reddit vs the Work Ethic

Summer 2022

The 4 Day Workweek movement and online radicalization

(NOTE: I'm trying to get back on schedule following numerous family issues and lifestyle changes. Thank you for understanding.)

This will be a controversial stand for this kind of blog to take, but I want to talk about the toxic nature of the Work Ethic. The Work Ethic is a relic from our Calvinist history - the belief that work is not just for survival, but that work is moral, and the harder one works, the more one's character is built and the more one's soul is purified for approval by god.

This is, of course, baloney. Yes, liking your job is important. Loving your job? Living for your job?

That's...not healthy.

As I age, I find myself falling out of love with work in general. Why do I code (badly)? Design (also badly)? Write (no comment)? I sorta like doing these things, but do I live for the thrill of compiling? Do I exult in drawing lines in Photo$hop or making shapes in Blender?

No, and that is OK. It doesn't mean I'm some pot-smoking video game bum, it just means I'm focused on the big picture - and I value work-life balance. Remember that?

And I'm not alone here.

You've all seen this, of course: The 4 Day Work Week movement. And that would naturally consist of 6 hour work days. Or 5! Work part time, get paid full time - it's the dream, right?!

And it's possible....if - real talk time here - you're a "pencil pusher", an office laborer who, let's face it...doesn't have that much to do.

You know who will never, ever, get that 20 hour work week?

Medical workers. Doctors, nurses, therapists, facility staff.

Supply chain workers. Truckers, warehouse workers, manufacturing and farm labor, delivery personnel of all kinds..hey, how about transportation labor and service workers and restaurant workers and maintenance workers?!

Within those ranks, overwork and pressure to perform and demand for more and more productivity and results has never been worse, and it has of course hit a critical mass thanks to the pandemic. 

If you ask me, these "pencil pushers" need to be retrained to work in those divisions, because one of these jobs is unnecessary - and it's not the one where the best thing you did today is empty your eMail box.

And they need to be paid fairly for it.

But why do that when there is The Work Ethic, teaching people that working yourself into an early grave for peanuts is right and moral and good?!

All of which, of course, brings me to this NY Times article about reddit's /antiwork page. Some observations for those refusing to cross the paywall:

Firstly, I always spell reddit and twitter in lower case because they're small sites that accidentally got big. But they have much more than that in common: they are also both, together and separately, why our public conversation and relations to our fellow persons has radicalized to such a dangerous degree, from all sides of the political diaspora. They're why it's literally impossible to not discuss current affairs anymore online - that is, if you want anyone to acknowledge your existence. (Hence this post? Maybe.)

The article mentions the usual silly discussion about “What would you do if you didn’t have to work full time to survive?” You have to wonder how often that scene from the movie Office Space came up, because that's going to be the real answer more often than not. (You should watch that movie if you haven't.)

Hating your boss is practically human nature - the servant can't not resent the master. So cursing your job that you hate - but will never so much as try to leave - is a fact of life for most of the world.

And radicalized social media is a great place to "vent" (god, I hate that word - I'm not an air duct!) without the pressure of having to like beer and sports to do it. You can even do it at work, from your phone on a break (if you even get that) or surreptitiously at your desk if you're really mad.