Caution: Work Is Approaching Peak Bullshit

The number of people working because it gives them meaning as opposed to simply paying for their now unaffordable rent, mortgage or dependents, has reached peak low.  As for the number of people whose work agrees with their deeper ethics, values and beliefs, it is close to zero.  The first lesson we learn as we approach adulthood is that if we want to survive this system, we first and foremost need to put aside our values. 

Obviously this has ended in disaster, because this type of work only sponsors and strengthens the most ruthless, greedy and dangerous psychopaths a.k.a. what we have learned to call “businessmen” and women i.e. your boss.  By surrendering our values to employers for the reward of a salary, we have sponsored a global necronomic system which makes money out of the climate crisis, ecological catastrophe, genocide and war – hardly a sustainable business.

Even those who think they are doing “ethical” jobs are deluding themselves.  Their work may be ethical on the surface, but they are making money for an employer who works with suppliers and big corporations who have no ethics whatsoever.  In this world, the trail of money always leads back to ecocide and carbon emissions.  Our economic system is a chain of Chinese whispers which always begins with ecocide and somehow always finishes in a spectacular advertisement of “people, progress and prosperity” that is filled with smiles, blue skies and green meadows.

Ecocide always goes hand in hand with sophisticated greenwashing, delusion and distraction, because employees deep down always want to believe that their job is ethical and meaningful.  Knowing deep down that we have no option to abandon these jobs, we are already heavily primed towards accepting and believing positive messaging that will make us feel that “hey, at least I am doing something good, some of the time”. Companies have developed incredibly clever ways of making us feel “fulfilled” by distracting us from the “end” and focusing us only on the “means”. It is an ancient practice that is not limited to corporations but pervades every facet of religion, power and society. It rests on a web of false narratives which I call the Civilisational Lie.

When I worked in consumer marketing and advertising, the whole exercise of finding ways to deceive and manipulate consumers was often sugar-coated by the top management as “social science” or “advanced psychology”, in the same way that inventors of the atomic bomb thought they were working on “quantum physics”.  By reframing and glorifying our job descriptions companies try to convince us that what we do for them is highly intellectual work beneficial to this planet and society.  For a species that constantly strives for “purpose”, accepting this disconcerting truth is a bitter pill that is extremely hard to swallow. Most of us prefer to believe the brochure version of this civilisation. For me, its all a big yawn at this point.

A system which blackmails us into pretending to ourselves that we are someone else can only be described as slavery on gaslighting steroids.  But the bullshit is beginning to reach peak level, and thankfully, many of us are waking up.  There are always ways to resist and change this world.  But it ain’t gonna happen if we keep selling ourselves, is it?  

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist.

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