SubscribeI'm an old dog who spent several decades in a lab putting in frightful hours, then another 2 decades in business putting in even worse hours. Like you, I burned out and spent several years licking my wounds. During that time I had unlimited hours to ponder why I had done this to myself. Certainly there was the lure of lots of money and the possibility of financial independence. But in retrospect, I think that was more an excuse. Buried deep down I discovered that I was reacting to beliefs which had been picked up in childhood and never corrected by me.
One of those was that I was "lazy". My well-meaning parents used this epithet on me to encourage me to work harder at school and to spend less time in my own thoughts. Since it was always possible to find others who appeared to spend more time at their studies or other activities than I did, I grew to believe this about myself. When I entered university and was relatively free to choose my own lifestyle, I determined to prove this judgment wrong and became a workaholic. That commenced the addict's cycle of work 'till my health failed, recover, then start again to make up for "lost time". (The illness was always viewed by me as evidence of my laziness.)
My point in writing about this is that I believe that many people are driven by their own demons, adopted at a very early age, which are never challenged for what they are because they are so deeply seated. Like you, I was finally blessed with utter collapse which forced me to re-examine these very basic assumptions. Like you, I came up with an entirely different value system and have been delighted with the results.
I think that a very important point has yet to emerge in the discussion 'in the green', and which bears directly on the questions you raised. Employers will do anything they can to perpetuate these kind of myths (for obvious reasons). I once had a man working for me who had been voted as one of the country's most effective CEO's. He had successfully rescued a major corporation from certain bankruptcy and brought it into a commanding place in the electronics business. He told me that the secret to his success was to assist every employee in establishing a lifestyle that they then had to run harder and harder to maintain. The key was to instill in the group consciousness that success was measured in the number of "toys" accumulated. Loss of toys was equated to failure and no one can tolerate being viewed as a failure by one's peers. Internally, these practices include offices with windows, corner offices, 'rug-ranking' (thickness of pile = measure of status) and so on. By extension, these are extended to type of car driven, size of home, private school for kids, and so on.
Once on such a treadmill, it takes a remarkably strong ego or a major melt-down to break out of that mold. Move too far from that mold and society will commence pointing at you as being a 'parasite', even though you might not be drawing upon any social assistance or the help of others.
"do they lack confidence in their ability as much as in their endurance?" I think that endurance has been raised by the factors mentioned above to be a major virtue. So those on the treadmill who are seeking to show that they have some value choose to demonstrate such endurance to make up for their self-perceived shortcomings in other areas. Through demonstrating such endurance they seek the approval of their peers, neighbors and relatives. How marvelous that you have seen through that fallacy and have the courage to live your new found beliefs.
Richard Malcolm
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In fact, I'd argue that we're all morally obligated to find or enforce those alternatives. It seems clear to me and has seemed clear for a very long time that we're deep into a "correction" phase, where business is pushing back against the continuing effort to separate work life from private life. Corporations really do want to be able to buy our labor power and all that goes along with it; they'd love to be able to buy the right to control content of our minds, and everything we learn while working on their problems, too, and if it ever becomes feasible to do so they'll lobby hard for it. Their "right" to it is purely a matter of whether they can get it from us; we have to not let them have it.
So don't just shut up -- do something. You're doing it for yourself.
... spoken by someone who lives and works in a town where you take the job-scraps that are thrown to you and are happy to get them, doggammit....
posted by lodurr at 7:59 AM on November 11, 2004