Study of “Workism Is Making Americans Miserable” by Derek Thompson
Workism Cult Defined
Thompson observes that Americans have been suckered into becoming members of an identity cult. This cult he calls workism. Thompson writes:
The economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production. They failed to anticipate that, for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity; but for the college-educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion, promising identity, transcendence, and community. Call it workism.
This cult affects the well-to-do college educated. It offers connection, greatness, and validation. It is a sort of an addiction, but if it remains unquestioned and people seek it blindly this cult has many self-destructive properties, the most obvious being burnout.
People Abhor a Vacuum and Will Fill Their Emptiness with a False God
One such false god or false religion is workism. Thompson writes:
The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new atheisms. Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children. But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants.
What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.
Homo industrious is not new to the American landscape. The American dream—that hoary mythology that hard work always guarantees upward mobility—has for more than a century made the U.S. obsessed with material success and the exhaustive striving required to earn it.
Lipstick on a Pig (a cliche I love)
Workism is a sort of lipstick on the pig of greed and materialism. Let’s hide our greed and materialism by pretending we’re engaged in some noble, spiritual enterprise. Let’s erect this facade by using pretentious language about our vocation. Let’s give Ted Talks about how amazing our work is.
The HBO TV show Silicon Valley was a parody of workism in many ways.
Isn’t the point of being rich to work less? The answer is no.
This shift defies economic logic—and economic history. The rich have always worked less than the poor, because they could afford to. The landed gentry of preindustrial Europe dined, danced, and gossiped, while serfs toiled without end. In the early 20th century, rich Americans used their ample downtime to buy weekly movie tickets and dabble in sports. Today’s rich American men can afford vastly more downtime. But they have used their wealth to buy the strangest of prizes: more work!
The rich and successful work more because
One. They don’t know what else to do.
Two. They are running away from the misery of not working.
As Thompson writes:
Without work, including nonsalaried labor like raising a child, most people tend to feel miserable. Some evidence suggests that long-term unemployment is even more wrenching than losing a loved one, since the absence of an engaging distraction removes the very thing that tends to provide solace to mourners in the first place.
Three. They are so insecure they must rely on their work identity to validate themselves.
Four. Their work is their religion.
Five. Their “work ethic” states that if they slow down for even the slightest bit their competition will have an advantage.
Six. Their crazy worldview tells them that being overworked is a sign of happiness and success even though the empirical evidence shows the opposite.
Seven. Being at work is where they feel they can be engaged, creative, and their true self.
As we read:
Perhaps long hours are part of an arms race for status and income among the moneyed elite. Or maybe the logic here isn’t economic at all. It’s emotional—even spiritual. The best-educated and highest-earning Americans, who can have whatever they want, have chosen the office for the same reason that devout Christians attend church on Sundays: It’s where they feel most themselves. “For many of today’s rich there is no such thing as ‘leisure’; in the classic sense—work is their play,” the economist Robert Frank wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “Building wealth to them is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.”
Could the above points be an outline for an essay that analyzes the causes behind workism?
Another essay could argue that workism has destructive effects on society. One such ill effect is America’s lack of daycare and paid leave. As we read:
Even as Americans worship workism, its leaders consecrate it from the marble daises of Congress and enshrine it in law. Most advanced countries give new parents paid leave; but the United States guarantees no such thing. Many advanced countries ease the burden of parenthood with national policies; but U.S. public spending on child care and early education is near the bottom of international rankings. In most advanced countries, citizens are guaranteed access to health care by their government; but the majority of insured Americans get health care through—where else?—their workplace.
Mass Anxiety, False Expectations, and Burnout
Thompson writes:
But a culture that funnels its dreams of self-actualization into salaried jobs is setting itself up for collective anxiety, mass disappointment, and inevitable burnout.
In fact, you may very well not find the meaning of life at your work.
Professor Jordan Peterson and others say only about 2% of us get a job that is “our calling.” What about the other 98% of us?
Millennials, College Debt, and the Comparison Factory of Social Media
Thompson observes that Millennials are especially vulnerable to the traps of workism:
While it’s inadvisable to paint 85 million people with the same brush, it’s fair to say that American Millennials have been collectively defined by two external traumas. The first is student debt. Millennials are the most educated generation ever, a distinction that should have made them rich and secure. But rising educational attainment has come at a steep price. Since 2007, outstanding student debt has grown by almost $1 trillion, roughly tripling in just 12 years. And since the economy cratered in 2008, average wages for young graduates have stagnated—making it even harder to pay off loans.
The second external trauma of the Millennial generation has been the disturbance of social media, which has amplified the pressure to craft an image of success—for oneself, for one’s friends and colleagues, and even for one’s parents. But literally visualizing career success can be difficult in a services and information economy. Blue-collar jobs produce tangible products, like coal, steel rods, and houses. The output of white-collar work—algorithms, consulting projects, programmatic advertising campaigns—is more shapeless and often quite invisible. It’s not glib to say that the whiter the collar, the more invisible the product.
Since the physical world leaves few traces of achievement, today’s workers turn to social media to make manifest their accomplishments. Many of them spend hours crafting a separate reality of stress-free smiles, postcard vistas, and Edison-lightbulbed working spaces.
Watching people brag about their amazing careers on social media creates FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, encouraging others to join the rat race.
It appears that constructing or curating their “amazing lives” on social media becomes a job in itself.
Myth of Dream Job Leads to Burnout and Job Market Based on Exploitation
Thompson writes:
The problem with this gospel—Your dream job is out there, so never stop hustling—is that it’s a blueprint for spiritual and physical exhaustion. Long hours don’t make anybody more productive or creative; they make people stressed, tired and bitter. But the overwork myths survive “because they justify the extreme wealth created for a small group of elite techies,” Griffith writes.
There is something slyly dystopian about an economic system that has convinced the most indebted generation in American history to put purpose over paycheck. Indeed, if you were designing a Black Mirror labor force that encouraged overwork without higher wages, what might you do? Perhaps you’d persuade educated young people that income comes second; that no job is just a job; and that the only real reward from work is the ineffable glow of purpose. It is a diabolical game that creates a prize so tantalizing yet rare that almost nobody wins, but everybody feels obligated to play forever.
Even if we become aware of this manipulation, we can’t necessarily stop the workism cult from growing inside of us. The author Thompson himself confesses half way through the essay that the cult owns him.
This shows there is often a disconnect by our intellect and our emotions. Our soul can’t follow the truth we know to exist in our brains.
Is there a cure for workism?
Thompson says in his conclusion that changes in public policy might lead to such a cure: UBI (Universal Basic Income), parental leave, childcare. As he writes:
This can start with public policy. There is new enthusiasm for universal policies—like universal basic income, parental leave, subsidized child care, and a child allowance—which would make long working hours less necessary for all Americans. These changes alone might not be enough to reduce Americans’ devotion to work for work’s sake, since it’s the rich who are most devoted. But they would spare the vast majority of the public from the pathological workaholism that grips today’s elites, and perhaps create a bottom-up movement to displace work as the centerpiece of the secular American identity.
Covid-19 Pandemic and Workism
It’s hard to read Thompson’s essay and not consider workism in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has the population working from home and in general being in a lockdown situation.
It’s hard to believe that when we get out of this pandemic things will return to normal.
People will probably work from their homes more.
Workism may be challenged by the permanent effects of the pandemic on our economy.
Analysis of Thompson’s Essay and Developing a Thesis
Most if not all of everything Thompson writes here is insightful, true, and relevant.
I could see how a writer could develop an argumentative thesis in support of Thompson in two ways:
A writer could argue that Thompson makes a persuasive case about the underlying causes of workism.
Review of the Causes of Workism
One. Successful people don’t know what else to do.
Two. They are running away from the misery of not working.
Three. They are so insecure they must rely on their work identity to validate themselves.
Four. Their work is their religion.
Five. Their “work ethic” states that if they slow down for even the slightest bit their competition will have an advantage.
Six. Their crazy worldview tells them that being overworked is a sign of happiness and success even though the empirical evidence shows the opposite.
Seven. Being at work is where they feel they can be engaged, creative, and their true self.
A writer could also argue that Thompson makes a persuasive case about the self-destructive effects of workism.
Review of Self-Destructive Effects of Workism
One. Burnout
Two. College debt
Three. Unrealistic expectations about finding meaning from a job when only about 2% of workers find their calling on the jobsite.
Four. We constantly feel inadequate as we compare our lives to other curated lives on social media so that no degree of accomplishment will satisfy us in the context of the bigger superstars we inevitably compare ourselves to.
Agreement Trap
Often when an author as good as Derek Thompson presents a persuasive case, we find much we can support, and this becomes a trap because in our agreement we inevitably do little more than summarize the author’s essay.
I could for example use the causes or self-destructive effects of workism as body paragraphs for an “agreement essay,” and I’d be rather bored.
What’s the alternative? Perhaps disagree with the author. I don’t mean disagree just to disagree, but find a real weakness in the author’s essay.
Weaknesses in Derek Thompson’s Essay?
Contrarian Thesis That Picks Apart Thompson’s Essay
While Derek Thompson makes many compelling points about the state of workism in America, his essay in many regards is a failure.
For one, workism is just a refitted term for the perfectionist, a personality archetype that is not new to our current age but has existed throughout time.
For two, the perfectionist commonly becomes self-destructive in his or her “accomplishment dysmorphia,” the condition in which there is never enough of anything because one is in a losing battle against an inferiority complex. People have had inferiority complexes throughout time.
For three, the upper elite 1% who have lots of money and are trapped on the ambition treadmill are neither exceptional nor sympathetic. It is self-centered for someone of privilege like Derek Thompson, a successful writer and journalist, to invest time and energy fretting about the collective neuroses of successful people.
For four, through Derek Thompson’s own confession, he is a victim of workism, and he is projecting his own neurosis and trying to make it universal when in fact most of us aren’t members of the Cult of Workism; most of us in fact are just trying to pay our bills.
Conclusion:
In the end, Thompson’s essay is a failure. It is self-serving; it focuses on a thin slice of rich America who hardly deserve our sympathy and psychoanalysis, and his refitting of the perfectionist archetype into some new workism cult is more of a gimmick than a piece of legitimate cultural criticism. Sorry, Thompson, write something that addresses the real concerns of me and my students.
Dysmorphia
Defined by Mayo Clinic:
Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental health disorder in which you can't stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in your appearance — a flaw that appears minor or can't be seen by others. But you may feel so embarrassed, ashamed and anxious that you may avoid many social situations.
When you have body dysmorphic disorder, you intensely focus on your appearance and body image, repeatedly checking the mirror, grooming or seeking reassurance, sometimes for many hours each day. Your perceived flaw and the repetitive behaviors cause you significant distress, and impact your ability to function in your daily life.
You may seek out numerous cosmetic procedures to try to "fix" your perceived flaw. Afterward, you may feel temporary satisfaction or a reduction in your distress, but often the anxiety returns and you may resume searching for other ways to fix your perceived flaw.
Physical Dysmorphia
Intellectual Dysmorphia
Spiritual Dysmorphia
Financial Dysmorphia
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