Delusions of Work, Delusions at Work!

An article that appeared on March 3, 2017, in The New York Times made me so angry that I could barely contain myself. Inspiration and spleen are my muses today. With impressive conciseness, the piece neatly arranges almost all of the delusions that make up what the German philosopher Josef Pieper, writing prophetically after World War II, called the world of "total work." Pieper, an immensely important prophet, foresaw the development of "total work," a time when human lives--their thoughts, their concerns, their discourses--would be more and more defined by work and by working. Some of those delusions I espied:

The article presumes that work is the most important thing in life, and the truth is that it's just about the least important thing.

It unconsciously adopts what I call the Centrality of Work thesis, which is that work is that around which everything else in life turns. Work is thought to be the centerpoint of the turning world. That thesis, albeit widely held, is utterly false.

The Centrality thesis goes hand in hand with work's imperial colonization of the rest of our lives. For instance, it's nearly impossible to think of what is not work without thinking (a) of not-work in work-derived terms (I rest from work; I have a weekend; I am taking a short break from work; I am taking time off from work; I spend time away from work; etc.) or (b) of what is non-work in working terms ("Oh, I have X number of tasks to do on Sunday." "We need to work on our relationship." "I've been very busy during this holiday." "We got a lot done on Sunday.")

It assumes the reigning secular thesis that the telos for human life is either work or health. Which is just madness! How is it even possible for health to be that for the sake of which one lives? How possible for work to be one's reason to "get up in the morning?" That's insane!

It engages in such a degree of historical myopia as to be frankly obscene. No longer do humans live for glory, for God, for truth, for beauty, for goodness but--are you kidding me?--for work.

It reveals the extent to which people who don't work or can't work are existentially lost. I'm referring to those relatively new modern categories of people: the "unemployed," the "underemployed," "retirees," those who have "exited" the "labor market." And it just so happens that those who have spent virtually all of their lives working (think of that: to spend virtually all of your life, to have "spent" much of your time working! Utter insanity!) feel lost. And what does this show? That perhaps the greatest existential conundrum facing us in late modernity is acedia, a medieval vice associated with restlessness, listlessness, and torpor. Acedia is the gnawing sense of not knowing what to do with oneself, not knowing what to make of oneself. Great! Ever tried actually dwelling in that painful silence? Contemplating? Wandering? Doing--nothing?

Given the view that we live to work (false) and given too that we work to be healthy (or: we live to work and one of the byproducts of continuing to work is that, according to this article, we continue to be healthy) (also false), what's ruled out from the outset is the existentially gripping question at the heart of our existence. Which is: why in the world are we here?

There's a reason why Americans get so damn scared and feel so damn lost when they retire. Because they realize they have nothing! They are nothing!

How did we get to this level of cultural madness? I won't even try to answer that question today. Instead, I'll get around to analyzing this utterly delusional article.

Are You Kidding Me?

In "Working Long May Benefit Your Health," Christopher Farrell has in view those Americans, largely baby boomers, who are thinking of retiring or who already have done so, and he explores how continuing to work often in some lesser capacity may improve physical health and well-being, may extend your social connections, and may provide you with a "reason to get up in the morning." Bleck.

Well, all right, what's the matter?

To begin with, the article trades on a common New York Times telic assumption, which is that if something is good for health or if something has health as one of its byproducts, then it's a good thing to do. Therefore, if work is good for health insofar as work promotes health, then it's a good thing to do. But this is absurd! Why would any reasonable person work and contingently enjoy the health benefits or else work for the sake of health? Are you kidding me? After the Death of God, how can we not see that this is plainly not a good answer--it's an absolutely shitty answer!--to the question of nihilism? To live in order to live longer? To live in order to live healthily? Vanity! Delusion! Total nonsense!

Second, it's said that "[w]ork offers a routine and purpose, a reason for getting up in the morning." Wow! Wow! Really? Are you serious? Your purpose in life, your reason for getting up in the morning, the reason why you believe that life is better than death, that it's better for you to live than it is for you to die, that for the sake of which you're living your life is to----go to work? Does anyone really believe this? It's madness!

Third, one expert said, "The workplace is a social environment, a community." True, it's a social environment, but I'm calling bullshit on the community claim. What. Absolute. Bullshit! The workplace is not a family and it's not like a family. People believe that stuff, and it causes them suffering. It's, in truth, a place that cultivates what Aristotle called "friendships of utility." Each worker matters just to the degree that he or she can provide something of benefit to those involved. It's like LinkedIn, right?, a platform that cultivates instrumental relationships. OK, I suppose, so far as that goes. Yet rarely is it the case that philia--true and genuine friendships in which one person cares for another person for that other person's own sake--obtains, and the modern workplace is most surely not designed to encourage philia-friendships. If and when they occur, they occur outside of work and become something other (and wonderful and beautiful). But only notice what happens when somebody leaves or is laid off. She is soon forgotten! Poof! Someone else comes to take her place! I'm leaving out all the ways that in competitive industries these work relationships involve carping, backbiting, gossiping, passive aggressiveness, Scandinavian politeness, manipulating all in order to "make it." It's a damn lie we tell ourselves to hold that these are philia-friendships! Stop it!

In fact, one of the greatest lies today is that the genuine bonds of family, philia-friendship, and camaraderie can simply and frictionlessly be replaced by the the tenuous free-agent, freelance, contractual relationships associated with modern work. The loss of civil society--the groups, clubs, and small 's' societies that enabled some people to realize genuine social bonds with others--are largely gone. Facebook is shit, is no substitute. What's worse, we can perpetuate these delusions of the kind limned just above by employing analogies ("Oh, it feels like home here.") and metaphors ("Everyone at company X is family to me."). These delusions saturate and permeate our thinking! Horrifyingly! Plainly, work is not home, and this ain't your family!

Fourth, one American invoked the American ethos as well and clearly as anyone could, saying, "I don’t do well at home." I'm not kidding you. That's a direct quote from the article! Of course, you don't! Because being in solitude, away from the perturbations, the noises, the busynesses, being with our own thoughts causes you to feel the emptiness, the acedia, at the heart of your being. Then existential questions are released into the void, questions like: what am I doing here? What is it all about? Why life at all? Why my life? Why can't I dwell in solitude? Have I lived a good life? Who am I anyway? And so, rather than facing them, in lieu of facing up to yourself, hey, you can just keep working until you die! That's right: avoid the truth by hurrying (a good work concept) back to work!

Just a Few Plain Truths

Work isn't the most important thing in human life. Not by a long shot. It's incredibly shocking that someone needs to write this. Other times and cultures were actually sane. St. Benedict holds to ora et labore. We pray and we labor some each day. Zen Buddhists also insist that working some each day bears some importance (provided that one works mindfully and compassionately), yet neither Zennists nor Christian monastics would have thought it even remotely reasonable to put work as the centerpiece of life or of the universe. Consider an even more modest proposal--namely, that many people at many times in history have worked some because they've had to, not because they wanted to. OK, that's at least reasonable. Both views, and countless others, uphold the plain truth that work isn't the most important thing in human life. Play is the space in which meaning arises. A plain truth is that we work (if we have to) in order to play. Sophisticated forms of play are civic engagement in the life of the polis, religion, love (that is, genuine eros), philosophy, philia-friendship, contemplation of nature, and art (of all kinds). Work has no business, so to speak, in any of this. None whatsoever. Modern work is a massive, systemic delusion that forecloses the very possibility of coming to understand what we as human beings are doing here. And that is really the only reason to live: to understand what one is doing here with the rider that that understanding deeply inform and shape how you relate to others, how you live your life. Failing to realize this, you miss out on a human, and humane, form of living.

I write all this in leisure. This applies also to a note I wrote this morning: "Philosophy is a rational form of conspiracy theory." Being so far from common sense, it risks its own form of madness. For me, the risk, however dangerous, is worth taking. No doubt philosophy is not the only thing that can liberate us, but it is surely one of those rare and excellent gifts offered to those whose eyes now are able to see something exceptionally ugly and to glimpse something exquisitely beautiful.