Byung-Chul Han’s Warning: Why Modern Life Feels Emptier Than Ever

Many ages ago, there was Sisyphus, a cunning king  who made the mistake of challenging the gods. His punishment was simple but torturous: The gods  condemned him to push a massive boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down each time he reached  the top. As his punishment was for eternity, he had to repeat this process daily.

Sisyphus,  therefore, found himself trapped in an empty, meaningless life of toil.  As modern-day Sisyphuses, aren’t we condemned to a similar fate? Aren’t  we stuck in a relentless grind as we find our lives reduced to endless tasks?

Could it be  that, as subjects of an achievement society, we’re losing something essential? Could it  be that by constant productivity and the pursuit of achievement, we’ve forgotten to live? In his book, The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering, Korean-born  German philosopher Byung-Chul Han explains that, in our fast-paced world, we experience time in  a fundamentally different way.

Time has become atomized, causing it to lack direction, coherence,  and meaning. As we hop from one event to another, none of these events carry depth or significance.  According to Han, we experience a temporal crisis, which causes us to feel restless, anxious,  nervous, and frantic.

But, there’s hope for recovery, which Han also shares in his book. This video explores Han’s The Scent of Time, a dense work filled with profound insights.  I’ve focused on unpacking its central ideas and capturing the essence of his essay.

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According to Han, today’s society demands  people achieve, and failing to perform makes you a “loser. ” Achievement has become an ultimate  concern—a virtue—leading us to constantly ‘whip’ ourselves into productivity. In his book, The Burnout Society, Han describes the workings of the achievement  society and its destructive consequences, such as anxiety and burnout, which I’ve explored  in a previous video about Han’s observations.

While the imperative to achieve primarily touches  upon our working lives (such as chasing financial success or becoming startup entrepreneurs), the  collective accomplishment-driven attitude also bleeds into the remainder of our lives,  which we could classify as ‘leisure. ’ Even leisure has become some form of achievement.  How we generally fill our free time has become a matter of checking boxes.

For example, when  we travel, we try to cram as many activities as possible into our schedules, rushing from  place to place, like warehouse workers rushing from shelf to shelf, picking orders. The general  experience of traveling often lacks reflection, digestion, and simply being there. Experiencing it  is more akin to window shopping.

Many people today are more interested in whether a particular  place is “Instagrammable” than if there’s some profound, meaningful experience to find. Even watching a TV series has become a matter of quantity. In the past, certain shows created  shared excitement—we’d talk about them beforehand, watch them together, and reminisce afterward. 

The experience extended beyond the airing itself. Today, most entertainment is available on  demand. There’s much less anticipation, excitement for what’s to come, and collective  experience.

And because the entertainment options are so abundant, we tend to move on immediately  to the next instead of adequately digesting and reflecting on what we just consumed. Nowadays, dating also shows a societal shift from quality to quantity: as marriage and  commitment were the norm, serial monogamy (and even polyamory) has become more prevalent. We  prefer more different experiences superficially and fleetingly over actual depth and meaning in  relationships.

From today’s perspective, depth and length in relationships also come with monotony  and boredom, things we look down upon nowadays and should be avoided. Why waste our time in the  repetitiveness of long-term commitments if we can have exciting honeymoon phases characterized by  novelty every couple of years with a new person? Today’s dominant mode of living is marked  by relentless activity.

Han refers to it as vita activa (the active life), a term coined  initially by Hannah Arendt to describe a life focused on labor, work, and action. Han  criticizes the contemporary form of vita activa in the context of modern capitalism  and the achievement society, as he observes that activity has become an end in itself. Being  active or ‘in pursuit’ is what makes our lives count.

There’s no place for contemplation  or reflection. There’s no place for what Han calls “duration” of time. Not producing or  pursuing some kind of goal is seen as wasteful.

At the root of our current “age of haste” lies  a fear of missing out. This fear leans on the idea that to make our lives more fulfilled  and richer in experience, we must escalate the quantity of experience. In other words, the  more experiences we can stuff into our lifespans, the better.

Of course, doing so requires an  acceleration in savoring worldly experiences. We want to do more different things in a  shorter period. However, according to Han, such a pursuit is counterproductive.

I quote: Whoever tries to live faster, will ultimately also die faster. It is not the total number of events,  but the experience of duration which makes life more fulfilling. Where one event follows close  on the heels of another, nothing enduring comes about.

Fulfilment and meaning cannot be explained  on quantitative grounds. A life that is lived quickly, without anything lasting long and without  anything slow, a life that is characterized by quick, short-term and short-lived experiences is  itself a short life, no matter how high the ‘rate of experience’ may be. End quote.

According to Han, our fast-paced lives  give way to franticness, restlessness, nervousness, and anxiety. But more profoundly, as  he describes in his book, our relationship with time has changed; time has lost its “scent. ” People often say, “Things were better in days gone by.

" But looking at the statistics regarding  things like wealth, physical health, and overall safety, we could hardly make that case. Still,  there’s something about the old days, something we’ve lost when life became more fast-paced,  individualistic, and achievement-driven. According to Han, our “age of haste” is like  a cinematographic succession of point-like presences without access to beauty or truth.

We  want immediate enjoyment, and the default response to enjoyment fading is moving on to the next.  As we pursue a larger quantity and variety of experiences in an attempt to enrich our lives,  time also moves faster. Moreover, as Han explains, we experience time as temporal points,  which he calls “atomized time.

” I quote: Atomized time is a discontinuous time. There is  nothing to bind events together and thus found a connection, a duration. End quote.

Atomized time fragments life into a directionless  sequence of isolated moments, leaving no space for cohesion or meaningful conclusions. Without a  narrative connecting past, present, and future, experiences remain shallow and fleeting. Han explains that time used to be more structured.

For example, in prehistoric times, time was  cyclical, and we would adapt to these cycles, such as the seasons and lunar phases. Time  had a rhythm, which granted us stability and predictability. Later, religion provided us  with meaning through a greater narrative.

God gave us purpose and guidelines by which to  live. Whatever we did, as religious people, everything fitted into a larger narrative. According to Han, actual, profound experience lies in vast temporal spaces.

Unlike point-time  (or atomized time), these more significant periods consist of a dialectic between past and  future, experienced in the present. These temporal spaces allow for a sense of continuity and depth. Religion, for instance, gives our lives a special purpose.

It creates an overarching narrative,  a defined purpose, and a ‘why’ to everything we do. For example, an Abrahamic religion such  as Islam provides a rhythm of rituals and celebrations. Take Ramadan, for example—a period  of fasting from sunrise to sunset, during which Muslims experience shared meaning, and conclude  with a celebration.

As a recurring holy month, Ramadan gives time rhythm. It takes people out  of atomized time into a world of meaning. A day of fasting isn’t just an isolated point in time;  it’s part of something bigger, combining past, present, and future.

Han stated: God functions like a stabilizer of time. He ensures a lasting, perennial present. End quote.

However, the regime has changed. For a significant  part of the world, God lost His power. This hasn’t been without consequences, says Han, as God’s  “death” (referring to Nietzsche) deprived time of any theological meaning, any doctrine  of design and purpose.

In postmodernity, the present has shrunk to a fleeting point  in time, atomized and disconnected from any meaningful past or future. I quote: Atomization and individualization take hold of societies as a whole. Social practices  such as promising, fidelity or commitment, which are temporal practices in the sense  that they commit to a future and thus limit the horizon of the future, thus founding  duration, are all losing their importance.

End quote. What depth do our lives have if we jump from moment to moment? According to Han, atomized  time doesn’t allow us to complete anything.

Take serial monogamy, for example, which characterizes  itself not just by alternating relationships but also, from my own observations, by very small  in-betweens and often no in-betweens at all. According to Han, a meaningful conclusion is  necessary for proper experience. Experience isn’t just about the activity itself—it involves  anticipation, reflection, and a narrative that connects it to something greater.

It’s a bit like  Lao Tzu’s cup: the emptiness within and around it gives it purpose. Similarly, without the space  around our actions—time to linger and reflect—this pointed, atomized time reduces life to isolated  tasks, leaving no room for genuine experience, no room for completion or transition to  the next. We prefer not to endure these intervals as we hop from one possibility  to another.

After all, these transitional phases are a waste of time, obstructing us  from more consumption and achievement. However, Han states that intervals—periods of  not achieving and pursuing—serve a function. They provide us with direction and cohesion. 

They bring order. For example, religious celebrations are intervals that provide us with  structure, and so are rites of passage, as they close off one life’s chapter and transition  to the next. Without these intervals, time becomes chaotic, a space without direction.

Things may have been better in the days gone by because our relationship with time was different.  Events had more gravity and space around them. Time was slower.

As we anticipated and completed  something and transitioned into the next, we experienced more depth. Commitments were  sacred; friendships were longer and deeper. We could commit to a board game with family and  friends for a whole evening, feeling genuine connection and fulfillment instead of checking  hundreds of TikTok reels on our smartphones, which leaves us empty, restless, and unfulfilled.

As times have changed, and, for many, God as a “stabilizer of time” has become  something of the past, and life’s pace is speeding up exponentially, what can we  do to reclaim time? Han proposes a path to recovery: the art of lingering. In a world obsessed with productivity, where rushing and multitasking have become  the new normal, and where anxiety, burnout, and depression have become prevalent, the  idea of slowing sounds pretty rebellious.

As vita activa is our dominant mode of living,  being less active is akin to blasphemy. But Han wrote quite early in the book that what’s  necessary to overcome the temporal crisis is a revitalization of the “vita contemplativa” as a  counterbalance to the vita activa. I quote: The temporal crisis will only be overcome once  the vita activa, in the midst of its crisis, again incorporates the vita contemplativa.

End quote. According to Han, the return of the vita  contemplativa will bring back ‘scent’ to time, as it liberates human beings from the compulsion  of labor. But doing so requires a different look towards what we regard as ‘leisure.

’ Han observes  that today’s leisure time is merely a break from work, as all energy is fully absorbed by work,  so the only thing we do during leisure time is passive entertainment or recreation. Our free time  is merely a matter of recuperating to enable us to work again with full strength. Therefore, leisure  is part of work; it serves our primary purpose: labor.

It’s not contemplative rest, which Han  regards as true leisure, disconnected from work. So, what’s vita contemplativa or the art of  lingering? What does contemplation actually mean?

In his book, Han guides us through different  views of contemplation and its proper place in our lives by philosophers such as Hannah Arendt,  Martin Heidegger, and Aristotle. In my own words, the essence of Han’s vita contemplativa (which  is deeply tied to our relationship with time) is this: instead of using time, linger in it. Leisure  isn’t a mere break to recover from working; it is a space to endure, reflect, and simply be.

In the vita contemplativa, time becomes something to inhabit rather than use. For example, instead  of actively directing our thoughts to achieve something, we allow them to arise naturally in  moments of reflection. Traveling, for instance, transforms from a means of reaching a destination  to experiencing the journey itself—wandering for the sake of wandering.

This contemplative  space lets us think deeply about life, truth, and the cosmos: things far beyond the trivialities  of daily life. It offers room to breathe, reflect, and transition meaningfully through rituals or  solitude. It’s also where original ideas and profound insights emerge—possibilities that the  restlessness of the vita activa does not allow.

“Contemplative lingering gives time,” writes Han,  unlike the active life, which uses up and kills it. He states: “When life regains its capacity  for contemplation, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness. ” Thank you for watching.