To live is to work
Are we solely responsible as individuals for the plague of burnouts in XXI century, or there is something else rooting - in the society.
This is how the first chapter of a book I’m currently reading is named. Simple as that - To live is to work. Paradoxically, the chapter is about the laws of thermodynamics and the birth of biology in comparison to the violent conversion of African tribes. While I’ll leave physics and biology for some of the next letters, in light of today’s topic I’m not able to turn a blind eye to the fact that conversion to Christianity for the tribes was part of, let’s call it, onboarding training to the forced unpaid labour.
Just a century or two ago economists and philosophers were talking about an economic utopia where the development of machines would help cut down scarcity, and improve everyone’s life as we’ll all live in a world where we don’t have to work but live a joyful abundance. Well, Adam Smith may be a founding father of economics, but his predictions about this one went pretty south.
We’re currently living through the fourth industrial revolution. We do live in the most abundant civilization surrounding so far. Machines took over a lot of our chores and manual labour. Yet, we work more than ever, and we burn like a box of matches. Daily.
Marx Weber argued, a hundred years ago, that Protestantism with its work ethics, and ideation of professional success as God’s affection to the individual, laid the foundation for capitalism.
Today, capitalism has become a religion on its own. It has its own values, standards, morals and has tos.
It’s no wonder we’re witnessing a massive comeback of pagan religions mixing with Christian, Hindu and many other teachings, as well as a huge promotion of stoicism. People are suffocating under the pile of everything they need to become and acquire to survive and get someone’s approval that they do thrive - daily.
When Alexandar of Macedonia settled new rules of government, where thinkers and philosophers weren’t able to change anything outside themselves so they turned into within - Stoicism was born. The same logic can be applied to psychotherapy nowadays - one is fixing oneself to survive and thrive.
While I’m praising psychotherapy, coaching, wellness, self-care and whatnot, I cannot ignore the fact that I’m not the only one in my encirclement who went through severe burnout or two before the 30ies.
It’s often the topic on friends’ chat tables - the state that should be avoided at all costs, yet it gets us faster than approvals from our parents for a new career pursuit. The burnout.
We discuss whether it’s the wideness of the choice, (lack of) buying power, an overwhelming quantity of information we face daily, isolation and lack of support or even the existence of the communities, chasing the potential of the status and security of the capital while being chased by inflation and while the treat of poverty hangs upon us just to remind us where could we and up if we dare to stop just for a moment.
Dealing with burnout is not just oversleeping a weekend and starting a Monday morning with a cold shower to get yourself together. It requires changing the operative system of oneself completely.
I’ve read quite a few self-help books about burnout, stress, getting better, being better, fixing, and healing. I’ve listened to the podcasts. I’ve talked to and with therapists and coaches. I’ve participated in workshops, programs… I’ve done some work, you know.
What always surprises me, like cold water that suddenly runs from the shower head when the boiler is empty, is that responsibility is always on an individual. Like the guilt of a beggar, for protestants, is on him - for being lazy.
Disclaimer: If you think that being born into poverty, and not being able to go out of it is just a personal choice and is just that - lazy, boy, we do have some critical thinking to develop.
My two cents is that the chase is making us sick. No amount of tools and new healthier coping mechanisms I develop won’t help me save myself If I’m running on an empty stomach for something I don’t believe in while doping myself with values and promises I’m not convinced by.
Disclaimer 2: I’m not against therapy of any kind. Yet, let’s be aware of the fact that while we work individaly on what’s a wider problem in general for most of the Western society we won’t change much, as conditions for development of the mental issues won’t be replaced with healthier social mechanisms if we’re soleyly self centered.
So instead of blindly chasing a dream that is not mine, yours… let’s just sit down for a few hours, days, or even weeks and let’s contemplate.
Why do we work?
What a job gives us, and what do we give to a job?
While the exchange won’t ever be even in capitalism, how do we reconcile with the propaganda of always being behind and just stop bothering about it?
Why do we have a plague of burnouts in the XXI century?
What we can do as individual participants of our communities to support each other so we actually stop the cycle?
Is my job really my identity or it’s just easier that way to gaslight myself that my career is my raison d'être, while my body is clearly opposed to it? Daily.
Psychiatrists talk more and more nowadays about how distortion of identity is the root of anxiety, depression and other mental difficulties. The chase of the masses for the capital is the chase of an individual for a sense of meaning. While the meaning, I believe, is always within. And that’s some (un)happy flow.
The Puritan wanted to work in calling; we are forced to do so. M.WLet’s make careers just part of us, not us part of careers.
Love,
B.
PS. If you’ve expected a guide for how to cope with burnout or how to prevent one without having to launch a new 21st-century French revolution- well, the answer is simple you need human connection with yourself and with your community. But in-depth, you can read here (in Serbian tho).