Caplan and Lehmann on work & happiness, Strauss on Zoomers, Klosterman on the Nineties, Russell on expectations, Henderson on cooperation, Douthat blast from the past (again)
On the one hand, as Kaplan says, work provides structure that we can lean on if our lives are lacking one.
On the other, when people rely entirely on work to provide them with a sense of life and structure, unwanted effects like the Woke movement occur. Daren Paul put it well: "In decades past, Americans would express and advocate for their cultural values through their churches, fraternal organizations, charities and clubs. As such institutions declined since at least the 1990's, the workplace emerged as the most important-and for many, the only-site of popular sociocultural action. "
The culture of therapy that Douthat describes is related to what happens in the workplace. Again Daren Paul: "In fact woke capital is the epitome of two intertwined developments in the American political economy since the 1960s: globalized corporate power and a national therapeutic culture. (...) narratives of suffering and healing, of authenticity and liberation, of self-care and self-actualization, overflow the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and counseling to fill schools, churches, corporations, and the state. It stands today as our national collective moral philosophy."
It is one of the main "solus populi" ideas for the working and lower middle class, but here be the problem: the liberal arts barista class really need ways to be artists rather than power-hacking bureaucrats, and they are not suited to the service industry as they are often "crazy enough to do art" but not mentally stable enough to handle people. Are there easy solutions for this other than Etsy-fication?
On the one hand, as Kaplan says, work provides structure that we can lean on if our lives are lacking one.
On the other, when people rely entirely on work to provide them with a sense of life and structure, unwanted effects like the Woke movement occur. Daren Paul put it well: "In decades past, Americans would express and advocate for their cultural values through their churches, fraternal organizations, charities and clubs. As such institutions declined since at least the 1990's, the workplace emerged as the most important-and for many, the only-site of popular sociocultural action. "
The culture of therapy that Douthat describes is related to what happens in the workplace. Again Daren Paul: "In fact woke capital is the epitome of two intertwined developments in the American political economy since the 1960s: globalized corporate power and a national therapeutic culture. (...) narratives of suffering and healing, of authenticity and liberation, of self-care and self-actualization, overflow the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and counseling to fill schools, churches, corporations, and the state. It stands today as our national collective moral philosophy."
Link to Paul's essay: https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/woke-capital-in-the-twenty-first?s=r
> similar connection between work and well-being
It is one of the main "solus populi" ideas for the working and lower middle class, but here be the problem: the liberal arts barista class really need ways to be artists rather than power-hacking bureaucrats, and they are not suited to the service industry as they are often "crazy enough to do art" but not mentally stable enough to handle people. Are there easy solutions for this other than Etsy-fication?