In light of the fact that over 28 million Americans have recently filed for unemployment, I thought now may be the time for a Q&A issue, an issue concerned with taking stock, getting an overview, and coming to an assessment of Total Work.
With these things in mind, feel free, in the comments section below or, if you prefer, via email (totalwork.us@gmail.com), to answer any or all of these questions:
1.) Since you’v been reading this newsletter and since you’ve been thinking about Total Work, has there been anything that has been clarified—I mean, really, sharply, intuitively clarified—for you? Or is there anything related to your understanding of Total Work that you’re grateful for?
2.) As you think about Total Work further, is there anything that remains unclear to you? That something could be personal, existential, sociological, theoretical, and so on.
3.) As you think about Total Work further, do you find that there’s something that, say, I’ve been in error about, or that I’ve overlooked, or that may be in need of reconsideration?
Again, feel free to reply in the comments section below. Or send me an email in the form of a letter. The next issue will be the result of whatever conversation or conversations unfold in response to these questions.
May you and yours continue to be well and safe. With kindness,
1. Several things: a. The actual terminology; Total Work always makes me think about Total War, and the way both come to dominate our lives is the perfect analogy. From a sociological/theological perspective, conceptually I really like that whole Weberian Protestant Work Ethic on steroids that is Total Work. How work can become a substitute for God in a secular world. b. Being able to separate Total Work from right livelihood; how extricating oneself from a Total Work mindset does not mean that we suddenly drop all our responsibilities but that we take a proper perspective on them. c. I am grateful that learning about this term is helping me think about and enact practical ways to work less. For example, while still being responsible I am checking my emails and marking less at weekends. Next academic year I will be working less hours. I am also thinking about ways in which I can consume less and be happy with what I have materially instead of wanting new things.
2. a. That some people have such colossal amounts of energy (instantiated within them at the mitochondrial level is my hunch) that only the demands on Total Work can burn it off? b. Whether some jobs by their very nature have powerful in-built tendencies towards Total Work no matter what we do about it; emergency service jobs, for example?
The several things you mention are wonderful. In my philosophy practice, I've spoken with teachers and medical doctors, both of which are prone to taking their livelihoods to be "callings," the consequence of which is that they overexert themselves in some endlessly self-sacrificial way.
A NYC-based doctor recently committed suicide. According to the NY Post (which is tabloid-ish but still), "For somebody," the sister recounts of her late sister, "whose life’s calling is helping people, and she just couldn’t help enough people, the combination was just untenable.”
"She [namely, the late doctor] had 12-hour shifts,” said [the same sister] Feist. “When she finished, she said, ‘I can’t leave. Nobody’s leaving. I have to stay and help.'”
If this is an accurate account of the late medical doctor, then it only goes to show that she hadn't confronted her "shadows" (Jung) or "baggage" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D_E6u4drVE). Specifically, she hadn't examined closely the shadows associated with presuming that she had a calling.
*
I'm less concerned about your points in 2. than you are. I have a lot of energy, and I channel it in a variety of ways, one of which is meditation. In a post-Total Work world, others would channel a lot of energy into genuine civic engagement (which is not work and which would have struck classical Greeks as undeniably not work) and into ecological restoration. Concerning the emergency jobs, I think that is more a result of an unjust, inhumane system than it is of being involved in emergencies. For instance, your fellow Englishman E.P. Thompson observes that pre-industrial people used to have to work LONG HOURS at specific moments when it was harvest time or when the cottage industry had to kick it up a couple of notches. But that haul was only temporary. There would be very long rests as well as plentiful holy days to ensure that the frenetic mode, however necessary, was short-lived.
A good culture would have ways of letting people expend lots of energy in a beautiful form (Dionysus --> Apollonian) and would also celebrate periods of rest.
Yes, that was sad to read about the case of the medical doctor who took here own life. It reminded me of this tragic case of a university lecturer in the UK. According to the report, "An inquest heard how the accountancy lecturer would reply to his 418 students any hour of the day or night." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-44389004 Total Work is truly dangerous.
After reading your reply I was reading up a little on E.P. Thompson. I didn't know that he actually wrote The Making of the English Working Class while living in Halifax, which is the next town over the hill from where I live. Turns out there is a blue plaque on the house he lived in while writing his opus so I'll definitely go and visit that when the lockdown lifts a little bit. "The Making" is one of those books that I've always heard about so I'll have to read it.
I was also interested to read your outline of a post-Total Work society. Increasingly I am convinced of this need for networked city states as part of a progressive future.
I've liked what I've read from E.P. Thompson. Sadly, I've not yet read his magnum opus (?) The Making of the English Working Class. If you read it, please tell me how it is. Warmly, Andrew
I've had many friends reach out to me over the past few weeks. The tone of the conversations have been similar. One friend wrote in an email "I get it now" about the nonsense and meaningless of his job despite high-status and high pay.
The themes of these conversations are a sharpening of focus on what you might loosely call "what matters" (but also something that can't ever fully be articulated). People have a lot of guilt (especially if they can work from home and have a good salary) related to still being able to work when many low-wage people cannot even legally work.
Some random thoughts and questions that I keep pondering that may help you think about what to write about:
1. How the word "work" is too broad and totally insufficient to really talk about work
2. The difference between work and employment
3. More practically, It seems an inevitable outcome of this crisis may be a jobs program of "makework" - is there a way to "hack" this with new ways of thinking about work or finding things beyond the traditional construction type jobs that will inevitably be proposed
4. You have been a bit hesitant to outline what a "good" approach to work looks like, but it does appear that things like shifting to fully-remote do provide somewhat of an opening to putting life before work. It would be interesting to see an earnest attempt / guide for leaders to think about that.
I'm going to begin with a rather unorthodox point: I think that the experience of guilt, something I've heard a lot about, is a dodge. First of all, it's a dodge of the fact that (a) the one who is writing is actually experiencing perpetual dissatisfaction (dukkha) and yet is unwilling to look deeply into it. Second of all, the fact that the writer can work remotely while others (in retail, the hospital industry, and so on) cannot and therefore the fact that the former are much better off than the latter does not entail "survivor's guilt." It should lead to (b) compassion as well as (c) the willingness to ACTUALLY HELP other people. Guilt, in this kind of case, is navel-gazing and is often virtue-signaling.
I grant that this is a strange, even potentially uncompassionate place to begin, but I do so because the writer who expresses guilt here has yet to actually investigate himself or herself and often wants to get off scot-free simply by saying "I feel guilty." That's just not good enough, given the actuality of human suffering.
Apropos 1., I think I may understand you, but I'm not sure that I fully do. Can you elaborate?
Apropos 4., I'm be sharing some "portraits" of lives well lived soon. For now, two concerns I have. One is that it seems to me one either has to be very lucky or one has to go through a full deconstruction of work in order to be ready to fully live a right relation with work. In Buddhism, vedana refers to the feeling-tone of a sensation, and there are three kinds: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. Typically, out of unpleasant sensations arises craving to get rid of said unpleasant sensations. Hence, once one has started to feel that one's relationship with work is unpleasant, he or she JUMPS TO ASK, "OK, what's next?" So, one must begin to SEE THROUGH the entire process of craving before one is really ready to open oneself up to what is beyond Total Work.
Let's suppose that has happened. Then I can think of a lot of portraits or worlds. Here is a fictional one:
--The withering away of hegemonic nation-states
--The birth of city-states that are properly sized such that all citizens of a certain age and development in city-state X can engage in questions concerned with the common good of that commonweal.
--Each city-state follows best practices in regenerative design so that some man-made deserts are greened, soils are restored, land is properly used, and so on. Supply chains, meanwhile, become less complicated and more transparent.
--The internet and other networks make it possible to connect properly scaled, autonomous, self-governing city-states one to another.
--No doubt global federations or networks would be necessary in order to ensure that genuine, robust agreements are made with respect to climate change and ecocide.
--Meanwhile, art, philosophy, science, and religion flourish. People create the beautiful for the sake of the beautiful (art); people ask questions in order to know themselves (philosophy); people investigate nature in order to understand it (science); and people open themselves up to mystery with a view to its awesomeness (religion or spirituality).
--As infrastructure, work commences as and only so far as it's needed. In some cases, there are stipends or gifts for those on genuine sabbaticals. In some cases, a gift economy operates and circulates. Work of various kinds targets what is needed to sustain and regenerate life--not just human life but all sentient life. And work is put down whenever it is done.
In short, it's not about "putting life before work" for I don't think that "life" and "work" can be held onto as they are. (See that "work-life balance" and "work-life integration" are just two of many canards.) What needs to be rethought is an entire culture. In a new culture, work would be in its proper place, and transcendentals like goodness, wisdom, beauty, truth, and the sacred would be celebrated.
Remote work may be part of that path but ONLY IF it's not captured by the current system. We should accept that in many cases talk of surveillance, accountability, and productivity will continue. Yet there may be some cases in which people, due in part to remote work, are on the verge of an existential opening.
Hi Andrew,
1. Several things: a. The actual terminology; Total Work always makes me think about Total War, and the way both come to dominate our lives is the perfect analogy. From a sociological/theological perspective, conceptually I really like that whole Weberian Protestant Work Ethic on steroids that is Total Work. How work can become a substitute for God in a secular world. b. Being able to separate Total Work from right livelihood; how extricating oneself from a Total Work mindset does not mean that we suddenly drop all our responsibilities but that we take a proper perspective on them. c. I am grateful that learning about this term is helping me think about and enact practical ways to work less. For example, while still being responsible I am checking my emails and marking less at weekends. Next academic year I will be working less hours. I am also thinking about ways in which I can consume less and be happy with what I have materially instead of wanting new things.
2. a. That some people have such colossal amounts of energy (instantiated within them at the mitochondrial level is my hunch) that only the demands on Total Work can burn it off? b. Whether some jobs by their very nature have powerful in-built tendencies towards Total Work no matter what we do about it; emergency service jobs, for example?
Best wishes,
James
Dear James,
The several things you mention are wonderful. In my philosophy practice, I've spoken with teachers and medical doctors, both of which are prone to taking their livelihoods to be "callings," the consequence of which is that they overexert themselves in some endlessly self-sacrificial way.
A NYC-based doctor recently committed suicide. According to the NY Post (which is tabloid-ish but still), "For somebody," the sister recounts of her late sister, "whose life’s calling is helping people, and she just couldn’t help enough people, the combination was just untenable.”
"She [namely, the late doctor] had 12-hour shifts,” said [the same sister] Feist. “When she finished, she said, ‘I can’t leave. Nobody’s leaving. I have to stay and help.'”
Source: https://nypost.com/2020/04/29/coronavirus-altered-the-brain-of-er-doc-who-killed-herself-sister-says/
If this is an accurate account of the late medical doctor, then it only goes to show that she hadn't confronted her "shadows" (Jung) or "baggage" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D_E6u4drVE). Specifically, she hadn't examined closely the shadows associated with presuming that she had a calling.
*
I'm less concerned about your points in 2. than you are. I have a lot of energy, and I channel it in a variety of ways, one of which is meditation. In a post-Total Work world, others would channel a lot of energy into genuine civic engagement (which is not work and which would have struck classical Greeks as undeniably not work) and into ecological restoration. Concerning the emergency jobs, I think that is more a result of an unjust, inhumane system than it is of being involved in emergencies. For instance, your fellow Englishman E.P. Thompson observes that pre-industrial people used to have to work LONG HOURS at specific moments when it was harvest time or when the cottage industry had to kick it up a couple of notches. But that haul was only temporary. There would be very long rests as well as plentiful holy days to ensure that the frenetic mode, however necessary, was short-lived.
A good culture would have ways of letting people expend lots of energy in a beautiful form (Dionysus --> Apollonian) and would also celebrate periods of rest.
Warmly,
Andrew
Hi Andrew, thanks for your detailed reply.
Yes, that was sad to read about the case of the medical doctor who took here own life. It reminded me of this tragic case of a university lecturer in the UK. According to the report, "An inquest heard how the accountancy lecturer would reply to his 418 students any hour of the day or night." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-44389004 Total Work is truly dangerous.
After reading your reply I was reading up a little on E.P. Thompson. I didn't know that he actually wrote The Making of the English Working Class while living in Halifax, which is the next town over the hill from where I live. Turns out there is a blue plaque on the house he lived in while writing his opus so I'll definitely go and visit that when the lockdown lifts a little bit. "The Making" is one of those books that I've always heard about so I'll have to read it.
I was also interested to read your outline of a post-Total Work society. Increasingly I am convinced of this need for networked city states as part of a progressive future.
Best, Wishes
James
I've liked what I've read from E.P. Thompson. Sadly, I've not yet read his magnum opus (?) The Making of the English Working Class. If you read it, please tell me how it is. Warmly, Andrew
I've had many friends reach out to me over the past few weeks. The tone of the conversations have been similar. One friend wrote in an email "I get it now" about the nonsense and meaningless of his job despite high-status and high pay.
The themes of these conversations are a sharpening of focus on what you might loosely call "what matters" (but also something that can't ever fully be articulated). People have a lot of guilt (especially if they can work from home and have a good salary) related to still being able to work when many low-wage people cannot even legally work.
Some random thoughts and questions that I keep pondering that may help you think about what to write about:
1. How the word "work" is too broad and totally insufficient to really talk about work
2. The difference between work and employment
3. More practically, It seems an inevitable outcome of this crisis may be a jobs program of "makework" - is there a way to "hack" this with new ways of thinking about work or finding things beyond the traditional construction type jobs that will inevitably be proposed
4. You have been a bit hesitant to outline what a "good" approach to work looks like, but it does appear that things like shifting to fully-remote do provide somewhat of an opening to putting life before work. It would be interesting to see an earnest attempt / guide for leaders to think about that.
Dear Paul,
I'm going to begin with a rather unorthodox point: I think that the experience of guilt, something I've heard a lot about, is a dodge. First of all, it's a dodge of the fact that (a) the one who is writing is actually experiencing perpetual dissatisfaction (dukkha) and yet is unwilling to look deeply into it. Second of all, the fact that the writer can work remotely while others (in retail, the hospital industry, and so on) cannot and therefore the fact that the former are much better off than the latter does not entail "survivor's guilt." It should lead to (b) compassion as well as (c) the willingness to ACTUALLY HELP other people. Guilt, in this kind of case, is navel-gazing and is often virtue-signaling.
I grant that this is a strange, even potentially uncompassionate place to begin, but I do so because the writer who expresses guilt here has yet to actually investigate himself or herself and often wants to get off scot-free simply by saying "I feel guilty." That's just not good enough, given the actuality of human suffering.
Apropos 1., I think I may understand you, but I'm not sure that I fully do. Can you elaborate?
Apropos 4., I'm be sharing some "portraits" of lives well lived soon. For now, two concerns I have. One is that it seems to me one either has to be very lucky or one has to go through a full deconstruction of work in order to be ready to fully live a right relation with work. In Buddhism, vedana refers to the feeling-tone of a sensation, and there are three kinds: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. Typically, out of unpleasant sensations arises craving to get rid of said unpleasant sensations. Hence, once one has started to feel that one's relationship with work is unpleasant, he or she JUMPS TO ASK, "OK, what's next?" So, one must begin to SEE THROUGH the entire process of craving before one is really ready to open oneself up to what is beyond Total Work.
Let's suppose that has happened. Then I can think of a lot of portraits or worlds. Here is a fictional one:
--The withering away of hegemonic nation-states
--The birth of city-states that are properly sized such that all citizens of a certain age and development in city-state X can engage in questions concerned with the common good of that commonweal.
--Each city-state follows best practices in regenerative design so that some man-made deserts are greened, soils are restored, land is properly used, and so on. Supply chains, meanwhile, become less complicated and more transparent.
--The internet and other networks make it possible to connect properly scaled, autonomous, self-governing city-states one to another.
--No doubt global federations or networks would be necessary in order to ensure that genuine, robust agreements are made with respect to climate change and ecocide.
--Meanwhile, art, philosophy, science, and religion flourish. People create the beautiful for the sake of the beautiful (art); people ask questions in order to know themselves (philosophy); people investigate nature in order to understand it (science); and people open themselves up to mystery with a view to its awesomeness (religion or spirituality).
--As infrastructure, work commences as and only so far as it's needed. In some cases, there are stipends or gifts for those on genuine sabbaticals. In some cases, a gift economy operates and circulates. Work of various kinds targets what is needed to sustain and regenerate life--not just human life but all sentient life. And work is put down whenever it is done.
In short, it's not about "putting life before work" for I don't think that "life" and "work" can be held onto as they are. (See that "work-life balance" and "work-life integration" are just two of many canards.) What needs to be rethought is an entire culture. In a new culture, work would be in its proper place, and transcendentals like goodness, wisdom, beauty, truth, and the sacred would be celebrated.
Remote work may be part of that path but ONLY IF it's not captured by the current system. We should accept that in many cases talk of surveillance, accountability, and productivity will continue. Yet there may be some cases in which people, due in part to remote work, are on the verge of an existential opening.
With kindness,
Andrew