“The Scent of Time”
My Second Book into Byung-Chul Han's Work
Again, it was the title of the book that caught me, The Scent of Time. Truthfully, I aspire to write something so beautiful and thoughtful. I couldn’t ignore this. (Seriously, how cool is that title?)
Here I am trying to make sense of a few major ideas and understand the philosophical project Byung-Chul Han is up to.
As it can be with philosophy and ideas, it can be difficult to comprehend them at first. Again, I only want to share strands of what I am working to comprehend. In some sense, I viewed each chapter of this book as an attempt and reattempt to express something as if the chapter before got close but not all the way there.
I found this book to be wonderfully thoughtful.
Here is where we begin our walk
“The impression that time moves considerably faster than before also has its origin in the fact that today we are unable to linger…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” (34).
“The contemplative relationship to things presupposes freedom from work…Rest now is a time of recreation or relaxation that is necessary for the sake of work” (97-98).
“Just being active impoverishes your experience. It continues ever the same. Whoever is not capable of stopping and pausing has no access to what is altogether different. Experience transforms. It interrupts the repetition of the ever same. You do not become more susceptible to the making of experiences by becoming more active. Rather, what is needed is a particular kind of passivity. You need to let yourself be concerned with that which evades the activity of the acting subject…” (104).
“Without rest human beings are incapable of seeing what is at rest. Making the vita activa an absolute value drives everything out of life that is not an act or activity. The general time pressures destroy all that has the character of a detour, all that is indirect, and thus makes the world poor in forms…If walking lacks all hesitation, all pausing, then it freezes into a march…A melody is a detour. Only what is monotonous is direct” (109).
There he is again, back at it with the acceleration. Han is again working on the acceleration from The Burnout Society, but he now expresses its source in part as a lack of the ability to linger. He also points to the element of ‘experience’ for a fulfilling life and a capacity for contemplation as a sense of freedom. That is, freedom from the speed of a fast life is found in linger and contemplation.
Having lost our sense of an ability to linger and to hold a thought, so to say, Han finds it important to express how one does this again. It is a forgotten skill set. Lingering, as a way to make experiences that add to a fulfilling life, requires an element of passivity and concern. These are ways to escape the acceleration of life, perhaps, but also create a sense of rest. Against the thought and common belief of today, moving quickly through things to experience it all isn’t possible and actually robs you of the richness an experience can bring. Velocity is vandalism; the art of lingering centers itself on the ability to stop, passively hold a moment, and bring concern to and around the moment, whatever is at-hand.
What I find to be especially rich is that moving too quickly actually destroys experience.
When I think of what becomes draining and exhausting, but not necessarily leading to burnout, is a sense of endlessness in meaninglessness. The same ol’ same ol’ is vandalism to one’s life, and a way to reclaim meaning is to avoid monotonous action, that is, a moment or action without pause or contemplation or concern.
The capacity for lingering is the amount of depth that one can stomach in solitude. There is a strength in knowing how to do nothing, something perhaps toward which modern life has created an allergy.
I would posit that life does have times that do require speed and activity without contemplation, but in my own change after reading this, I am much more keen to invite stillness into my way of seeing and being in the world.
More soon,
Trevor
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