So I finished the Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel. It was a decent book. If you want my honest opinions you can probably read the past 5 or 6 articles as various chapters inspired me to write on those subjects. But long story short, it did expose and shed light on some political divisions that are worth discussing and that I did discuss. I kind of agree with some of his discussions about how meritocracy is at the head of our current political divisions and we're living through a disunified society based on resentment and hubris over the effects of neoliberalism, although I do think he kinda misses some stuff, like how college isnt always a pathway to success and how there are a lot of younger college grads on the wrong side of these divisions too.
At the end though, and this is what I really am writing this about, he goes full jobist though, and you know me, you NEVER go full jobist. It was kind of disappointing. To me, meritocracy has always been about its pragmatism, work has always been about its pragmatism. Sausage needs to be made, we created these systems to make the sausage, and theyre only valid insofar as their practical purpose is solved.
As I said, my own perspective is based on a balancing of functionalism (conservative ideology), and progressivism. I'm idealistic on one hand, I'm practical on the other, I often balances these perspectives. But there is a third paradigm in sociology known as symbolic interactionism. I dont use it often. Mainly because its subjective and focused primarily on feels. ANd in terms of work, it would look like, work provides a certain cultural significant associated with contribution to society and the prestege that confers and blah blah blah.
Basically it looks at what social structures mean to a society subjectively. And this is good if youre like an anthropologist, looking to understand some foreign culture without crapping on their views, but soemtimes it gives way too much leeway and validity to ideas that make no sense. I prefer to look at work through functionalism, we need work for us to develop the goods and services we need, and conflict theory, work exists to basically enslave humanity to make a bunch of rich people rich. Im not a symbolic interactionist. I dont give a flying crap how people feel about this stuff, when those feelings are subjective and culturally ingrained.
But thats basically what "dignity of work" is. It's a concept that was developed over time to valorize work, and workers. Rather than workers be looked down upon by their "superiors", it kind of became this thing where we recognize and value the contributions of workers who do work that we need done in society. We dont look down on them, theres dignity in all work.
To some extent this helped make workers feel better about their lots in life. Work was inevitable after all, so we might as well have an ethos that gave them respect. But it also further entrenched jobism, and also made people less likely to resist the concept of work.
During early capitalism, there were more serious discussions about work under capitalism and wage slavery. And it was kind of recognized for what it was. Basically slavery with extra steps, but then unions came along and "made work fair" and the idea stopped being challenged. And a lot of that history has been forgotten. Work is fair, work dignified, blah blah blah.
And that's where Sandel sees where our society has gone wrong. Sandel, much like Yang and others, talks about deaths of despair from middle aged white dudes without college degrees being made useless by the modern economy. With the fall of factory work comes precarity, people drop out of the work force, many commit suicide, or do drugs or alcohol. And it's because of anomie, a mismatch between society and its values. We have this value that work is good, your value is your contribution, and if you cant contribute youre a worthless POS. And we enforce that at every level of society informally. If you dont work and you dont have money, you are denied a lot of social prestege that opens the door for things like hobbies, or romantic interest, or a life. We basically treat people without jobs like human garbage and then wonder why they wanna kill themselves either directly or indirectly. Gee. Maybe its because we treat people in such a way. Thats my stance on it.
But heres the thing about anomie, when you have a mismatch of values and reality. You can either try to shift the values to match reality, or reality to match the values. And for some reason, and I notice this in the literature over and over, and sadly this book is no different, everyone freaking wants to make reality match the values. But this is valuing aesthethics over function. The values exist so the sausage is made. If society is becoming more efficient and shedding its need for human labor, then we should actually celebrate that. Because it means we can work less and spend more time on other things. But, people just look at the massive anomie that joblessness is causing because our values are still stuck on work ethic and meritocracy, and insist we need more jobs. To me, this is madness.
The dignity of work is, to me, a dystopian concept. It reminds me of a certain similar phrase used by a certain central european country in the mid 20th century when they instituted death camps. And before people think im being a bit ridiculous, take this tidbit into consideration. That phrase did not originate with that evil government. It came from the democracy before, and its jobs programs during the great depression. Amazing how a certain dark chapter in their history changed the phrase from being valorized to demonized, but that's the power of symbolic interactionism and context.
But really, we do realize we just kinda forced people into industrial work like 200 years ago right? And durkheim looked at the same issues then and he talked about people committing suicide. Heck anderson's book pointed out something interesting about marxism i never realized. A huge reason why marxism was popular was because capitalism was new and uprooting the previous ways of doing things under the guild system, and people kinda realized that the guild system was dying and coming to an end and that way of life was being lost. So people wanted to overturn capitalism and return to that.
Now people are used to factory work and wanting to overturn globalism to go back to a past era that seemed better. But lets face it i have no illusions over the past. The past sucked, work was never great, and i feel like someone NEEDS to say it. We live in a society where you cant realistically dissent from this weird circlejerk of work. If you do, youre lazy. We force people into it, indoctrinating them from birth, and then we wonder why, when our system doesnt live up to its purported ideals, that they suffer mentally for it. Gee, I wonder why.
maybe we shouldnt live this way. And maybe we shouldnt valorize work. Maybe we need to overhaul our concept of social value and our prestege in the 21st century. maybe things like efficiency and being intelligently lazy should not be demonized. Maybe we should be honest about our true feelings toward work and instead of just circlejerking about how great it is when i swear most of us dont really wanna do it, we're honest with ourselves, and just let the past die already. Maybe we should plunge society into an existential crisis in which we leave the cave en masse, and realize how great life can be when you DONT have to work. maybe we should long for the day that we eliminate work rather than creating jobs endlessly and gaslighting them into this stuff.
The point is, nothing about capitalism is natural. Modern society as we know it has only existed for 200 years. Humans have existed for 200,000, and most had to be dragged kicking and screaming into working like they do in the first place.
I dont think anyone actually LIKES this system. Well okay maybe they do, but i feel like the amount to which people do is exaggerated. It was forced on us, we had no choice, and i feel like virtually everyone in their teens and 20s has an existential crisis about how much this sucks before just going "well maybe this is just how life is" and becoming accepting of it. But after they accept it, many struggle to adapt when it turns out that it didnt have to be like this all along and it aint working. Maybe we shouldnt force people into this societal structure in the first place.
Rather than trying to force reality to meet these arbitrary values like creating jobs just so people can feel "dignity" and a sense of purpose, maybe we should just....stop valuing work so much. Radical idea, I know, but thats how I feel. I think we should try to bring an end to jobism and the cult of work. That we should try to devalue the concept of work. Rather than gaslighting people into wanting to work for mcdonalds with "dignity of work" concepts, maybe we should recognize that "yeah this sucks, i dont wanna do this, who the hell actually wants to do this?" and then we stop doing it. Ya know?
The work crisis is one in which we live in a society that has brainwashed everyone into wanting to work all the time and then when they cant do it, they feel useless and it impacts their self esteem. This wound is not natural, its inflicted by society itself.
Im so sick of these books I read on the subject of the future of work trying to come up with new ways of working. Maybe the problem is work. Maybe the problem is the work ethic. Maybe the problem is meritocracy.
Im not saying these things have NO value. Im a pragmatist. Again i understand the functionalist aspects of the system. But....i also recognize the limitations and how we should probably strive to move society in a different direction. Society in the 21st century is like a cult of work, but then when work doesnt work we keep trying to make ideas to make it work, even though i dont think most of us enjoy it anyway. Why should we keep struggling to keep this idea alive? Its a crappy idea, we should do away with it.
Maybe we should normalize people sitting on the couch and doing nothing. It seems like the only reason we dont is we think the sky will fall if we dont all work. But if the sky wont fall, then yes, maybe we should soften the hard edges of our system that forces us into it anyway. Maybe we should allow people to be lazy and not wanna do anything for a change. And maybe we shouldnt treat them like crap.
And if that makes you angry, ask yourself why? What value does keeping this going? if it really comes down too the fact that its not fair that you have to work and that they dont, maybe reconsider that youre part of the problem in keeping us all working in the first place. And also consider that maybe you also hate work and wish to be lazy, but feel like you cant. Well, whats stopping you? Other than our social structures not allowing you too.
"Oh but society will collapse". Uh...we literally cant provide everyone a job. And its causing massive societal problems. Maybe society will be fine, as long as we balance our shifts in values with our needs.
Ya know? Lets MOVE away from work. We dont have to go from 0 to 100 overnight, but lets start edging that way. So that one day we can kill the leviathan of the work ethic for good.
Really, thats why i dont like social interationism. You start getting into peoples actual values and its a mess of circular logic and contradictions. And I just dont see the value in entertaining peoples feels when they're literally oppressing me by forcing me into a system i want nothing to do with.
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