The privilege to burn out
Is burnout elitist? (No, despite what some seem to think.) Plus: printed copies of THE END OF BURNOUT now exist!
I’ve renamed this newsletter Burnout Culture. It’s where I post about burnout, the future of work, and cultural miscellany. If you like what you read, please do share it with others. That’s one of the best ways you can support my work.
I recently received my author copies of The End of Burnout. They look great! I am indescribably thrilled to hold the book in my hand, after years of holding it only in my head.
The book is available for preorder in all the places you would expect. If you order from the publisher, you might get the book a little early, and you can save 30% by using the code 21W2240 at checkout. Impatient readers can buy the Kindle edition, which will be delivered on Dec. 10 — just a month away!
To learn more about what I’m saying in The End of Burnout, take a look at this recent Fast Company article focused on the book.
The most common criticism I receive in response to my arguments for less work is that my message is all well and good for educated elites with cushy jobs and high salaries, but they don’t apply to people have to, you know, work for a living.
Here’s an example, from a reader comment on my New York Times essay on the need to formulate a post-work vision of the good life:
Vinnie here thinks he really has one over on me. He thinks he’s speaking up on behalf of the working stiffs who don’t have the leisure to read the Sunday Times over fair-trade coffee and an artisanal croissant-danish hybrid.
But — and apologies to the 345 Times readers who thought Vinnie was onto something — his objection doesn’t make any sense. Does he think I’m saying everyone should just knock off early and accept lower pay? Because I am not.
The problem is, Vinnie didn’t read the essay very carefully. Here’s a direct quote from it: “this new vision should inspire us to implement universal basic income and a higher minimum wage, shorter shifts for many workers and a shorter workweek for all at full pay.” You see, I think there should be laws that mean no one has to work two jobs to support themselves. In fact, I explicitly argue that this should be possible while working fewer than 40 hours a week! That’s less than one full-time job, by current standards!
You know who ought to bring his smart ideas to the working class? Vinnie. I would love to hear the reaction from a bunch of construction workers to his large-brain notion that they have nothing better to do with their lives than work literally all the time. Who knows, maybe they would agree. Anything is possible, right?
Vinnie is under the impression that members of the working class value hard work (probably true) and thus hate any suggestion that they might be able to work less, even if it didn’t mean earning less (obviously false). It’s a far more condescending position than my own, which proceeds from the assumption that most people like to have more days off and higher pay. Vinnie is more interested in signaling concern for the working poor than he is in actually helping them live stable and prosperous lives.
And he’s not alone. Earlier this year I heard similar criticism after I gave a presentation at an academic conference. The person who made the critique claimed that we academics needed to keep our privilege in mind when we talked about burnout, because hourly employees can’t afford to set the kind of boundaries around work that I and some other presenters were calling for.
This is a classic example of how the “privilege check” is little more than politically-useless posturing. In her book, The Perils of “Privilege”: Why Injustice Can’t Be Solved By Accusing Others of Advantage, Phoebe Maltz Bovy (whom you may know as one half of the Feminine Chaos Podcast) argues that calling out others for their privilege makes the caller-outer seem like an ally of the downtrodden, yet it curiously leaves the whole downtrodding social structure intact. Which is very convenient for people who’ve benefited from that structure, such as the typical person making a privilege callout.
By the way, the person who made the callout at the conference happens to hold an endowed professorship at the very university where I am an adjunct instructor earning $3,000 per course.
Look, I don’t pretend to be in touch with the working class. I even wrote a whole essay last year about just how out of touch I am. People like Vinnie and this senior scholar are pretending. They claim to speak up on behalf of the poor, bedraggled American laborer, but they do not question the whole labor arrangement — low minimum wages, minimal job security, little ability to organize, no paid time off — that keeps them poor and bedraggled.
Bovy recommends replacing privilege discourse with rights discourse as a way to promote more just social policy. I couldn’t agree more. Let’s have less “your privilege is showing” and more “everyone has a right to a living wage, housing, and health care” by virtue of their inherent human dignity.