Philosophtea: Burnout Society-How Late Capitalism Created A Mental Health Crisis

Description:
Every weekday the same loop: alarm, commute, work, scroll, sleep, repeat. Why do most of us work 9 to 5, five days a week? Who decided that, and why didn't it get shorter, as Keynes predicted it would by 2030? And why do so many of us end the workday too drained to do anything but scroll, shop or stream?

In this PhilosophTea we'll explore how the modern working day came about and what it does to us. Starting from Byung-Chul Han's The Burnout Society, we'll look at some of the topics below:

Where the 9–5 came from: factory clocks, Henry Ford's 40-hour week, and the forgotten push for a 30-hour week
Burnout as a system, not a personal failing: Han's "achievement society," where we exploit ourselves
Who benefits from exhausted workers? Marx, Kalecki and the politics of the working day
Medicating the rat race: when burnout becomes a diagnosis, who profits? From Big Pharma's "empire of pain" to treating social problems as individual brain chemistry
Amusing ourselves to death: The 5-9 pm effort to recover from exhaustion and the yearn for quick dopamine fix through quick rewards, endless entertainment. How does doomscrolling benefits the attention economy?
Are we too tired to think? Pre-filtered information, algorithms, AI and "technofeudalism"

No preparation needed. Just bring your curiosity and your own experience of work/burnout.

If you'd like to warm up, pick any one of these:

Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society (book, short, around 60 pages)
James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis (book)
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (book, 1985): how entertainment took over public life, decades before smartphones
Bertrand Russell, "In Praise of Idleness" (essay, free online)
Matt D'Avella, "The Death of the 40 Hour Workweek" (YouTube, about 10 min)
Joshua Krook, "The Philosophy of Byung-Chul Han" (YouTube, about 10 min)

Format:
18:00 Arrive, grab a tea, introductions
18:10 Short intro to the topic
18:25 Small-group discussions
19:30 Whole-group wrap-up: what would a better working week look like?
20:00 End (shop closes at that time)

Where: Café CU, Bornheimer Straße, Bonn
When: Wednesday, 18 November 2026, 18:00–20:00
Cost: Free
Language: English (and German)

Everyone is welcome, whatever your background, opinions or job, including if you love your 9–5. Please note: we'll be discussing systems, not anyone's personal treatment choices. If medication helps you, that's valid.

Must Watch before you come: Happiness by Steve Cutts
If you only have four minutes, watch this. Steve Cutts' darkly funny animation follows a rat through a city of rats chasing happiness, one commute, sale and quick fix after another. It sums up tonight's whole topic without a word of dialogue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk

Want to go even deeper? Further reading and watching
Where the 9–5 came from
E.P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism" (essay): how factories swapped task time for clock time
Jenny Odell, Saving Time
Benjamin Hunnicutt, Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream: the lost push for shorter hours
James Suzman, Work: A Deep History
Juliet Schor, The Overworked American
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work
Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture
Short classics: Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren" · Paul Lafargue, "The Right to Be Lazy"
Burnout and work culture
Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics and Vita Contemplativa
David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs
Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism
Anne Helen Petersen, Can't Even
Jonathan Malesic, The End of Burnout
Sarah Jaffe, Work Won't Love You Back
Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing
Mental health, medication and profit
James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis: how distress caused by work and the economy gets treated as an individual problem
Johann Hari, Lost Connections: depression linked to meaningless work, loneliness and lost status
Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: the Sackler family, OxyContin and profiting from pain
Videos (search the titles on YouTube)
Above the Noise (PBS), "The Truth About Why We Work 40 Hours a Week"
"A Brief History of the 40 Hour Work Week"
Einzelgänger, "Byung-Chul Han's Warning: Why Modern Life Feels Emptier Than Ever"
Cal Newport on Byung-Chul Han
David Graeber at the RSA, "On Bullshit Jobs"
Rutger Bregman's talks on the 15-hour work week
NPR Planet Money, "Why We Work So Much" (podcast)

Take care and stay curious!

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