Translator: Alberto Ciria

In this essay Byung-Chul Han traces the violent power of the equal in phenomena such as fear, globalization and terrorism, which are what characterize today's society.

The times when the other existed have passed. The other as a friend, the other as hell, the other as mystery, the other as desire are disappearing, giving way to the same. The proliferation of the same is what, masquerading as growth, constitutes today these pathological alterations of the social body. What sickens society is not alienation, subtraction, prohibition or repression, but hypercommunication, excess information, overproduction and hyperconsumption. The expulsion of the different and the hell of the same set in motion a totally different destructive process: depression and self-destruction.