YOWIEHUB

The lifestyle of the Yowie presents a potential remedy to our malady, in the current age of ‘grustle’ culture. 

Byung-Chul Han’s The Burnout Society argues that our society has moved from Foucault’s notion of a ‘discipline-based society’ into an ‘achievement-based society’ and investigates its implications upon the modern-individual. The modern society is a cult of individual achievement and self-exploitation. 

“The new human type does nothing but work,” says Byung-Chul, “The depressive human being is an animal laborer that exploits itself. And does so voluntarily, without external constraints.” 

Notions such as ‘the grind’ or ‘hustling’ reflect the hyper-individualist, competitive disposition which Byung-Chul illustrates. To be successful in our society, you must hyperfixate on being an individual. Everyone in your vicinity is your competition, and your energy and time should revolve around out-doing them. 

Unlike Hannah Arendt’s notion of atomisation, the individual is not subject to authority from a totalitarian state, but is suppressed from within. Byung-Chul uses the analogy of inoculation against a disease: negativity. The individual must inoculate their body from negativity through positivity. To be available is positivity. To say yes and over-extend yourself is positivity.

Modern society is self-policing, and the effects of this society are experienced within. Depression and burnout are effects of positivity and the pursuit of productivity. Productivity in an achievement-society is our identity. Failing to be productive means failing to be your identity. External-facing, individual achievements are what’s most valued in society. Social media and networking only serves to exacerbate the dissociation. 

When seeking an antidote to the malaise of our times, it is only fitting to seek out the wisdom of the antithesis to late-stage capitalism. Over decades of researching Australia’s yowie populations, we’ve learnt several shifts in values which present an alternative to the achievement-based society. 

Yowies value communal ties and bring a collectivist approach to the conceptualisation of achievement and progress. The re-communalism of achievements as shared amongst the community in many ways presents an antidote to our hyper-competitive, laborious lifestyles. Through this lens, the achievements of the individual are linked to the impact it has upon the society. Achievements are viewed as positive externalities, with an individual’s worth being linked to how much they improve their community. 

Yowies don’t view shared work as competitive. The tasks of hunting for food, creating shelters or raising a family are natural parts of life, and are viewed as activities to enjoy rather than outdo other yowies in. The only area where Yowies are competitive are in arts and expression. If you have ever seen a Yowie dance off, you will know what we’re talking about. The pursuit of ‘beauty’ and ‘sincerity’ is conceptualised as a competitive endeavor – one which encourages an authenticity of ideas but also a shared struggle against the conditions of Yowie life. 

Yowies avoid absolutisms and do not prescribe positive and negative modifiers to events they experience. In fact, this attitude is most important as it counters the entire foundation of Byung-Chul Han’s argument of humanity moving to the ‘innoculisation’ of experience. There are no ‘positive’ inputs which lead to health, longevity and ‘positive-feelings’, and no negative inputs which can be repressed by society. 

It will be interesting to explore what else we can learn from Yowie societies over the next few years. They of course won’t have all the answers, but the present an opportunity for our philosophers and sociologists to explore alternative cultural-societal attitudes and values.