Modern work

There are around 76,412,583,910 (close to 77-billion, basically) high-level themes relating to, centered around, and underpinning the modern economic and political system and how labor/work is understood within that system, where the neo-liberal version of Western liberal capitalism that started to emerge as the de facto approach to corporate and government policy some time in the 1990's has failed and has directly led us to the majority of the current problems that we face today which include but are not limited to the growth of right-wing populism and early stages of fascism, nationalism, racism as a government policy, entire demographics being left out of the workforce, emotional disconnection from society, depression, reversal of global collaboration, etc, etc, etc, but today I just want to talk about two of these essentially infinite themes: (1) the idea that if you don't "love" what you do (with respect to work) then you should find a different job (eventually everyone who loves garbage collection and everyone who loves cleaning toilets will find their dream job unless robots take over all that); and (2) the fetishization of work and the idea that if you're not working on something "significant" then why are you working on it at all.

Both have been heavily pushed through the awful medium known as TED talks. If you don't know what a TED talk is then I envy you and your life is actually probably pretty good and maybe you shouldn't be reading this downer of a blog post mostly because it might lead you to become curious about what exactly these "TED talks" are and you might then go actually watch one of them and then you'll have wasted a whole bunch of your time (because [spoiler alert]: they're awful). But if you're all too familiar with TED talks and your over-eager colleagues are sharing them with you every other hour with assurances that this one on how you've been improperly tying your shoelaces your whole life (I have!? DISASTER!) or that this life hack will save you thousands of dollars (hint to the millionaires in the audience: it's a "thrift shop" [but they actually know about it now thanks to Macklemore]) or (maybe the worst of all) the twelve-year-old douche-bag who made an "app" in the "app store" and was home-schooled and therefore obviously the school system has failed us all and if we were all home-schooled we could all be pretentious shits making apps in the app store and wouldn't we be so successful and outside-the-box and progressive and maybe one day Google will buy our company and then we'll be rich too and because we made an app in the app store our opinion will all of a sudden become important.

TED talks are not the topic of this post (but are highly related to it) but just one more thing (well two actually): have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? It is "a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is". This is exactly what TED talks help to perpetuate (among other nasty things like spreading the fake news about "power poses" and then that will make you barf [literally]). Because I watched a 3-minute video on quantum physics I now am fully qualified at discussing why isn't it crazy that gravity isn't even explained by quantum physics??? OMG here is what I think the answer to that is! (you have added zero to the conversation). TED talks are hmm... what's the right metaphor?... they are the FitBits of pop-intellectualism. Everyone has a FitBit and they are deluded into thinking that if they hit their special goal that they will turn into a sculpted supermodel. Ok maybe a bad analogy, but having a shallow piece of information on a complex subject is generally more destructive than the other way around (especially when that shallow piece of information is used to try to start a conversation on which said person knows nothing about.. which would be fine except that they believe they have the background to make outrageous ignorant commentary upon said subject). Oh right, the second thing: most of these TED talks take an implicit view on both of the topics I said I would cover today -- namely, loving what you do, and the festishization of work.

The first view is repeated ad nauseam, especially in the technology / Silicon Valley / computer sector, and it's not exactly clear where it started, but a fairly representative and somewhat "famous" example is from Steve Jobs's Stanford commencement address in 2005:

"You’ve got to find what you love [...] Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle…"

Easy if you're a multi-billionaire who is in the 0.000000001% of people who have the skills, tenacity, strange interests (etc) that happen to fit what is currently wanted by the world economy/society/*, but how can anyone honestly argue that everyone will be able to find a job that they "love". For the time being, we still need parking lot attendants, security guards, waste processing engineers (garbagemen), janitors, secretaries, grocery store check-out people, retailers (i.e. the people who sell you your clothes at the Gap or whatever), accountants (OK I admit there are some really weird people out there who might like this), bus drivers, waiters, cake decorators, administrative assistants, Uber drivers (see below), Amazon shipping workers (I mean people that go through the warehouse, find the book, and put it in the package -- the robots can't fully do it by themselves yet), mechanics, dentists (though they are always odd), etc. If you really love something you shouldn't have to get paid to do it, right? I can't imagine any of these people doing any of the above jobs for free (well, maybe the really weird dentists). Deluding people into thinking that everyone is doing something (as a job) that they love and if you're not amongst them there's something wrong with you is a recipe for mass depression in a society. And one of the things that I really hate about this is that I think people convince themselves that they LOVE their job and get all annoying about it and then an expectation perpetuates that you should totally just think about your job all the time and since you love it anyways you should be doing it all the time all weekend long and why would you ever take any vacation because you're taking time away from something you love so much. Which leads to the feishization of work...

The erroneous belief that everyone should LOVE what they do and therefore you're not really "ever working a day in your life" means that companies shouldn't even have to pay us all that much for doing work that benefits the very few corporate executives and shareholders of the company because they are making it possible for you to "do your best work!!!". Then that's tied to the idea that since you love it so much and it's so exciting and these are such exciting times you should just always be working. Let's key-in, actually, on that important point just mentioned that is now pushed heavily by (mainly) tech industry corporations: that these are such exciting times. This is a viewpoint expounded by Silicon Valley elites / tech "apologists" (though no one seems to be forcing them to apologize so that's probably not the right label) and is represented in this widely-shared (almost exclusively shared in a positive light) quote by Tom Goodwin (not the former professional baseball player but the tech/media something-or-other over-confident smarter-than-all "head of innovation" somewhere):

"Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening."

The part that's especially galling is the presumptive conclusion that follows the premises: "something interesting is happening". Indeed, something terrible. Somehow these frighteningly brilliant marketing / Silicon Valley people have convinced us that this is exciting and the "democratization" of the every industry from media to service to retail. Here is an open secret that I will share with you: no one is getting rich driving an Uber (besides Uber). Facebook is perpetuating fake news and learning everything about you that advertising executives 20 years ago would have had fantasies about (and you're doing it for free), and if Airbnb puts the hotels out of business then we're all screwed (for obvious reasons but in case they aren't as obvious as I think they are here are some examples: who regulates for safety? what happens when there's a fire in your apartment? what happens when the tenants have a party and burn the place down? who will you talk to when you arrive at an airbnb and it actually doesn't exist? etc.).

I hear farming can be rewarding...