Writes David French in "The Hidden Moral Injury of ‘OK Boomer’" (NYT).
It’s necessary to think hard about our first answers to a deceptively simple question: “Who are you?” If my honest first response is “I am a columnist” more than a husband, a father, or a grandfather, then when I get older I will wrap my arms around that identity and refuse to let go. If that first answer is centered on faith and family, then the sunset of my career will not be the sunset of my purpose. I will be more willing to release that which I value less because I still preserve that which I value most....
The Mitt Romney Christmas card is legendary in some niche circles in Washington. Every December, he sends out a simple picture of his growing family. You can Google it and see it expand, year by year.... Skeptics might claim that Romney let go of his power because holding it would be hard.... Perhaps, but it’s also true that he retains immense purpose, and the picture captures that purpose....
French links to this Atlantic article: "Workism Is Making Americans Miserable/For the college-educated elite, work has morphed into a religious identity—promising transcendence and community, but failing to deliver," by Derek Thompson.
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63 comments:
Your deeds define you. Such as inventing new words to replace common words defines a fabulist.
We get the Romney Christmas card every year. It is a sight to behold. One pic with them in the center of the family and one with just the family and not them. Did you know there’s a black guy?
No hired cartoonist or artist renderings and no letter about their year. Say what we will about Mitt but the cadd is good…
"For the college-educated elite, work has morphed into a religious identity—promising transcendence and community"
I would stop doing that.
MMmm. Not so much. It was interesting and challenging. It sent two daughters to college and provided a nice house, but I don't think it defines who I am.
I am pretty handy with tools, however. Unlike most suburban primates.
rehajm said...
"Did you know there’s a black guy?"
I did not, and I looked. "Black Romney" sounds like a Dave Chappelle skit waiting to happen.
If my honest first response is “I am a columnist” more than a husband, a father, or a grandfather, then when I get older I will wrap my arms around that identity and refuse to let go. If that first answer is centered on faith and family, then the sunset of my career will not be the sunset of my purpose.
Ok then. Let's do sex. We'll start with the easy bit. Life is reproduction. Your children are your future, your only future. Your spouse is important because he/she is your necessary partner in the offspring production game.
But - on the whole - being the scarcer resource, females are the ones doing the mate choosing. And women find something like 80% of men unattractive. Hence those otherwise unattractive males need to get themselves noticed. Hence their attempts to display mateworthiness - which includes health, competence, status, resources etc. Hence the scrabble to succeed in male-male competition. Do well in your career and your chances of being chosen by a pretty, non-skanky gal improve. Or polish up you technique at fighting with your horns - it's the same idea.
Evolution, of course, works on the result. So it doesn't care that men pursue careers, unaware that success contributes to better mating odds. Men who genuinely think their career is the most important thing in their life don't upset the evolutionary apple cart. Think that you dummy, says evolution, but in reality you're still working for me.
But females ? A woman's status and career play little part in a man's estimation of her mate value. Thus women who think their career is the most important thing in their life are in a different position to men who think that. The guys are wrong, but it doesn't cost them. But the women are wrong and it does cost them. We see it every day - the panic in the 30s when a woman realises her options are closing terrifyingly fast, and she's more than a decade overripe for her maximum value in the mating market.
Along with all those miserable cat ladies who keep on muttering that they never wanted children anyway. Nobody believes them, least of all themselves.
When I was in France and they would arrogantly declare they "work to live while Americans live to work" I would also remind them that they still mostly live by candlelight and we don't.
I am not an animal! I am a human being!
Writer: I will build my argument upon a big foundation which is a definition I just pulled out of my ass. The edifice I build upon it will be grand and magnificent until the rain comes and melts my bullshit foundation away. But that will be two days from now and I’ll be onto my next POS structure and no one will remember.
It seems to me that there is a balance to be struck between not defining yourself by your work and acknowledging the spiritual value of work, though.
I worked 62 years straight from fourteen. My work did define me to my detriment. I lived and loved my job and being the best at it after being a poor student was a point of pride.
As a boomer, I regret being too busy earning money & raising a family to pay too much attention to what was happening to our country.
I apologize for my lack of attention, but raising two Eagle Scouts who worked their way through college, have jobs, homes & families seems to be a plus.
Who are you?” If my honest first response is “I am a columnist”
This is CRAZY! it's not as if people her refer to Professor Althouse as a "Professor".
"You remember only about the brass ring
You forget all about the golden rule"
There are some high-profile old people clinging to full-time employment, cogently or not. If this suggests the incumbents believe they are defined by full-time paid work, it also blocks younger people from the kind of full-time paid work that they might think defines them as successes or failures. Building in dissatisfaction and rage in younger people who are asked to pay taxes and all that?
On the other hand, one hears a lot about people retiring at 55 or so. I retired at 60. Somehow in Covid time (watching a lot of videos) I started watching videos about life in the Villages, Florida. Anne will tell us the climate in the summer almost by definition is more fit for gators and now the introduced wild boars, iguanas and snakes, but many people seem quite happy there.
"College-educated elite" is the key phrase. Plenty of boomers would love to step aside but they can't afford it.
Also, David French is an overweening bore.
The vast majority of all work is unnecessary in any case. But we have been so degraded as a species that we don't know what else to do but work. There is more to life, much more, not that most people will ever be aware of it.
The Crack Emcee said..."When I was in France and they would arrogantly declare they "work to live while Americans live to work" I would also remind them that they still mostly live by candlelight and we don't."
Yes. I think this is the answer to the importance of work. Society needs people to work or we'd all be sitting in the dark. We're all better off when everybody's working.
I can understand why French is doesn't want to identify so much as a columnist anymore. He lost his mind and fucked it up and he knows it. Same thing happened to Mitt Romney and his political career.
Sad. TDS is real.
Lee said..
But females? A woman's status and career play little part in a man's estimation of her mate value
Thought experiment:
you get to choose between two women (why YOU get to choose is beyond me but it's only a thought experiment)
Both women look alike, talk alike, etc (again.. Thought Experiment)
but one woman is a waitress (or such) and the other is a VP at a Fortune 500 company
Which would you pick to spend your life with? The Thought Experiment assumes that all of you are young; and that you'll have pre-nups (no divorcing for money)
Which would YOU pick?
Personally, it's an easy pick for me
Some of my jobs were useful and one was mildly lucrative, but none were enviable or fulfilling of any need beyond making a living. For the most part I liked my coworkers and on some jobs I could indulge the illusion that I was competent and organized. That was something, but not all that much... I guess when you're a Supreme Court Justice or President of a large or even middling country, the trappings of office can become part of your identity and you don't want to let go. Harrison Ford, also, has a good gig and keeps at it into his eighties. That's not the usual experience though. Work sucks, and I was glad to put an end to it. My most fulfilling work experience was retiring.
The trouble with defining your self worth by your career is what happens in retirement. I am a fully retired attorney and have been so for 1.5 years now, and I really enjoy it. I miss a few of the people, but I don't miss the stress and long hours one little bit. But I have seen some of my peers regret retirement so much that they go into deep depression, drink heavily, and regret that they ever retired. For me, there is so much I want to do and experience, and I finally have the time and resources to do it.
Rich said...
The vast majority of all work is unnecessary in any case
There's about 150 million people working in the US, a vast majority would be what? 100 million?
please describe this 'vast majority of all work'? I'm brain damaged and don't see it.
ps. I'm NOT saying there aren't unnecessary jobs.. I'm wondering about the 'vast majority'?
French is an ass, but there is something to what he says here. There is a generational difference in sensibilities between Boomers and everyone else. The bell curves mostly overlay, but there are differences. I have friends older than I am that are committed to their jobs still, full time - and others that are slowly cutting their hours, but still working. Part of their problem (if that's what it is) is a sense of commitment that they feel responsibility for, that will be left as an empty requirement, should they step back. These are people with a very strong sense of public service, and their perception, as far as I can tell, is accurate in their fields of medicine and education.
Boomers were indoctrinated with a work ethic from early on. Subsequent generations, not so much, sometimes to an appalling degree. There are slackers in every generation, but younger people seem to be much less driven to lock in a career path that involves long hours and a sense of intellectual / spiritual engagement to their job. Rather, they seem to embrace a sense of freedom that life is distinctly 'outside' of work, and that smaller, more appetizing jobs taken together can be as satisfying as the full-time deal.
Once again, I see bean counters as the villain behind the loss of community that people used to feel in their professional home-away-from-home. That sense of belonging to your work community has gone the way of the dodo, and corporate life has suffered because of it. Shaky and insincere commitments from the employer inevitably leads to the same, from the employee. Costs are controlled, but a greater value is lost.
“Be of significant service to other people” in some way, shape, or form, whether you get paid for it or not, is a lifelong expectation in some cultures. Some of my acquaintances, in the United States, when they retire from income-producing jobs, don’t know how to continue to be of significant service to other people, and that’s sad.
I got a gift from Al Gore in the mid-90s. My government job was on the chopping block. Didn't end up being cut after they ran the real numbers, but it did cause me to take action to separate my identity from my job. One thing to face in the service is that almost all will "fail" to become the top brass. It's baked in, up or out. Untold to most is that when you hit your 50s, and work for a corporation or others, you will likely be tossed out. Happened to my brother-in-law but he was prepared. His top three chemical company didn't have many people over 55 below the c-suite, so when at 53, they wanted to reorg him to be under someone younger, he negotiated early retirement, and lucky too as before he left they'd sold the division and trashed the retirement plan for all.
Brooks and other of the college-edumedicated elite have the added problem of basically having nothing outside their employer. Sure Brooks can write, but others skills are readily marketable as say a plumber or electrician after leaving the corporation. They are the real modern "working class". They go to the place of their employer, use the tools and facilities of their employer to do the work assigned by their employer. Work that is of limited value outside that employer or the small niche of employers. The very definition of a production worker.
Now for me, coming to this realization in my mid-30s, well, I didn't kill my self for my job except as it pertained to my personal ethos of doing a good job. So when I was forced out, my basic goal was to not be cut off before I vested, then went quietly, finishing several critical, but neglected, tasks that were of more benefit to those lower in the chain than the top until my very last day. I take pride in doing a good job especially when the climbers are likely to simply neglect that job since the downside impacted the "lesser" in their eyes.
Since then I've learned out to do useful things that lessens my dependence on getting a technician out to keep things going for myself and those I care about. The rest of the society is on its own.
Interesting juxtaposition with the bit about Hamas working its way into the Israeli economy, the Israelis coming to think their main motivation was work and money. Turns out they too had a higher purpose that gave meaning to their lives. That product of Western Enlightenment, the Economic Man (which now includes many women) is blind to that need, until it's too late.
My job never defined me; my profession did. I retired on my 69th birthday because (1) I loved what I was doing, (2) I was objectively good at it, and (3) the Gen-X and Millennial candidates to replace me lacked my work ethic.
Plenty of boomers would love to step aside but they can't afford it.
Kate’s got a point.
Also, David French is an overweening bore.
No, Kate’s actually got two important points.
But we have been so degraded as a species that we don't know what else to do but work. There is more to life, much more, not that most people will ever be aware of it
We have been so successful as a species that there is more to life than work, much more...for some of us. Maybe not so much for the squid fishermen.
David French never seems to add much to the conversation.
Some people like to work and have great relationships with colleagues as there is a shared objective. Picking the right mate and raising competent children isn't part of everyone's skill set.
I've always been defined by my work while my brother has always been defined by his wife and children. In several books, Terry Pratchett wrote, "It would be a boring old world if everybody was the same."
David French doesn't seem to get this. Most of the people who really moved civilization along were defined by their work. People like Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Nikola Tesla, Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison. All these people ended up being Americans. Wonder if that's relevant.
I just asked myself some questions.
Would I have rather had the career or my family? The family, hands-down. Would I have rather had my career if it meant I would not have had kids? Again, no doubt, I would choose the kids.
But then I had a troubling thought: Would I rather have had my marriage (thirty-four years of being with my best friend who loves me unconditionally) or have had my kids? Wow that's tough. Maybe when they were little I would have said my kids, but now that they are grown and living elsewhere...?
And yet, the depth and meaning of that bond you have with your child never goes away. Husband and I were just watching a good drama last night where a mother has to identify her murdered adult child's body, and my husband remarked, "I wouldn't want to go on living after that" and I knew exactly what he meant.
My career was putting bad guys in jail and keeping them there, while upholding the Constitutional rights of all of us, including the accused. There are still bad guys and my former office is now led by a Soros-backed District Attorney. His entire life is dedicated to "social justice" and he has systematically undone everything that all prior DAs built up. He exists to reverse convictions---the most recent campaign is to not oppose those who file post-conviction appeals based on the fact that they were under twenty-five years of age at the time they committed the crime.
I took an early retirement and it's been tough to sit on my hands while all this is going on.
When I lived in Portland every social interaction with someone who worked at Intel, Columbia Sportswear, Microsoft or REI inevitably led to them letting you know before 60 seconds into the conversation.
"Which would YOU pick?
Personally, it's an easy pick for me."
My daughter is a waitress. She's gorgeous, hard-working, loyal, and forward-thinking. If you're picking some snooty VP over her, you're an idiot.
David McCullough once said* "I think that much of the joy of life can come, and should come, from work." He wrote or researched nearly every day of his life.
I like working. It contributes to the functioning of society. It involves you with other people, unrelated to you. It gives you daily accomplishments. You have a responsibility to someone other than just yourself.
A lot of the people I respect the most continued to work well after retirement age. Not necessarily full time or at their former career, but at something. I don't expect or want to fully retire. If I get tired of the reading/writing/analysis work I do now, I'll do something else, simpler maybe, more local.
* California Typewriter, an excellent little documentary.
Faith, family, and vocation are a three-legged stool to hold us up. Vocation is one leg, but it shouldn’t bear the whole weight. Family may include close friends. Faith need not be religious. All three are necessary.
I don't think the Boomers can quit work because they see inflation coming back after 50 years and the economy going to shit.
If you're over 60 and leave your job, you're probably leaving the employment market forever.
And Bidenomics makes that a very risky proposition.
I'm 69, and I doubt that I will ever retire, unless I can't continue working. I consider myself very fortunate to be good at doing something useful. I don't love my work, sometimes I hate it. I guess I'd better go check my e-mail. I probably have a meeting coming up.
I neglected to mention that my daughter makes a ton in tips, is incredibly frugal, and probably has more in her bank account than the vaunted Fortune 500 drone.
"My daughter is a waitress. She's gorgeous, hard-working, loyal, and forward-thinking. If you're picking some snooty VP over her, you're an idiot."
"Gorgeous, hard-working, loyal, and forward-thinking" doesn't depend on who your employer is and being a VP at a Fortune 500 company is not necessarily a long-term situation. You could ask Alissa Heinerschnozz.
Kate said...
"Which would YOU pick?
Personally, it's an easy pick for me."
My daughter is a waitress. She's gorgeous, hard-working, loyal, and forward-thinking. If you're picking some snooty VP over her, you're an idiot.
Kate? i sorry; i assumed my choice would be obvious.
I could NEVER make a snooty VP happy, or could she make ME happy.
That's WHY i put in the part about prenups. The ONLY reason i could see Anyone picking the snooty VP would be her money. I LIKE waitresses. I'd LIKE to meet your daughter; she sounds Wonderful.
Blogger Bob Boyd said..."We have been so successful as a species that there is more to life than work, much more..."
Yes. I don't think many people today understand the hard scrabble existence that has been necessary for almost all of our species' time on this earth. We've reached the point that not everybody has to work (and I include many things, like raising a family, in this definition of 'work'), but woe onto us if the work ethic is abandoned.
Isn’t it amazing that nearly every job takes five days / 40 hours to do per week. The people who created the '1938 Fair Labor Standards Act' in the US knew how things would be in the 21st Century ……
There is no advantage or virtue in working a day when there is no work actually needing to be done. Places like Google and the finance industry are unwilling to face up to this because it requires them to reckon with the fact that a lot of what they do simply doesn’t need to be done at all.
But that is also a warning to employees because rather than grant a 4 day work week after realizing one day is superfluous they’re more like to cut 20% of the workforce and keep the rest on 5 days.
Romney sending out a Christmas card to a bunch of utter strangers sounds to me like he identifies as a political hack.
gilbar said...
Which would YOU pick?
You forgot the most important trait - which one is pleasant?
Likewise, workism tells younger Americans that their job will define them. It is core to who they’re becoming.
He seems to believe people are assigned jobs/careers. People choose the work they do even if they feel pressured, because you can always stick out your thumb, change locations and start from scratch, which I've done a couple of times. I grew up in KC's stockyard district and I left to become a career telecommunications specialist. And yes, I told people that's what I did because it's friggin' difficult and only a scant percent can do it.
Read in this way, it is easy to see why older Americans are reluctant to simply 'step aside.' If they feel able... then the demand to leave is an attack on their essential identity....
I didn't "step aside" because I didn't want to, nothing more. When I did it was so I could do other things, not make way for someone else. I had writing, art and MA instruction to do. David French? Just telling others about his feelz.
People who think they can read others' minds like this are pompous idiots. And typically, like this buffoon, project their impulses onto others.
Their "essential identity"... That mind set of his tells you he had no other interests.
Those are the people who off themselves because they can't handle not having that career anymore.
gilbar - Nice hypothetical. As always, depends on many variables.
One area to consider is the male's personality/makeup. Does he want a strong copilot who can lessen the financial worry? Maybe he would get more satisfaction "taking care of" the waitress.
Why wife does not work, from her choosing as we met at work. I do get a lot of satisfaction providing for her, the dog, the house, etc.
Lastly, did anybody see the movie The Waitress? Was very sweet and exceeded my expectations. Had Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Cheryl Hines (RFK Jr wife!), and good ole Andy Griffith.
Workism is a liberal term to color productivity that is realized in diverse occupations, and necessarily in taxable labor.
Mea culpa, @gilbar
People like Albert Einstein …
Einstein had a fabulous year of research in 1905 — sometimes called the annus mirabilis, publishing four papers that together with quantum mechanics laid the foundations for modern physics. He was working as a patent examiner at the Patent Office in Bern, Switzerland, because it was the best job a young Jewish scientist could get at that time. That last point is worth contemplating.
As Political Junkie says, assuming the waitress and the VP to be identical in every respect except their jobs, and reasonable inferences therefrom, there's no obvious preference. The VP has pros - will bring in more money, likely to be a more intellectually stimulating companion, because probably smarter; and cons - will have more competing priorities from her career that may detract from you (and your career), the kids, the home and the society of neighbors. Which is better depends on second or third level tiebreakers.
Which is the point. For mate choice by the male, female career and status is not a yuuge decisive thing. But the other way round, it's a biggie. Females, on average, pick men who are a little older than themselves, because (unconsciously) status potential plus a bit of proven achievement is better than mere potential. Once that initial choice is made there's a cascade of consequences - eg it's always going to cost more for him to trail your career than the other way round, because he's a couple of steps up the ladder.
I'll also mention some horrifying psychological research. Turns out that a true love match between higher career status female and lower career status male is, on average, very vulnerable to erosion. The female, once that first hormonal flush is waning, she begins to find her lower status mate less sexually attractive - even if he's a hunk - and starts fooling around with high status guys she meets at work. Statistically of course, not universally. But it indicates that female attraction to male status is not purely a dollar and cent calculation module. It actually has an effect on those physical sexual attraction things - blood flow, heart rate, bodily fluids and suchlike.
Men, being simpler creatures, aren't like that. A shapely pair of pins, a decorative chest and a winsome smile and they're smitten. Waitress or VP, it doesn't matter.
Not mentioned is that if the government pursued true economic growth policies there wouldn't exist this perception that the old have to make way for the young.
"Sure Brooks can write,"
Wait, I thought this was about David French.
Not mentioned is that if the government pursued true economic growth policies there wouldn't exist this perception that the old have to make way for the young.
There is no advantage or virtue in working a day when there is no work actually needing to be done.
Rich, I'm sorry to have to differ with you so vehemently, but... that's just stupid. Let me count the ways:
1. Who defines "need"? For instance - does an avowed atheist believe that a preacher/pastor/priest does work that "needs" to be done?
2. Who defines "no advantage"? We have a friend whose mother-in-law had to live with him and his wife for a year or so. He doesn't like her and she doesn't like him. He didn't have to work; his wife is an executive and has always been the breadwinner. But he saw significant personal advantage in getting a job, as it got him out of an untenable daily situation.
3. Who defines "no virtue"? If a person with a developmental disability is given the job of picking up trash on four contiguous city blocks, that person (according to studies of working people with developmental disabilities) will very likely feel pride in her accomplishment, derive a sense of meaning from responsibility properly discharged, and be happy to be bringing in a paycheck, even though one of those sidewalk Zambonis could do the job faster over a greater area (and robot sidewalk Zambonis are undoubtedly coming to a city near you). It seems to me that for a city to decide to employ this person, even at a very low wage, instead of doing the more efficient thing could be construed as virtuous.
The rest of your comment, though, makes more sense: companies are likelier to fire one in five people and spread the work around than to go to a 4-day work week for all. But even that isn't necessarily all that clear-cut.
Say a labor movement arose to push for a 32-hour work week, the way it did arise to push for 40 hours back in the day. It's obviously become possible for factories to close on weekends - for lines to be powered down, is what I'm saying. So there's theoretically no problem (except for units produced, presumably!) with having the line shut down for three days instead of two.
But what about an accounting firm? Everyone is obviously going to want to have either Monday or Friday off - what do you do about that? Sometimes accounting has to get done RIGHT NOW. Even if you split your work force so that half is off Monday and half Friday, COVID has taught us that complications crop up when not everyone is working at the same time.
What about universities? Our daughter, double-majoring at a major university, is already having to take one lone class in an extra semester because it required certain prerequisites in a certain order, and therefore was not available to her until after her otherwise-graduation date. Tenured professors won't feel the burden of a 4-day week on their teaching calendars, I suspect, but the adjuncts sure will, and they already get paid a pittance.
So - do you social-engineer a 4-day work week into existence, or basically just have office people kind of slack off and take 5 days to do the work of 4? Work does provide psychic benefits, including people to talk to and putting a damper on individual spending on work days in our society that tends to think of weekends as little vacations.
"... younger people seem to be much less driven to lock in a career path that involves long hours..."
Imagine their outrage when those that work (harder and for) longer hours move up the pay and prestige ladder while they remain stuck.
Imagine their outrage when those that work (harder and for) longer hours move up the pay and prestige ladder while they remain stuck.
I knew - from high school - a couple of classmates for whom teaching was their "vocation." They had the potential to jump on that business hamster wheel and earn plenty of pay and prestige. But they picked their vocation. Fair enough. By their mid thirties they had both become grumpy about the unfairness of teacher "low pay", and by their mid forties they were sufficiently resentful that it was no longer worth going out for a beer - the conversation always moved on to politics, which is of course deadly dull.
Young folk at, and shortly after, college are told a lot of lies. No, on the whole, your "career" is not about self fulfilment. It's about putting a loaf or two on the table. Sure some people really enjoy their work, and lucky them. But mostly we have jobs not careers, and if they didn't pay us we wouldn't do them.
And as I mentioned above, these lies are particularly tough on women. A guy who gets to 35 before he starts to think about getting a life, and a wife, has time to recover. A gal has more or less missed the bus by then.
If job is associated with service, then it does more good than harm to prioritize it as a big fucking deal.
Service prolongs both life and quality of life.
Workism talk is the denouement of a society in decline. And that’s not just me typing.
Mitt Romney isn't leaving because "Gosh, look at my family, there are more important things in life". He's leaving because he can't get re-elected.
French is the same sort of sanctimous fake that Romney is.
The Christian who attacks other Christians. The "Conservative" who attacks other conservatives and was caught taking money form Leftwing google. The White man who's constantly attacking other whites as "racist". The man who talks of Christian love and plays the victim while viciously attacking others.
The idea that boomers are clinging on their jobs because its their identity is a half-truth. Most of them feel they can't afford retirement. Others have no reason to retire. No doubt a few have nothing to retire to. But we've always had these types
I’ve never had the attitude someone else couldn’t do a better job than I - even when in jobs I loved and for which I was perfectly suited. And I’ve never felt defined by my work, despite always seeking to do my best. I remember disliking Feinstein’s response when asked why she was running again this last time around. She still had important work to do…the country had important work for her. I remember thinking it was such an arrogant response. Because there was an underlying assumption no one else could do it as well. Sometimes, in certain jobs, the right thing to do is step aside.
I haven't seen David French walk and chew gum at the same time, and now I know why.
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