werk and maturity
remember the thing about G’rups, which determined that Gen X/Yers are refusing to grow up due to various changes in cultural expectations and influences? and then there was the conversation i had about how adolescent the club scene is, despite the majority of clubbers being well into adulthood, and THEN there was the article on memory that concluded “wasted youth” is no longer such a bad thing because regret is held onto long after indulgence guilt has long faded away in your mind.
so now there’s this: “…to so many peers I encounter, work is worse than a four-letter word: it is psychologically troubling, a squirming emotional sore spot they live in denial of and avoid discussing. With unsettling frequency, I find that my generation can only identify and embrace success if it stems from self-expression, to such an extent that people are numbing and abusing themselves through drink and drugs to suppress frustration and a crushing sense of failure for having a job.” — full (~via)
his theory is that the baby boomer generation was the last to have to work real hard for a living, and they were on the cusp of seeing that the World 2.0 was going to offer opportunities to NOT WORK – IF you were smart enough and had the right opportunities. formerly a privilige only for “old money” and royalty, now anyone who did the right things could work for themselves or not really work at all. think the rise of pyramid schemes and Amway in the 80s. they themselves were born a little to early to take advantage of this globalization benefit, and so from the time our generation was born, we were taught to believe that if you’re special enough and smart enough, you can find a way to get out of having a job. and, of course, all parents believe their children are special. so now that Gen X is nearing middle age, there’s this expectation that if you’re still working for The Man, you missed a turn or something. you should be working for yourself by now, either as a proprieter or an artist or by playing the stock market on the internet. working a 9-2-5 is for suckers!
in many ways, i agree. i just had a conversation the other day about how so many of our friends are self-employed, and how amazing it is. and inspiring. and, if you’re not one of them, a little depressing.
in addition to this theory of baby boomers rearing their children with these expectations, along with every American’s feeling of entitlement, i think there are definitely other factors in play in determining how the younger generations feel about working. for example, on NPR yesterday they were talking about Ford buying out over half their US workers in order to become profitable. like many blue collar union workers, these employees began working for Ford with the expectation that they’d be working there for 30 years, and then taken care of for the rest of their LIVES with big fat pensions. now, many of them, middle aged and with limited skills sets, are out of jobs and have to find new careers. my uncle worked for a factory in indiana for the past 20 some years and was recently forced into early retirement. now, despite a bad back, he’s painting houses to help pay the bills as his pension doesn’t cover his costs of living.
so, in yesteryear, going to work for The Man paid off. it meant a solid future. it meant healthcare and not having to worry about what to do when you got too old or sick to work. now, no one has that security anymore. US employers are outsourcing to asia and laying off people all the time. no one i know goes into a job thinking it’s going to be their lifelong gig. so why should we be expected to commit to working for corporations when really there’s not a whole lot of reason to anymore? why not see if you can work for yourself? if you can’t depend on a corporation to pay your pension when you’re old, why give them your youth?
so many of my friends are making their living as independent photo[url=http://www.alexanderwarnow.com/]graphers[/url], clothiers, web designers, hoopers, jewelers, massage therapists, writers, and all other kinds of trades. while i agree with a lot of what mr. ott wrote on his blog there about a shift in how we view work, and perhaps i also agree somewhat with why, i have to disagree that it’s taking the easy way out or some kind of spoiled-brat, trust-fund, bobo privilege. most of my friends work their asses off, and while i technically work for someone else, i help to run a small business, and it’s no easy feat keeping it afloat. i have to disagree with his statement that says “Ultimately, our parents’ drive to deliver a better childhood is proving a mistake, if a well-intentioned one. We are a generation embarrassed to have day jobs, embarrassed to work for a living. Embarrassed not to be kings and queens.” i think it’s just the opposite. seeing all the long years our parents and grandparents put in at factories and offices and in fields so that one day we could work less than 40 hours a week for a living, and then seeing how that turned out for them has made us realize it’s not worth it. it’s not that we are “embarassed to work for a living”. we’re embarassed to work for companies and employers that don’t care about us, that don’t care about our futures. instead, we’re taking that into our own hands, and to me, that seems pretty damned grown up.
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Historically we’re at a fascinating turning point as
to how we make our livings in the over-]developed world. It’s tempting to claim that Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand and their followers like Ronald Reagan have succeeded in destroying what labor unions and the New Deal put in place (the 40-hour week, pension benefits, and the whole social safety net) and that we are now back to the late 19th century evils of unregulated (modern version: deregulated) laissez-faire capitalism. The pattern of accelerating accumulation of wealth by the wealthy while everybody else scrapes along working two McJobs is easy to recognize.
But that’s not the whole story, just chapter one. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, exploited workers had no choice but to risk their lives (and many were killed and injured by company goons and National Guard troops) to build labor unions. The country as a whole had to endure the crash of 1929, the Great Depression and World War II before it was willing to use progressive taxation (and corporate taxes–take a look at how the corporate share of federal tax revenues has declined over the past 50 years!) to redistribute some of the wealth that the capitalist system marvellously generates and inevitably concentrates in the hands of a few.
Today, I believe we have other ways of bringing the corporate golems back under the control of the people who made them. Unions, progressive taxation and getting corporations to subsidize the government rather than the other way around are all parts of the answer, but maybe not even the biggest parts: just starting points.
What we had in the 1930s and 1940s (before my
time, but I’ve talked a lot about this to people of
my parents’ generation who were there) was a
sense of community, both locally and nationally.
People knew their neighbors, but would also help
out strangers on the basis of “there but for the
grace of God go I”. That sense of community has
been almost totally lost, but I see it returning in
virtual neighborhoods such as MoveOn and Faith
Action. Self-employed people can form temporary
networks in ways impossible for Upton Sinclair or
Samuel Gompers even to imagine. Microfinance
is providing a new model for lifting people (mainly
women!) out of poverty, although it has yet to
be adapted from its third-world origins to the
American context.
Where this leads, I can’t see clearly, but as Mr.
Dylan said, “You don’t need a weatherman to know
which way the wind blows.”
[reposting from tribe...]
i recently had a conversation about a bunch of this stuff. the thing that i’ve been pondering on for myself is that i notice that i feel like a failure because i’m not self-employed or a working artist or at the very least in a non-traditional job. i am often ashamed that i have a 9-to-5, and in particular a 9-to-5 in an office.
but the thing is, i’m *good* at office jobs, and i like working in an office, and i don’t mind working for The Man as long as i’m with a firm that i respect. and i’m sure i’m not the only one.
so i’m concerned that the current push to be creatively employed, combined with the self-fed guilt about not utilizing our ‘full potentials’, is leading some of our generation (and most particularly, in sF and the burner scene) to abandon or shirk at jobs that they would otherwise be proud of and/or hold onto for a long time. we’re restless and possibly making less-than-excellent decisions about our careers because we keep seeing examples of people surviving without day jobs. and i can’t help but think that we’re shooting ourselves in the collective foot.
yes, yes, of course, orange, smart decisions need to be made all around. financial planning for the future is so much tricker now than it ever was, and while the bohemian dream of quitting your job to become a full-time artist is a GREAT idea for those who have the talent, motivation, and solid foundation, it is NOT a good idea for people who don’t really have the skills to build that foundations but just want to be self-employed. coming to grips with that is tough for a lot of people who thought they had the skills but it turns out, they don’t.
as for people not working perfectly admirable jobby jobs because they somehow see it as less cool or less fulfilling, that’s where i agree with mr. ott: there is no shame in working for someone else if you enjoy what you’re doing and you believe in the work. in fact, it’s a much smarter choice if you can find that kind of job, because then don’t have to worry about healthcare and insurance and all those other things and there are definite benefits (401(k) matches, etc.). i think what drives so many of us to try to work for ourselves is that those jobs – GOOD jobs – are very few and far between.