The Religion of Work
Find your calling. Do what you love. Hustle harder. And love what you do.
Whether on social media, a cheap tank top, or a poster at a WeWork, we’ve all seen messages like this before.
On the surface, these messages seem harmless. What’s so bad about finding a calling? Sounds like the recipe for living a happy life, right?
Well, it’s complicated. Because beneath the surface, there’s little doubt what these messages are really about: a not-so-subtle capitalistic invocation of the four-letter word that sits atop the Iron Throne of societal values: Work.
In today’s world, work has evolved into something that’s more than just a job or a career—work is now supposed to be our one true calling. Our destiny. A singular purpose in which failure equates to a wasted life.
I’ve previously written about how the Japanese concept of ikigai—finding work at the intersection of your talents, passion, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for—can be an elusive target in the face of work’s banality. Expanding on this, I’ll now focus on how we’ve all—particularly millennials with college degrees—been hoodwinked into a belief that’s not necessarily ours: the idea that work needs to be a calling.
First, we’ll look at how we got here: how work became the identity and the religion by which we define ourselves. Then, we’ll explore why work as a religion, especially for millennials, can be debilitatingly counterproductive. And finally, we’ll look towards the future, where A.I., automation, and a changing economy might just make “work” as we know it obsolete.
1. In a secular world, work is today’s religion. How the hell did we get here?
Well, we’d need to read stacks of books to fully answer this question, but here’s a crash course:
For the ancient Romans and Hebrews, work was viewed as a curse—a punishment devised by God for spoiling the Garden of Eden. As explained in the “History of Work Ethic,” Plato and Aristotle believed that work should only be done by the masses so the wealthy elite could spend their time “in pure exercises of the mind—art, philosophy, and politics.”
After the fall of the Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, Christianity became the dominant structure in the Western world. According to early Christian thought, work still had no intrinsic value, and was only something passed down through generations: my grandfather and father were farmers, and so am I.
Then, in the sixteenth century, Martin Luther came along and crashed the proverbial work party. Luther claimed that work should be a person’s calling—a vocation a God-fearing person chooses to do. The Protestant Reformation that followed entirely re-defined work not as a sin, but as the will of God, allowing people to explore vocations outside of the simplicity of inheritance. This new ideology even went so far as to encourage people to reinvest their work profits into more work “over and over again, ad infinitum, or to the end of time.”
This Protestant philosophy, along with the laborious work ethic of Puritan settlers, laid the foundation for the emerging economic system that would then take hold in early America: capitalism. The brutal truth in America is that capitalism was built on the backs of African slaves, and it wasn’t until the nineteenth century, when early versions of the “American dream”—including manifest destiny—espoused that anyone who works hard can achieve wealth, prosperity, and freedom. But by this point, the shiny promise of work had become permanently sequenced into the DNA of American identity.
Over time, the American dream evolved, becoming less about working to conquer new land as a “universal right and moral obligation,” and more about entering the newly minted labor class created by the Industrial Revolution. In America, the land of opportunity, finding a day job to make a living was critical, but there were still other things that weighed heavier in life: notably religion, family, and community.
Fast forward to America in this past century, where the idea of work has “shifted from jobs to careers to callings—from necessity to status to meaning,” as Derek Thompson writes in his article (which is so good it almost hits too close to home) “Workism is Making Americans Miserable.” All of a sudden, work became not just about having a job, but rather about climbing a career ladder, and attaining a sequential series of acronyms like: VP, SVP, MD, and CEO.
And with Puritanical philosophy riding shotgun in an American dream convertible, the work crusade didn’t just stop with its construction of the career ladder. In contemporary America, our work is more than just a LinkedIn title—work is now the singular source of purpose, identity, and meaning for the majority of tax-paying citizens. Thompson aptly defines this new concept—“workism”—as:
“The belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.”
Sound familiar? As Americans have become less religious and more secular, we no longer look at work as a Protestant offering to God, because work itself has replaced God as the predominant religion. And work has filled all of the gaps left from the decline of organized religion—these days, there’s little separation between work, leisure, and essentially anything that’s not work. For many, work provides all of the critical elements of living a “meaningful” life: friends, community, identity, sustenance, and even health insurance. Today work is more than just meaningful—it’s the bedrock of a modern existence.
And American employees work longer hours, take fewer vacations, and receive less benefits than nearly all other first world nations. We tell our youth to follow their hearts, change the world, and make a good living—all at the same time. And what’s more, we tell them to not stop trying until they’ve found their Puritanical calling.
Yet, the problem with telling an emerging generation that your job should be your calling—a divine ikigain alignment of purpose—is that it can be a formula for disaster, a brutal mismatch between expectations and reality. It’s the formula for a mental health crisis.
Enter the millennial worker.
2. Does work make us happy? Why millennials are getting hosed by workism.
Millennials are the most indebted generation ever.
Millennials were sold on the latest version of the American dream—if we went to college and worked hard, we could accomplish anything. Then, we entered the work force in the midst of the Great Recession, the worst American economy since 1929. Now, 60% of millennials have debt—and 1 in 5 expects to die without ever paying it all off.
It’s not just the statistics that are depressing: millennial workism is contributing to a “health shock” largely fueled by a decline in mental health, where millennials could have up to a 40% higher mortality rate than GenXers of the same age. According to a World Health Organization report, this mental health crisis is comparable to the “effects the Vietnam War and recreational drug use had on the Silent Generation, and the effect the AIDS epidemic had on the boomers.”
And what happens to the younger generation where work is their religion? It doesn’t just mess with their mental health, it transforms their values. As Thompson points out:
“…in a recent Pew Research report on the epidemic of youth anxiety, 95 percent of teens said ‘having a job or career they enjoy” would be ‘extremely or very important’ to them as an adult. This ranked higher than any other priority, including ‘helping other people who are in need’ (81 percent) or getting married (47 percent).”
In other words, having a meaningful job is more important to millennials than family and kindness. Two equally troubling conclusions can be drawn from this. First, studies show that helping others and family are two of the greatest sources of happiness and well-being available. Few people on their death beds look back on their lives and wish they worked harder.
Secondly, for a world facing complex, existential problems that require collective participation, the individualized obsession with finding vocational alignment might hinder our ability as a species to survive.
Ok, wait a second… Hinder our ability to survive?! What’s wrong with wanting to have a job you enjoy?
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy a job and feel aligned. What’s problematic is the workism mentality that a millennial’s source of income needs to be a calling, and the single source of one’s multi-dimensional meaning. The idea that work is a divine salvation from life’s moments of mundanity, and the harsh reality of existence. In other words, the notion that work offers personal transcendence.
Because the reality is that life—and work especially—has its moments of utter mundanity, and boredom. A therapist will have sit through her one brutal client as he regales her with his dreams about shitting salmon (true story I once heard). An artist will struggle through painful creative blocks that can last years. And a tech founder will spend hours catering to clients and investors in what is often an Oscar-worthy acting performance. The type of vocation doesn’t matter—all types of work provide a reality that’s contrasted with the naïveté of expectations.
And for many, work is a merely a distraction—a distraction from taking a hard look at one’s life. Studies show that long-term unemployment is a fate worse than death, ranking higher than a family member dying or divorce. As our man Thompson points out in a different essay:
“The paradox of work is that many people hate their jobs, but they are considerably more miserable doing nothing.”
What’s more, the idea that work needs to be a calling is often adopted by millennials with very little critical thought about where it came from, and whether its Puritanical origins makes sense for a transforming economy. Benevolent phrases like “find your calling,” and “do what you love” sound so damn good, there’s little room to argue with them. But just because something sounds good, and looks even better on a social media post, it doesn’t mean it’s the ethos by which an emerging American generation should live.
In fact, when you see a millennial walking down the street wearing a #HUSTLE t-shirt while they prepare a social media post entitled “Never Stop Working Towards Your Dreams,” they’re broadcasting capitalist propaganda so inadvertently, Mao Zedong would be rolling in his grave in a fit of rage. This is the Brave New World-esque aspect of millennial workism—it comes with a dystopian lack of awareness. Millennials often fail to realize the ways they themselves perpetuate a cycle of unattainable ambition, anxiety, and dissatisfaction.
Now, there are certainly people who play this game—hustling non-stop until they win the vocational lottery—and earn that rare combination of wealth, happiness, and purpose. But unfortunately, the odds of winning this lottery aren’t too different from the odds of winning MEGA Millions. And while some millennials signal their lotto tickets on the internet, many are waking up without beating the one-in-a-million type odds, which is at least partially why so many millennials are so mentally unhappy.
But to be clear, the onus here—the capitalist game that fills the meaning void—falls more on the system itself rather than on millennial sovereignty or ignorance.
Does it make sense to tell millennials (a generation with negative net worth) to forget about a paycheck, and follow a dream? It’s a bewitchingly difficult decision, because both options often lead to a similar result. The idea that work itself—whether in the form of a doin’ it for the money big bucks job, or a cash strapped dream job—provides personal transcendence is misleading. Both scenarios are like chasing a Puritanical dragon, and trying to grab its tail:
“[Telling millennials] no job is just a job; and that the only real reward from work is the ineffable glow of purpose. It is a diabolical game that creates a prize so tantalizing yet rare that almost nobody wins, but everybody feels obligated to play forever.”
“Diabolical” might sound extreme, but that’s the unfortunate state of the Puritanical-American-dream. How else does one describe being stuck in a system where the never-ending search for work purpose is marketed as the only way to have a life worth living? It’s a cruel, Sisyphean game.
The baby boomers, as well-intentioned as they were, raised millennials to play this game with the “go for your dreams” mentality, which (typically) prioritizes purpose over paycheck. Yet, in San Francisco and New York City, a one-bedroom apartment on average costs $3,468 per month—or about $42,000 pear year. There’s only one way to afford that type of cost, and that’s to work around the clock.
So while inspiring, it turns out that the “find your calling” ethos drastically clashes with our current economic system.
At least for now…
3. The Future of Work: What happens to your identity when your job gets automated?
Doomsday screamers, utopian visionaries, and science fiction writers (not to mention a former 2020 presidential hopeful) have been saying it for years, but there’s a future in which work as we currently know it does not exist. In a “post-work” economy, AI and automation (read: robots) will streamline the majority of jobs, putting millions of Americans—and eventually the large majority of humans—out of work.
A post-work economy is no longer science fiction. Up until this point, technology has been working for workism, creating more and more jobs. But for the first time in history, we are reaching a time when technology will actually start destroying jobs.
By 2030, automation is expected to replace 73 million U.S. jobs—1/3 of the labor force. These are mostly lower-tiered administrative and manufacturing jobs, but automation has the potential to impact all disciplines: robots are being tested as therapists, and AI is not only better at detecting diseases than doctors, but also can beat top corporate lawyers at finding flaws in nondisclosure agreements.
All that said, in 2019 the unemployment rate in the US was lower than 4% on average, meaning that a remarkable number of Americans are working. It’s been 11 years since the Great Recession, and we’re now over a decade into a positive bull market run. It’s safe to say: at no other point in American history has work been such a thriving religion.
So, why stress out about robots taking all of our jobs? Seems like we’re good, right?
Even if we are still years away from a post-work economy, changes are coming—technology is not slowing down anytime soon. And 11-year bull run or not, markets don’t always tell the full story. We are already feeling the effects of automation, most notably through the loss of jobs in rural states coinciding with the rise of populism around the world (e.g. the 2016 election and Brexit).
We need to anticipate the impact of automation on a realistic timeline. Automation isn’t going to change the economy overnight—it will be a gradual economic shift, slowly chipping away at the current work paradigm. And when we look closely, there are already some alarming trends hidden in plain sight: specifically, the spread of nonworking men and underemployed youth.
The economy might be booming, but the number of young and middle aged American men (25 to 54 years old) who are working has been trending down since 1950, and it’s gotten even worse since 2000. Typically, men in this age range are in the their “prime” working years: these are people who should be working, especially in a “strong” economy. But 1 in 6 American men are either unemployed or out of the workforce entirely—a trendline that’s only forecasted to get worse for this key demographic. And who’s the culprit? Economists suspect technology, where traditional industries like manufacturing have already been hit hard.
So while a post-work economy might feel far away, its subtle beginnings have emerged, and are visible in the current state of American politics. The rise of Donald Trump is inseparable from the rise of white male resentment. Trump seized on the unemployed “forgotten man,” whose interests have been neglected by the establishment.
The populist surge around the “forgotten man” is an indirect consequence of an assault on a workism mentality. When work is the cornerstone of a person’s identity, and then that person suddenly loses their job—potentially finding themselves permanently out of work—this is what happens. With no other way to fill the void created by the absence of work, anger and resentment inevitably build.
When we think about how work might evolve on a longer-term scale, the future is mostly unknown, which is all the more reason to start preparing for this transformation of identity. We are entering a new, unchartered epoch in which workism—and the Puritanical-American dream—is challenged in unprecedented ways.
CONCLUSION: So… job, career, or calling? It’s a matter of perspective.
Even if we are still years away from a full-fledged post-work economy, in 30 years, it’s reasonable to hypothesize that our current our jobs—vocations we’ve chased our whole lives to perfect—will be at least partially, if not entirely, automated (perhaps with the notable exception being computer scientists—people who tell computers what to do).
So here’s the biggest question:
Does it make sense to cling to a Puritanical conception of work when the notion of work itself might drastically change in our lifetimes?
In a post-work economy, work won’t be about getting paid: “work” will be about finding something unique to contribute to the world. Utopian visions of this future include a renaissance of artistry, craft making, and creation.
And it’s entirely possible that when we think about work in the future, contrasted against our current obsession with it, we may look back and laugh at the rampant overwork. Long hours, obsession with vocational alignment, millennial burnout, and having work as a God might all seem ridiculous.
Image by Adam Levey
This might just sound like a utopian vision, but there are still some important takeaways from the thought experiment. If work is no longer about being paid, “work” can become about exploring passions and true callings—things that are typically better nurtured when pursued outside of the constraints of a capitalist system.
And in the meantime, while we are stuck in this system, we can embrace the separation between work and callings—working for money, and embracing callings on the side. Because callings have a role to play, as even more important than work itself is filling the meaning void left in work’s absence.
As it turns out, research suggests that experiencing work as a job, career, or calling simply boils down to a matter of perspective. Some people see work as a job: something one does for others to simply get paid. Other strive to have a career: a job one does for themselves, with advancement opportunities. And many wish to have the elusive calling: finding deep alignment between their vocation and who they are as a person.
But it’s entirely possible to see the same job as all of these things with the right mindset. I know many people who work in tech who seem pretty confident that they’ve found their calling. If you can convince yourself that the reason you were birthed into existence was to “unify digital data streams across multiple channels” or “bring prototype APIs into the cloud,” you can convince yourself of just about anything. There are tech workers, investment bankers, and social workers who all feel profound ikigai alignment in their jobs.
I also know several entrepreneurs, artists, and creators—the type of professions where you’d think a person has “found” their calling—that want nothing more than to do something else. Entrepreneurs want to be artists, artists want to be businessmen, and tech founders want to be political activists. And I’ve personally fallen into this trap, thinking I’m a failure for not making money from being all of these things at the same time.
It’s not our fault we got swept into the Puritanical-American dream about work. But it turns out, in the face of millennial angst, a capitalistic system, and a potential post-work economy, perhaps it’s better to simply tell our citizens to first focus on paying their bills, and follow their hearts on the side. This doesn’t have to be a depressing concession—it can be quite liberating to embrace the idea that a person’s intrinsic worth is not attached to work whatsoever.
Work was supposed to be a gateway to God. But these days, Americans don’t want God, so we have to reconstruct meaning while caught in this Puritanical prison of work.
Work itself was never meant to be a God.
**This writing originally appeared in my weekly newsletter, Fridays on the oLo. Subscribe here to get updates like this delivered fresh to your inbox.