Work Is Not Supposed To Be The Center Of Our Lives - So Why Is It?
- Jan 30, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 24
Work hard, play hard. Time is money. Thank God it’s Friday. These modern sayings have become so common in the Western World (especially in the US) that we see them in movies, TV, advertisements, and even in corporate missions or slogans. The underlying theme, of course, is that hard work , long workdays, and over-productivity are both valued and rewarded. However, work has not historically been the main focus or highest-held value in our lives, especially before the industrial revolution.
“During the Industrial Revolution, the loss of autonomy peaked through the loss of ownership of time. This resulted from the inability to perform tasks from beginning to end, and the need for expensive machinery. Employing people for many hours in monotonous work under a hierarchical system required a marked increase in oppression. This unnatural situation was addressed by turning work into a first-rate cultural value, so that workers would oppress themselves voluntarily, without feeling that their will was a consequence of social construction.”
—Dr. Miki Ben-Dor, Ph.D.
The Hierarchy of Work
What happens when a large company produces a product or provides a service is that workers on the bottom level actually manufacture the product or provide the services, and they are paid a tiny fraction of the profits from the sales, because the corporate leadership decides what the value of their work is. Let’s just say that you work in a factory that manufactures toys, and the process is mostly done by hand, with a few machines that assist. In the span of one hour, you personally build /assemble 50 toys that will sell for $45/each on the retail market. That is $2250. Most likely, the corporation has decided your value, and that value is minimal wage, the smallest amount that they can pay you by law. So maybe minimum wage is $11/hr where you live—so you produced $2,250 worth of toys for this company, but you are only seeing a little less than one-half of one percent of the profits! And your supervisor, maybe they make around $16/hr, and maybe the factory manager make $22/hr. But then, when you look at the top executives, they are making $300--$800 per hour, and for what? Playing golf, having meetings, maybe a bit of accounting.
When we stop to actually look at how companies work in the modern capitalist economy, it begins to look like exactly what it is—a pyramid scheme. Of course, there are differences, like employees in a company are not usually required to recruit new hires, and the profit actually comes from the product or service and not from money from new recruits. However, in the workplace, referring new employees usually does come with a reward, and the company’s profit is derived from the employee’s (undervalued) time and labor. The similarities abound.
In our ultra-capitalist society, then, it is no wonder that one percent of the population owns about 33% of the wealth (as of 2021), with a system of labor that ensures inequality—those of us on the bottom take all of the risk and do most of the work—and the top dogs reap the rewards.
Among all of this inequality, employers constantly refer to their companies as “a family”, which is an illusion easily broken when the “family” decides to lay you off or ignores your complaint filed with HR about unfair treatment or harassment. Employers that have a ping pong table in the break room or annual Christmas parties with booze are often the employers that have the most toxic workplaces and overworked employees.
The myth of the “Dream Job”
A hugely common interview question is “what is your dream job”, and an experienced interviewee will often reply with a thinly-disguised version of “this job that I am interviewing for right now”. Along with “what is your biggest weakness?” (a question most of us would love to fire back at the employer), this has got to be one of the most useless interview questions. Because, no, being a dedicated administrative assistant/fast-food worker/corporate salesperson isn’t a “dream job”. In reality, if most of us could answer that idiotic question truthfully, it would be something like:
“What a great question. My dream job would pay one million dollars a year. My workdays would be limited to three days a week, which I would dedicate to doing my favorite hobbies, interspersed with chatting with friends, going on hikes, playing video games and enjoying my daily catered lunch. Really, what an excellent, insightful, and creative question.”
What We Do
When you meet someone new, one of the first questions they will often ask is “what do you do?”, which is really a question of “how much are you worth?” Work has become such an ingrained part of our values that for most of us, it is our whole identity. A single mother who is an avid hiker will respond “I’m an insurance agent”. An artist who loves dancing will respond with “I’m a teacher at a middle school”. We all know the real implications of that question, so we give the expected answer—our occupation, our 9 to 5. Because in this society, work is who we are.
So what do we do in this backwards world where work is life and life is an afterthought? How can we move past this unhealthy way of living? Everyone will have their own answer to this, because we are all attached to work in different ways. For some, quitting and starting their own business as a freelancer or contractor will be an option. For others, the answer may be just to get a different job, one that allows them to emotionally detach and not to have to surrender other parts of their lives. We can refuse forced overtime and unpaid work. We can refuse to answer emails or phonecalls from work when we're off the clock. For all of us, we can stop buying unnecessary things and start frequenting thrift stores when we do need stuff. Of course, there's the option of not working and moving into the woods to live off the land— that is an extremely challenging prospect, though. If you are interested in that, I suggest you read these books by Mark Boyle:
Work is not meant to be our whole lives. It is not meant to be an oppressive force that squeezes the joy out of our days. So let's stop letting it be.
“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”
—Carl Sandburg, Poet
