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“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.”
― Dōgen

“The society of positivity, from which negativity has disappeared, is a society of bare life, which is exclusively dominated by the concern to make sure of survival”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Agony of Eros

“Today, love is being positivized into a formula for enjoyment. Above all, love is supposed to generate pleasant feelings. It no longer represents plot, narration, or drama - only inconsequential emotion and arousal. It is free from the negativity of injury, assault, or crashing. To fall (in love) would already be too negative. Yet it is precisely such negativity that constitutes love”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Agony of Eros

“Eros concerns the Other in the strong sense, namely, what cannot be encompassed by the regime of the ego. Therefore, in the inferno of the same, which contemporary society is increasingly becoming, erotic experience does not exist. Erotic experience presumes the asymmetry and exteriority of the Other. It is not by chance that Socrates the lover is called atopos. The Other, whom I desire and who fascinates me, is placeless. He or she is removed from the language of sameness: “Being atopic, the Other makes language indecisive: one cannot speak of the Other, about the Other; every attribute is false, painful, erroneous, awkward.” Our contemporary culture of constant comparison leaves no room for the negativity of what is atopos. We are constantly comparing one thing to another, thereby flattening them into the Same, precisely because we no longer experience the atopia of the Other. The negativity of the atopic Other refuses consumption. Therefore, the society of the consumer endeavors to eliminate atopic otherness in favor of consumable —heterotopic— differences. In contrast to otherness, difference is positive. Yet today, negativity is disappearing everywhere. Everything is being flattened out into an object of consumption.”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Agony of Eros

“Today, we live in an increasingly narcissistic society. Libido is primarily invested in one’s own subjectivity. Narcissism is not the same as self-love. The subject of selflove draws a negative boundary between him- or herself and the Other. The narcissistic subject, on the other hand, never manages to set any clear boundaries. In consequence, the border between the narcissist and the Other becomes blurry. The world appears only as adumbrations of the narcissist’s self, which is incapable of recognizing the Other in his or her otherness — much less acknowledging this otherness for what it is. Meaning can exist for the narcissistic self only when it somehow catches sight of itself. It wallows in its own shadow everywhere until it drowns — in itself. Depression is a narcissistic malady. It derives from overwrought, pathologically distorted self reference. The narcissistic-depressive subject has exhausted itself and worn itself down. Without a world to inhabit, it has been abandoned by the Other. Eros and depression are opposites. Eros pulls the subject out of itself, toward the Other. Depression, in contrast, plunges the subject into itself. Today’s narcissistic “achievement-subject” seeks out success above all. Finding success validates the One through the Other. Thereby, the Other is robbed of otherness and degrades into a mirror of the One — a mirror affirming the latter’s image.”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Agony of Eros