Post
Region: Democritus
It's coming from continental philosophy where kinda the dominant theme of the 20th century was 'discipline' and raw power dynamics,
Comparable to like... liberalism in politics and behaviorism in psychology (rules-based order, environmental input -> behavioral output, etc.)
The author is basically saying we've flipped the script and even though we're more focused on relativism, 'acheivement', and rewards psychology, it's still causing problems- his big argument is that increasing diagnoses of ADHD, Depression, anxiety, and OCD- kinda anything in that neighborhood of not-personality disorders and not-divorced entirely from reality like a psychosis or schizophrenia-is partially the result of a society that's demanding increased attention, external performances of happiness and 'put togetherness' and especially increased demand for acheivements
The crux of it being that we don't even have to be threatened to do things we don't want to anymore, because we 'want' to do things that society tells us are useful despite being too exhausted/overburdened to really handle it, so we drive ourselves into 'burnout'
