Serialised book (with a progressively updated >>dashboard/ToC<< page). Part II: Philosophy of the Life Instinct

Book: Philosophy of Life Instinct: Chapter 17: Work and Ambition

Engines of life

Work is all about energy. So is the universe. The Big Bang was pure energy and from it appeared matter and time. Energy in different forms achieves different things. Potential energy keeps things in position, e.g., in atomic and molecular bonds. Kinetic energy moves matter, e.g., in acceleration and velocity.

Force is required to put energy into the position and movement of matter. Work is a force in action. It is done by applying force to move matter to a new potential or kinetic state (the latter also manifests as heat at the atomic level).

The universe is changing continuously. The energy of the big bang from sub-atomic to cosmic scale is morphing and moving. Work is happening all the time, everywhere.

Life forms have bodies that are forms of order, a state of higher potential energy than disorder. They also require kinetic energy while they are alive.

In and after conception, the unconscious drive of Life Instinct in a parent transforms food’s energy into the new living cells' molecular potential energy. The parent’s body works to apply force to move the matter into position and form the embryo, foetus and baby. Once the baby can feed and move independently, it transforms food’s energy into kinetic energy of motion. It works to apply force to move the matter in its body to feed, walk, run, think, etc.

To be alive is to be working. Continuously. Instinctively.

The simplest unicellular life forms and even the most complex animals don’t have much to choose from in the type of work they need. As per their form and habitat, they do the obvious to stay alive, grow and reproduce.

But it is very different for us, humans. Our ancestor Homo heidelbergensis may have foraged, hunted and sheltered very similarly to chimpanzees or gorillas. But Homo sapiens has taken the world of work to a level of variety, complexity and choice that is as complex as we can expect from our complicated conscious minds.

Let’s look at our work’s positive and negative nuances, examine its shadow — ambition — and round it off with how to make work well for us.

We and our work made for each other.

Let’s skip the obvious value of work in keeping us independent, and our families fed, clothed and sheltered, and look at a few other interesting points.

Identity and belonging

Our work defines us. Many of us have names that indicate the work our ancestors did. Work makes us feel we have meaning and purpose in contributing to our family and society. It gives us self-worth to motivate us daily.

Friendships developed in offices and other places of work can last a lifetime. Sharing the environment, experiences, successes, and challenges makes a community for us.

Pleasure

We have evolved to enjoy using our bodies and minds to think and achieve something every day. The Life Instinct has resulted in our brain rewarding its pleasure sensing regions when we forage, sow, reap, carve, shape, polish, build, repair, compute, solve, code, write, sell, discover, or invent. It is intricately tied to being alive. If we are mindful of our work, we enjoy it even more, individually and together.

Growth

The productive life of humans can range from forty to sixty years. That is a long time in our lives. Many things change in our personal lives and the world during this time. All of us grow as we work. We gain knowledge, skills, learn to face challenges, adjust to new ideas, work well with people, understand technologies, and use new methods. Some of us even become leaders and take others into new or challenging areas. We are bound to develop as we work. If we bring self-awareness to it, we may pull ahead and give more value and joy than our existence’s usual trajectory.

Balance

As men and women, it is healthy for us to divide time between home and away. It can be mental or physical distancing from children and elders' care, household chores, maintenance, etc. Traditionally, men have had this space by going out to work, and women through recreations and pastimes. Now both are doing both. This alternation is essential for sustaining life at home and work well.

When work starts hurting us

Work-life imbalance

Work can reduce the quality of our time off by allowing too little of it and affecting our mind and body.

Travel and long hours at the workplace have become de rigueur for a significant number of us. Some enjoy it, but many of us are dismayed by the tedium of packing, booking and accounting, waiting in lobbies and lines, cramped seats, bleary eyes and alarms at witching hours. And the travel time is typically twenty times that spent at the destination on the work itself. Whether we like to travel or not, the excessive time away from home takes a toll on our energy, interests, recreation and family life.

Then there is the physical deterioration. We, humans, have not yet become big brains with minimal bodies to keep us alive. We are just as much made of fat, muscle, bone and sinew as we were a million years ago. Yet, in modern work, we pay less and less attention to physical activity and spend increasing amounts of time using our minds. Mechanisation has deeply spread into traditionally physical occupations such as farming, fishing and tool making. It has become almost universally about manipulating power-assisted levers and wheels, keyboards, mice and buttons. But our bodies are built to walk, stretch, bend, and lift. We try fitfully to replace natural physical activity with games and exercise. But the rising obesity, back and joint problems show how far off course we have gone, with a significant cause being work.

Burn-out

Work can become an obsession. We feel wanted for our role and work, and it validates us. The pleasure centres of our brain reward us every time we interact with others at work. The buzz from this feeling becomes an addiction.

We often do things just to be present and acknowledged. We speak in meetings to show we exist — and have something to contribute. Without realising it, we find excuses to work late and on weekends. We start skipping holidays, family time and meeting friends.

Soon, the effects pile up, just like they do from other addictions.

Sometimes the reasons for the overwork are external and genuine. But when they last for more than a few days, we have to look at ourselves as the more likely cause.

One may also be working in a physically or mentally unfriendly environment. Bad bosses, politics, unrealistic expectations, and lack of career growth make many employees miserable.

Too much mind work

Gaze upon a shepherdess standing still under a tree in the savanna, chin on her stick, hearing the buzz of insects in the grass, the mewling of her lambs, listening for the big cats, as much in the moment as anyone can be.

Watch a carpenter planing a plank, feeling the wood grain's resistance to the blade, the whoosh whoosh as the curling wood falls away, totally engrossed in his work.

Admire a glass smith blowing a vase by the glowing furnace, turning the tube and shaping the gleaming liquid, the epitome of concentration.

Imagine yourself a potter, farmer, hunter, miner, mason, weaver or any of myriad other workers over the millennia, your form intersecting with nature to produce practical or beautiful things.

From a career past, I remember the pleasure and satisfaction in taking apart an oil pump to fix a sleeve, putting it back together and seeing it work again.

The old way of using our bodies directly in our surroundings kept us in touch with nature and the elements. Everyone worked like that. It was manual but not menial, for it needed knowledge, skill and application too. It kept us alert and alive, away from mischief, depression and ennui. Physical work calmed and steadied us, and we ate well and slept soundly.

For ever-growing numbers today, the most common way of working is to use our minds more than our bodies. Office activity occupies our sight and mind but doesn’t use our entire hands, arms, shoulders, back or legs for anything tactile. Most of us don’t use our smell, hearing or taste in our occupation. Our eyes and brains are busy and maybe our fingertips, but the rest of our being that evolved to interact with nature is sedentary.

Our brains are too active, and our bodies too little. We speak but do not listen. We see but do not observe. Our attention darts from television to the mobile screen to the laptop. We move about but don’t feel we get anywhere. We feel tired but can’t sleep. We eat lots and suffer more.

We live better and better but feel more and more dead.

So we turn to yoga and meditation, tai chi and mindfulness exercises, the gym, sports, and hobbies.

But I know I still genuinely enjoy working with my hands — fingers, palms and wrists, with my body straining in support. And using my mind to improve what my body does, close to nature’s design. Not the other way around.

Sadly, there’s no going back to the old corporeal occupations. We must do our best with paltry substitutes to immerse the mind in the body for a healthy soul.

Moral and ethical expediencies

The wrongdoing of several large corporations is legion. (Look here for a refresher.). We see money misappropriated and tests falsified, systemic sexual harassment, forced upgrades, environmental callousness, data theft, exploitation of labour, and many other depredations.

It is not the work of some faceless and remote entity. It is we, ordinary people, who, under the right circumstances, do these things. The variety and inventiveness of malfeasance attest to our ability to cleverly misuse the intelligence provided us by the Life Instinct.

Ignorance is bliss; wilfully ignoring a crime is corrupt. It is not easy to get away with such large scale illegality without hundreds or thousands of employees turning a blind eye, tacitly approving, or actively supporting it.

Why do some of us do wrong things in our work and company? Why do even more of us accept what we would vocally condemn and quash in an ordinary person? It is a sort of herd mentality. Companies become like cults. We who are in them feel an allegiance to their success and domination over others. The identity and safety provided by this community carry a lot more weight than our morality. We feel secure falling in line, adding our body to the group’s mass. We don’t want to break ranks and call attention to our disloyalty. We would be attacked and cast out if we did. Rather sail with the ship or slip away quietly if our conscience is too strong.

Even as laypeople, we accept many corporations' continuation after punishing them to some extent for their misdemeanours. In many cases, we even look up to them as if we expect such bad behaviour from the red-blooded alpha male of any pack. In many cases, the person who is the company's face becomes the object of our covert respect.

Envy joins with shaky morality and fluid ethics to become admiration for dubious captains of industry. Would the world be worse off without the inventions they make and we buy? Is the employment of a few thousand and the pleasure of a few million worth the collateral damage?

There is a pattern to this: Whether it is a country or company, when malevolent intellect and emotional charisma combine to rouse the primordial instincts of a cohort, they deliver crime at scale.

Difficulties of changing our work

If we are fortunate, we will have a vocation we like or love that rewards us well. But for many of us, work can be drudgery. We can address some issues by moving to a different division or employer. Or we see the way out as a new occupation or starting our own business.

To change one’s profession, one has to have an alternative skill or develop one. There is significant difficulty in making a large change, such as technical lines to selling, management, or something creative. Technical work needs specific learning, certificates and practical experience. Management can be stressful and requires a high level of people skills and patience. Creative work may not pay much or steadily. Selling requires a suitable personality type, including the ability to withstand customer knockbacks.

Working for oneself can be attractive at a distance. It looks like a way to avoid office politics, distasteful competition in a corporate hierarchy, and poor company policies. It can seem rosier than it turns out. There are many aspects of a new business that we may ignore at our peril before launching into it. The practical realities of investment and returns, income and spending, keeping books, paying taxes, managing staff and handling the vagaries of the market can soon bury all the excitement and enthusiasm. The reality here often dashes expectations.

Retirement blues

We are living longer and longer. When it is time to stop working, what is one to do with the decades left of life?

We lose a lot more than our working income. There is also the receding of all the good things about work we saw above — identity, belonging, growth, pleasure and balance. Some of us take up activities that replace these necessities. Others wither away. Some of the issues that emerge are below. (These are also about plain old age, but not working full time exacerbates them. See bibliography.)

• Running out of money.
• Difficulty in finding part-time work.
• Loneliness, especially once the spouse passes away.
• Lack of care.
• Deterioration in mental health.
• Ageing faster due to reduced physical activity.
• Feeling like a burden on the family.

Ambition

Ambition is a mechanism developed by the Life Instinct to drive us towards more robust lives and increase the propagation of our unique genes. Our brain rewards itself as much as we satisfy this drive. Like life, there is nothing of absolute value that ambition achieves. It is only a part of what we are. We have evolved to feel that if we become rich, powerful or famous, we will be happier. We also think that if we achieve much in life, we will be remembered after we die and become immortal in a way. These become motivators to produce more and receive more from the world.

Ambition has achieved everything great and glorious. It has taken the best of humanity to every corner of the world in science, art, philosophy, industry and more. The pyramids, America, aeroplanes, the light bulb, the Taj Mahal, St. Peters, landing on the moon, nuclear power, and many more human achievements have resulted from the ambition of individuals or a small set of people.

Then there is the pedestrian variety of our ambitions at work. We want to climb the ladder, get promoted, score salary hikes, be the next startup success, capture the market. The accumulated ambition of the billions of workers worldwide achieves the progress we make every year globally.

So how do we judge how much ambition is good? Can we? Should we? Why curb an instinct? Aren’t we who are of this book all about respect for the Life Instinct? Is it not the quintessence of the species trying to get as powerful as it can be? Yes, but the ambition of powerful people has killed hundreds of millions, destroyed civilisations, and made countless lives miserable. And that of ordinary people has ruined lives, wrecked families and destroyed friendships.

As an internal tool of Life Instinct, there is nothing wrong with ambition. We need it in good measure. But for the entire species to benefit, it has to be directed by morality, ethics and wisdom. Like our intellect, unbridled ambition is as powerful a force for good as for evil. We need to use our intelligence as a brake, not entirely an accelerator, to better use its power. We will consider how in the next section.

Working wisely

Time seems to pass slowly for some things, faster for others. The arrow of work flies fast, and we soon look back on decades of it. What do we want to see? That we were wise enough to combine our work and material success with a good life. Now is the time to make sure of it.

Personal growth

• We should keep a watch on shortfalls in our technical knowledge and skills to reduce or eliminate them. It is relatively easy, as it takes only effort to learn. For example, we may not understand how our company’s products or services work, what they require, etc. There is no shortage of information sources and informal mentors.
• Recognise our intellectual flaws and work on them. For example, we may be weak in language, communication, public speaking, etc.
• Know our emotional deficiencies and sort them out. We may be easily distracted, talk too much, unable to say no, too sensitive, impatient, vain, quick to anger, bigoted, sexist, etc.
• Be aware of our physical weaknesses and address them. We may lack stamina, suffer chronic back pain, feel tired or sleepy often, etc. Exercise and diet should take care of most maladies. Do not neglect anything that requires medical attention.
• If we can wake up every morning and look forward to getting back to doing what we love, we are indeed fortunate. So is the rest of humanity, for it gets the best of us. If we are also making a decent living, we can’t ask for more. Those of us who aren’t there must try to navigate towards the work we enjoy.
• If we are moving to a different work line, it is worth shadowing someone for a while. The closer the new occupation is to the former, the more we are likely to succeed. Take the time to learn the new skills as methodically as you can before making the change. Let us not assume or guess what is required. There is dirt beneath the green grass we see from afar.
• Prepare, prepare and prepare if we are launching a startup. Get a consultant. Consider the worst case of everything and have a plan for it. Consider the risks to relationships carefully before involving friends or family. It may be better to have only professional partners. (The Life Instinct makes the impulse for independence common enough that several thousand people begin new ventures every day. We must encourage this. Those who succeed contribute a lot to our species. The failures end up more robust for future endeavours or jobs.)

Growing for others

• Make a study of emotional intelligence and practise it for the right reasons and outcomes. It is the most powerful aid to working harmoniously with others at work and generally for life. It includes listening, psychological understanding, empathy, identifying with the other, self-control, etc.
• Balance our need to prove our worth versus helping others, as most work needs cooperation.

All of us can improve our attitude to work. It is especially true as many modern occupations are not natural for us. There are respected self-help books on each aspect. After we learn from them, we should summarise their gist in a couple of sentences and put them on our fridge or screensaver for daily practice.

Practical wisdom at work

Knowledge, intelligence, skills, talent, emotional intelligence — all come to nought without perseverance and discipline. Here are a few notes for effective working that should stand the test of time, from my experience.

1. Talk less, think more, do more.
2. Being busy is not work. “What tangible outcome did I produce today?” is the question.
3. Presentations, briefing meetings and messages are rarely productive. Reduce them to the minimum.
4. Spend the first thirty to forty-five minutes of work every morning on self-improvement. Do it alone and undisturbed. We can do a course, certification, learn, or make notes on our gaps. It is not selfish. The world will benefit from it.
5. Begin work before or by 9 a.m., finish before or by 6 p.m. No weekend work, unless it is a problem we created, or someone is dying.
6. Do not take work home. Keep our time to ourselves. Office mail and instant messaging on our phones are out. Detaching makes us more productive.
7. Be organised in mind and workspace. Clutter produces confusion.
8. Trust but verify. Never believe a good story; scepticism is an incisive weapon.
9. Respect the competence, not the title.
10. Have a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C for everything. It will save us more often than not.
11. Always think of the end-user, and we will not fail.
12. Work out the economics. It is the best argument.

Getting ambition right

Good ambition is an ambition for the right things and effects. As long as we make sure of both, it is as sound a tool of Life Instinct as anything else.

Besides the usual wanting to be rich, powerful, or famous, what are the ambitions befitting the most advanced species we know? A few examples:

• Create the best product or service of a type.
• Find the Grand Unified Theory.
• Employ everyone.
• Educate everyone.
• Create clean and healthy living conditions globally.
• Completely replace fossil fuels with green energy.
• Achieve zero waste and pollution.
• Restore the environment.
• Protect all species from extinction.
• Spread personal freedom and equality worldwide.
• Eliminate crime.
• Achieve global democracy.
• Eliminate war.
• Create the ultimate philosophy with all answers.

What are the moral and ethical conditions for any ambition? Whether our ambition is one of the usual three or altruistic:

• We will study all the effects of our ambition and ensure it does not directly or indirectly harm any life form or ecosystem. It includes not making addictive inventions, not increasing social disparity, and not allowing others to misuse what we make.
• If we have a family, it will remain our priority.
• If the work needs a team, we will inspire or convince others to join us and not force them.

Balancing work and everything else

• Forty hours of work every week are sufficient to achieve anything if we focus and work smartly. Forty hours of work.
• Physical exercise is vital. It gives us energy, improves our mood, sharpens our thinking and keeps us healthy. Sports are a fun aerobic and social alternative. Being active every day is excellent for work and everything else.
• Time spent with friends and family improves our work. Do not doubt this.
• Do we need that business trip? Cutting down on travel increases productivity, improves health, and strengthens family and social bonds. Keep travel to twenty days in a year.
• Balance our work addiction with sports, running, reading, talking, movies, or other healthy passions. There has to be a strong pull away from the siren call of work.
• Plan well for retirement financially, occupationally and socially. There is a lot of value in us while we live. If we release it at our own pace, it will maintain our mind and body. Being a strain on the family is the last thing we want. Think about tending our career’s offshoots, resuming a long-neglected interest, making new friends, working out a daily schedule, part-time work, volunteering, seeing new places, light exercise, meditation, clubs, teaching, helping with grandchildren and enjoying their company. Retirement can be golden dusk for most of us.

Conclusions

We work to live well. Let’s do that.

By the way, life is happening right now.

© 2020 Shashidhar Sastry. All rights reserved.

(As each chapter of the book is published, its link is updated in the ToC below.)

Table of Contents

Part I Metaphysics of The Life Instinct

Part II Philosophy of The Life Instinct

Part III The Life Instinct and The Future

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