Lonely Heroes

Audiobook Lonely Heroes, by Pavel Pospěch, read by Kryštof Bartoš, directed by Helena Rytířová. HOW THE CULTURE OF AUTONOMY IS CORRODING SOCIETY The culture of individualism and its impact on people's lives and politics We are all special. When we find our authentic self, we will finally be happy. We have to make our own success and life satisfaction, no one will do it for us. We have the right to live our lives in our own way. How many times have we heard such lessons and we hear them every day... They are all good-sounding advice, but like a lot of good advice, they have a catch: we'll be on our own in the end. In his book Lonely Heroes, Pavel Pospěch focuses on the increasingly important phenomenon of individualism and searches for its social roots and its impact on our everyday life. The explanations he offers are not generational, psychological or technological, but sociological. The rise of self-obsession is not the fault of the spoiled young generations, nor of the ubiquitous social platforms. Individualism is a product of the specific culture we are brought up in from childhood and we are more deeply trapped in it than we would like to think. The culture of individualism makes us the lonely heroes of our own lives and increasingly prevents us from living a meaningful life with the people around us. PAVEL POSPĚCH (born. 1980) is a sociologist and publicist. He teaches at Masaryk University and is professionally involved in urban and rural research and social theory. Previously, he was an assistant professor at the University of Vienna and a visiting researcher at Yale University. In 2021 he published a well-received book, The Unknown Society, about the unexpected contexts and features of Czech society. KRYŠTOF BARTOŠ After graduating from an eight-year grammar school, he began to study psychology. After a year he moved to Hamburg and then to Bremen, where he worked as a dock worker.  After a year he returned to the Czech Republic and studied drama at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.  Since the 2017/2018 season he has been a member of the ensemble of the Klicpera Theatre in Hradec Králové. In 2022, he portrayed Tomáš Kozák in the crime series The Nineties.