BraveSpeaking: YOLA 11: The Great Work Myth

Verb to take something away from someone or something

depriving
Work gets a terrible press. Pick up the paper on any day and you'll read about how work is killing our marriages, generating stress, depriving children of 'quality time', hollowing out local communities, and depressing us.

scapegoat

Noun someone who is unfairly blamed for something

scapegoat
Work has become the scapegoat for all our woes. The case against work is put in persuasive terms on a daily basis. There’s just one problem: it's nonsense. In fact, as far as work is concerned, we've never had it so good.

satisfied

Adjective having a happy or pleased feeling

satisfied
One survey shows that four out of ten British workers declare themselves 'very satisfied' with their jobs - more than in France, Germany, Italy, or Spain.

maternity

Adjective relating to the time when a woman gives birth to a baby

maternity
Average earnings have increased, a lot of firms offer longer maternity leave, a third of firms now offer sabbaticals, and two-thirds allow their staff to work from home some of the time.

rhetoric

Noun language that is intended to influence people and that may not be honest or reasonable

rhetoric
The rhetoric about longer working hours also needs to be put in perspective. The average working day has increased in length over the last two decades, but by just one minute and forty-two seconds.

ingrained

Adjective existing for a long time and very difficult to change

ingrained
Despite all the improvements in work over recent decades, there is still an ingrained attitude that happiness lies outside work; that we are waiting for the weekend.

alienation

Noun the act of causing someone to feel that she or he no longer belongs in a particular group

alienation
This idea that work is essentially bad for us has a long history. Karl Marx described workers being 'alienated' from the product of their labor: What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor?' he asked.

affirm

Verb to show a strong belief in or dedication to something, such as an idea

affirm
Marx goes on to answer: 'First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work he does not affirm himself but denies himself.'

mortify

Verb to cause someone to feel very embarrassed and foolish

mortify
Marx continues: 'The worker does not feel content but unhappy; does not develop his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind.'

condemn

Verb to cause (someone) to suffer or live in difficult or unpleasant conditions

condemns
However, relentless negativity about work condemns us to precisely the sort of work that Marx was trying to free us from 150 years ago.

demeaning

Adjective causing someone to seem less important or less worthy of respect

demeaning
If we accept that work is dull and demeaning - a ransom paid for the hostage of our 'free time' - then we are allowing alienation to remain.

dubious

Adjective likely to be bad or wrong

dubious
Work is becoming too important for it to be of dubious quality. Work is a community, the place where we meet friends and form relationships, a provider of our social as well as our work life.

indicator

Noun a sign that shows the condition or existence of something

indicator
One in three of us meets most of our friends through work, two-thirds of us have dated someone at work, and a quarter of us meet our life partners there. Work is also becoming a more important indicator of identity.

robust

Adjective working in an effective way

robust
Family, class, region, and religion are now less robust indicators, and work is filling the gap, making it the most important fact about ourselves we mention when we meet people.

futility

Noun pointlessness or uselessness

futility
'Work,' as Albert Einstein said, 'is the only thing that gives substance to life.' The shift of work towards the centre of our lives demonstrates the futility of much of the current debates about 'work/life balance'.

stack up

Phrase to make sense

stack up
It is true that some people are working longer hours. Yet the idea that it is being forced upon us without our choice just doesn't stack up.

reflect

Verb to think carefully about something

reflect
The people who work more than sixty hours a week are the ones who say they like their jobs the most. This may seem surprising, until you reflect that people who like something might do more of it than people who do not.

put in

Phrase to work or do something for an amount of time

put in
People who love their jobs own up to having a 'work/ life problem' because they put in more hours than they are strictly required to.

invest

Verb to use or give something for a specific purpose

invest
Of course, this leaves open the question of who keeps the home fires burning and of the impact on children especially. It may be that people are choosing to invest less time and energy at home than others think they should.

valid

Adjective fair or reasonable

valid
If certain people get more out of their work than they do out of their home, then perhaps this is a clear and valid choice for people to be making.

intrinsic

Adjective belonging to the essential nature of a thing

intrinsic
Ultimately, our goal must be to begin seeing work as an intrinsic part of our life, rather than an adjunct to it.

manifesto

Noun a written statement that describes the policies, goals, and opinions of a person or group

manifesto
Theodore Zeldin, an Oxford don, has the right manifesto for the future of work: its abolition. But not in the way anti-work campaigners have in mind.

abolish

Verb to officially end or stop something

abolish
Zeldin says 'We should abolish... the distinction between work and leisure, one of the greatest mistakes of the last century, one that enables employers to keep workers in lousy jobs by granting them some leisure time.'

down payment

Noun an initial or partial payment one makes to reduce a debt or to show gratitude

down payment
‘We should strive to be employed in such a way that we don't realize what we are doing is work.' Zeldin throws down the challenge for work in the 21st century. It's time to abandon the idea of work as a down payment on life.

stereotype

Noun an unfair and untrue belief that many people have about a category of people or things

stereotype
However, before we can do so, all the modern myths about work will have to be exposed: the ones that continue to stereotype work as intrinsically sapping, demeaning, and corrosive. It is time to give work a break.

YOLA 11: The Great Work Myth - all