Why Work Needs Degrowth
Building a better world requires disengagement from a machine-like work culture
Weekly curation of thought-provoking ideas and reframings that help us build a more human and natural world. The stuff I share and write about goes a bit deeper than the usual things you find online. This depth helps my readers rewild their minds and boost their creativity. If you haven’t subscribed yet, join now:
In a world that’s marching towards collapse, why should I keep working? Why should I, through my work, keep the destruction going?
🌎🔥 “Study: More than half of young people think ‘humanity is doomed’” via Grist
Why should I invest much time developing specific expertise in a world that’s becoming increasingly volatile and discontinuous? Why should I commit to one thing when the market's needs are changing so fast?
📈📉 “Between now and 2027, businesses predict that 44% of workers’ core skills will be disrupted.” via the World Economic Forum
In a corporate world where CEOs earn 344 times more than the average worker and workers are fired in large numbers even during times of record profits, why should I trust and be loyal to an employer? Why should I give this job everything when my employer sees me merely as an expendable human resource, as an obstacle to higher efficiency and agility?
👨💼🤑 “The CEO-to-worker pay ratio at Amazon is 6,474:1, at McDonalds it’s 2,251:1, and at Apple 1,447:1” via Public Citizen
💰🪚 “Despite the S&P 500 reaching historic heights and the Nasdaq mounting, the executives have shaken the industry by parting ways with tech-savvy employees” via The Verdict
In a corporate world in which seemingly all senior managers suffer from burnout, why should I want to climb the career ladder? Why should I seek seniority when it’s certain that this eventually comes with unpaid overwork and severe burnout?
😵💫😨 “More Than 50% of Managers Feel Burned Out” via Harvard Business Review
In a world in which housing costs are around 7x income (for today’s grandparents, this was only 3x when they were 25), in which those under 30 hold less money than their parents, why should I work? Why should I follow the so-called American dream when the entire system is rigged against me?
In a world in which work means sitting for 8 hours looking at several up-close screens – with breaks spent looking hunched over at a smaller screen – why should I get excited or energized about it? Why should I do it when the typical workstyle one needs to commit to as a knowledge worker is evidently unhealthy and unnatural?
👨💻👀 “Remote workers spend about 13 hours staring at screens each day. 80% of those surveyed said they have seen an eye doctor over the past two years.” via The Hill
🪑🐒 “A study of more than 481,000 people found that those who spent most of their time sitting at work had a 16% higher chance of dying from any cause, and a 34% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.” via Yahoo
When people who have less than I have, both in terms of wealth, income, and stuff, are much happier than I am and enjoy a much slower and less stressful life, why should I keep working? Why should I work for lots of money and status when that only comes with stress and overall diminished well-being?
🏝️😌 “Isolated Indigenous people as happy as wealthy western peers – study. Interviews with people in remote communities challenge widely held perception that money buys happiness” via The Guardian
Whether you resonate with the questions above or not, I think they very much represent the current zeitgeist, particularly when it comes to younger generations.
"For millennials and the younger generation Z and Alphas, who may never be able to afford to buy a home or retire at a reasonable age, there is a growing feeling online that hard work is fortifying a system that, at best, is giving them nothing back and, at worst, is actively screwing them over.”
The soft life: why millennials are quitting the rat race by Leila Latif
This analysis might slightly trigger some of you. 😅
‘Laziness won’t get us anywhere; it won’t solve our problems, Thomas.’
…you might be thinking. Or…
‘Older generations also had it tough. They had their own challenges back then; today’s young need to suck it up, like generations before did…Thomas!’ 😁
To those thinking this way, I’d respond:
Do we want to improve the world, our way of working, and our lives - or not? Do we want to progress, i.e. leave the “old” behind, or not? Do we want to create a future that prioritizes well-being over economic gains or not? Do we want to invest in our young and create an appealing future for them or not?
“What if people weren’t lazy — and instead, for the first time in a long time, were able to say no to exploitative working conditions and poverty-level wages? […]
Demoralization is what unites the underpaid, pandemic-unemployed worker, the adequately-paid, Covid-essential worker, and the more-than-adequately-paid, WFH knowledge worker.”
Today’s modern culture worships productivity and busyness, whereas laziness, rest, and leisure are either seen as a waste of time (and, therefore, money) or a necessary interlude to recharge for being productive again. Within the sustainability and social sector, I often see this culture of hyper-productivity expressed even more than in tech-bro hustle circles. And it kinda makes sense…at first: Due to the urgency of the situation that we are facing – i.e. nature- and society-wrecking climate breakdown and inequality –, many believe that we need to work more, create more, and give it our everything.
“In climate work, I have found that the productivity mindset disguises itself as unequivocally gainful; I believe the more I work, the more I’m aiding a cause that is undeniably urgent.”
Time On The Hour by Willow Defebaugh
However, I – the unconventional thinker I am – actually think we should do the opposite, and I’m not the only one!
“If we want to save the world, we’re going to have to stop working.”
David Graeber
This capitalist mindset of constant optimization and growth is so ingrained into our brains and lifestyles that we seldom actually deconstruct it or at least reflect upon it. However, once we do so, we realize that our adherence to that mindset is exactly what strengthens the current system and, therefore, prevents us from truly building a new and better world.
“Withdrawal has an almost universally negative connotation in public life, where it is treated as the ultimate transgression and disdained as retreat or defeat – the very opposite of engagement.
However, to withdraw is also, crucially, to repair – both to go to a place and to mend. From this perspective, withdrawal is not merely a defeatist tack; rather, it is, or can be, direct action for a restoration of intellectual life – the kind that is free to ask (to fully engage with) impertinent questions – in settings that have practically banished it, made it inaccessible, or are attempting to monitor and monetise it according to terms not of our choosing.”
Disengage by David J Siegel
This aligns well with some very interesting thoughts by Bayo Akomolafe and Marta Benavides in an article aptly titled ‘The Times are Urgent: Let’s Slow Down’:
“The system is not the cause of our problems, it is a consequence of our separation from each other. It is a consequence of our complicity with our own destruction. In other words, we are the system we fight against.
This is why we think that the current paradigm of protests, branding and volunteerism will not address the deep substructures of experience that need to shift. We must go deeper…a lot deeper than merely protesting the status quo. […]
It is no longer time to rush through the contested world blinded by fury and anger – however worthwhile these are. Now, we think, is the time to ‘retreat’ into the real work of reclamation, to re-member again our humanity through the intimacy of our relationships. The time is very urgent – we must slow down.”
In other words, it is crucial to build the meaningful relationships that a culture of hyper-productivity has lost. (Relationships here mean not only the re-building of better social connections but also the building of relationships with ourselves and our environment.)
When it comes to today’s world of work against the backdrop of a culture of hyper-productivity and capitalism, one observation becomes especially important: We peeled off the elements that made work meaningful and human.
These are, on the one hand, the sociality (or conviviality), artistry, playfulness, dignity, and dedication to quality and mastery of work – or simply said, the beauty of work; and on the other, the intuitiveness, humaneness, rhythm, sustainability, and nature-embeddedness of work – or simply said, the naturalness of work.
Work, for many, in service of efficiency and productivity, has become…just work stripped bare of all the joyful stuff. Nat Eliason calls this atomization:
“Atomization encourages us to reduce multivariate experiences, often the most important parts of life, to their single most obvious element:
Biking is about exercise, and scheduling with friends and planning a route and inflating your tires all get in the way of that. Eating is about sustenance, and inviting friends and getting groceries and cooking all get in the way of that. […] Work is about checking off tasks, so spending time commuting to an office where you might goof off and socialize all get in the way of that. […]
Atomization turns an integrated day of socializing, eating, exercising, and working into discrete hurried chunks of trying to move from one thing to another, wondering why we never seem to have time for everything. […]
The more we atomize, the more lonely and overwhelmed we start to feel.”
Devoid of beauty and naturalness, work ultimately becomes machine-like, which leads us to the conclusion of this little investigation:
To change the system and improve work, we need to bring more beauty and nature into our work and lives, and, in that process, become less machine-like and more human again.
“A dead thing goes with the stream, only a living thing can go against it.”
That’s it for this week’s Friday post!
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See you on Wednesday for the usual Rabbit Holes issue!
Work needs Degrowth - hey, that's about exactly my thesis in my book "Unternehmen in Grün". Have a the (german language) trailer https://youtu.be/MHVfBAkVJ84.
I think we are pursuing the wrong targets in companies. But we can change that: Any organisation can have the targets we choose to give it. We just need to organise them in a way that they stay loyal to their mission. That current Companies are just about profit maximisation is a design choice, not a natural law.