Thoughts on the ideology of workism (the religion of work)
What is workism?
In the society of today, a popular ideology has emerged around work. Specifically, the concept of having a job as an identity is relatively new but is now increasingly common. People in a way seem to be finding meaning, purpose, and self esteem from their job. In this post I discuss workism from my perspective and I highlight some of the problems I see with that way of thinking.
To summarize those highlights:
- Not everyone will be fortunate enough to have important "noble professions" which they can be proud to talk about. This negates the plausibility of finding meaning, purpose, or self esteem from a job for perhaps a majority of the people.
- The official jobs are likely to be diminished both in social importance and in voracity as artificial intelligence replaces human labor in the market. We can't all be engineers, computer scientists, AI experts, and we can't all be police, doctors, lawyers, etc. There will be jobs of course, but the nature of these jobs will in my opinion be more advisers, teachers, coaches, influencers, etc.
- People may be working many different jobs at a time, just to get enough income. We usually call these jobs side hustles/side jobs or as someone once told me "piece work" or gigs. The truth is, this is the kind of work the market is trending toward over time.
I do not think work should define a person
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In my opinion workism gets it all wrong. Maybe some people find meaning in life from their job if they are lucky enough to have a very important job like President of the country, or Prime Minister, or Pope, or CEO of a multi national corporation, but the vast majority of people will never be in any important role or position where their decisions impact billions of people and their entire legacy is based on how they do that job.
In my opinion, and at least what I'm focused on, self improvement, personal development, personal growth, these are what I actually work for. I don't and will likely never be in an important position on a societal level but I do not need to find meaning from a "job". I also don't think our contribution to society is only defined by what we are being paid (in money) to do.
Becoming a better person each year is the ultimate mission in my opinion. It's all about setting personal goals, developing a personal mission, and these can include service to others because if you become a better person then your ability to bring value to the lives of others is also amplified in correlation.
Working on yourself, building yourself, working for yourself, allows you to be better to everyone who has the privilege of knowing you going forward. In other words, you become more valuable to the people in your life if you're evolving better over time. In my opinion this self development/self improvement is the real work and through that anyone can serve other people more effectively over time.
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