Work To Live Or Live To Work?
Why Everyone Needs To Read “Bullshit Jobs”
“A bullshit job is a form of employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence.”
Graeber’s hypothesis is chillingly simple — almost half of the jobs that exist are bullshit. It would make not an iota of difference to the global economy if half of us were to vanish.
Agree? Probably not. I read his evidence and am sceptical. But Graeber, in this part-philosophical, part-anecdotal book, throws up some fundamental observations about our warped nature of work.
The pandemic has changed the way we work for good. But these observations still apply whether you work from your electric recliner or under the stern gaze of your boss.
There seems to be a general rule that the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less they are likely to be paid for it
Why does a hedge fund manager earn infinitely more than a nurse? What about a foreign affairs bureaucrat and a bus driver? Or a plastic surgeon and a schoolteacher?
“The free market” is skewed. People aren’t compensated for creating social value. Nor for the benefits their work provides. People are compensated for the perceived benefits of their work. Silicon Valley at least manufactures real and virtual goods. What value does Wall Street create?
Since industrialisation, the percentage of industrial workers in the USA has held steady. Productivity has skyrocketed. As have revenues and profits. Inflation-adjusted wages for workers has declined. So, where has the money gone? Some ostensibly to shareholders, but a far higher percentage to a growing layer of middle management with important titles and heady remunerations. The proliferation of bullshit jobs, as Graeber puts it.
We have become a civilization based on work and work as an end and means in itself
Why is our default worldview work-centric? Why is listing our occupation a befitting response to “what do you do?”. Anyone who doesn’t work must be a loser. The homeless deserve their predicament because they are lazy.
The concept that work is valour and not working is tantamount to sin is a throwback to its theological origins. The fundamental tenet of Adam Smith’s economics is that humans are inherently lazy, sinful beings who will always look to maximize self-interest and minimise work. Smith was a professor of Moral Philosophy. Moral Philosophy was a branch of Theology.
That’s why today’s modern, capitalistic workplace is seeped in allegorical sin.
Remember the school bell signifying the end of class or recess? It was self-consciously designed to train children for future lives as paid factory labour.
Pleasure at being the cause
Babies are delighted when they discover they can interact with their surroundings and affect change. Moving a pencil, for example. This is our innate pleasure at being the cause. We like making things happen. We are grounded in action. We barely move when we are engrossed in doing something pleasurable. When we are “in the flow”.
If the same pencil is taken away without the baby being able to affect a change, it becomes despondent. Inwardly withdrawn. Evidence links this to mental health issues later in life. This is called the trauma of failed influence.
You’d think having a bullshit job is great. You get paid, absurdly well in most cases, to do nothing. But it’s against our innate instincts. We take pleasure in making things happen and bullshit jobs deprive us of this pleasure. It hurts. Being forced to pretend to work just for the sake of working is a pernicious indignity.
Bullshit jobs sap us of our purpose. Gnaw away at our mental, physical, spiritual and immune systems. Leave us empty. Render us worthless. Kill our confidence. Drain our energy. Etiolate our mojo. Convince us we are impostors. This is a global mental health epidemic — a condition Graeber calls “scriptlessness”. And no-one is talking about it.
Self-direction. Decision Latitude. Autonomy. This is what our souls crave. For me, writing ticks all three boxes. Let’s my creativity blossom, keeps me fully engaged and makes me feel that I am accomplishing something of value. This is autonomy and it’s epic. And boy, am I glad I discovered it.
But writing doesn’t pay my bills.
We are all bound to our jobs. We need them to eat, live and dream. We must also hope they nurture our soul. Graeber’s book will open your senses to the wanton waste of human potential. It’s maddening and proudly anti-establishment. Unputdownable for the champions of the free market hypothesis. Sure, capitalism has given us shiny iPhones and endless hours of Netflix. But what sort of an economic system thrives when the only way to feed your children is to spend all day in pointless, box-ticking exercises?
