly allows to leave his grasp. As a result of pursuing superiority over his peers, he dictates himself to one great work. This work becomes the core of his every other endeavor. He exploits it. He squeezes whatever juice he might be fortunate enough to extract out of it. And then, at once, when his fuel combusts, he rests upon the burning fumes he so much so desired to triumph. The modern man does not endeavor to uplift himself. No, the modern man seeks asylum from himself. He is wary of himself. He is tired, sick, and exhausted. Richard Sennett writes:

As a character disorder, narcissism is the very opposite of strong self-love. Self-absorption does not produce gratification, it produces injury to the self; erasing the line between self and other means that nothing new, nothing “other,” ever enters the self; it is devoured and transformed until one thinks one can see oneself in the other — and then it becomes meaningless. . . . The narcissist is not hungry for experiences, he is hungry for Experience. Looking always for an expression or reflection of [oneself]. . . . one drowns in the self (Sennett 324).

He has basked in his own glory for such an extent to which his own body deprives himself of his rightful hydration. He has been labored so unjustly by himself, that his own body, he can not consider even his. Drawing from Kafka’s tale Prometheus, Byung-Chul Han writes, “The eagle that consumes an ever-regrowing liver can be interpreted as the subject’s alter ego. Viewed in this way, the relation between Prometheus and the eagle represents a relation of self-exploitation. Pain of the liver, an organ that cannot actually experience pain, is said to be tiredness. Prometheus, the subject of self-exploitation, has been seized by overwhelming fatigue” (Han 35).

The modern man must be open to other opinions. He must not be so one-dimensional as to shade himself from the sun with the non-existent shelter the tree he just planted might provide. If he seeks cover, he must attend himself to the trees planted before him. He must not labor himself for today, but for tomorrow. For, perhaps, a century later, a young man like him might come visit in hopes of finding coolness. He must not shelter his own ego.

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