False freedom

This year's Princess of Asturias Award for Communication, the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, a brutal critic of today's neoliberal society, is in tune with the advice of Giorgio Armani, who warned against the tendency to self-exploitation.

The impact of his death, a few weeks ago, made the media talk about his figure and we knew details of his life especially striking. For example, although he died a fashion icon, he entered this world by chance, as an assistant to the architects who assembled the windows of a department store. 

When, in one of his last interviews, he was asked if there was something he had not had time to do in this life, he answered that he had been preoccupied with himself, without realizing that time was passing. This "regret" led Armani, in the last years of his life, to repeat the importance of not being a slave to work and not living solely and exclusively for it.

It was as if, in the twilight of his life, after having built a fashion empire from nothing through hard work (and time), he had realized that living for work, neglecting other areas, did not bring happiness. 

The neoliberal society imposes the value of hard work: to work more and more and better in order to perform better and be more productive (to exploit oneself more and more). All of this is dressed up in values that would improve the individual. The self-realization of the individual would have to do with being more and more successful.

From this derives the self-demand and self-exploitation that would give a false sense of freedom, because the self-demand would be imposed by the individual himself (not by an external boss). A person who self-exploits himself, falls into a labor or psychological subjugation that leads him to lose what fills him most: personal life and social ties. An abyss that leads to emptiness.