Modern Dating and "The Agony of Eros" by Byung-Chul Han

What happens to love when we treat ourselves as projects, other people as options, and dating as something to optimize? Modern dating gives us more choice than ever. More profiles, more filters, more ways to connect, compare, and move on. But does this help romance, or does it make romance harder?

In this meetup we will discuss Byung-Chul Han's book "The Agony of Eros". Last month we discussed "The Burnout Society", which provides the foundation for this discussion. Han describes an achievement society that no longer says you must, but you can; a society in which we constantly optimize ourselves, never feel finished, and quietly experience every failure as our own fault. In this meetup, we'll examine what this society does to romance.

Han thinks modern life trains us to treat ourselves as projects: we optimize our bodies, careers, personalities, happiness, and even our love lives. At the same time, capitalism turns more and more of life into products, including people. And we start to see others as options, profiles, or mirrors of our own desires.

For Han, love needs "The Other": someone who cannot be fully known, consumed, managed, or controlled. We will talk about dating apps, self-improvement culture, burnout, narcissism, trust, mystery, pornography, filters, and the question of whether romance can survive a culture of endless optimization.

This meetup is relevant whether you are currently dating or looking to add more romance to your life.

The evening has two parts. First, we will briefly recap Han’s diagnosis of modern life and ask what the Achievement Society does to romance. We will look at capitalism, sameness, narcissism, "The Other", and the myth of Eros: Who is he, and why is he in agony?

In the second part, we will ask what we can do about it. Han is not a self-help writer. He does not give five steps to better