A lot of work is meaningless, why are you still rushing to do it?｜ Changjiang Reading 370 Issue

Keynes, a well -known economist, "Father of Macroeconomics" as early as the 1930s, made predictions. By the end of the 20th century, high -level machine automated production can replace most of worthless work. People only need to work 15 a week. For an hour, there is more free time to find the fun of life and the dream of chasing life.

However, real development is very different from Keynes' predictions. Automated production does not bring predicted relaxation and superiority. Instead, it gradually spreads away to form a fear of being worried about being replaced by machines.

Why do we seem to be busy today, where artificial intelligence is becoming more and more popular, and working hours are getting longer and longer? Do you really create great value for our personal and society every day?

In the previous "Reading of the Yangtze River", we recommended Fred Cobaman's "Revolution". The main point of view is: deep in the heart, everyone wants to contribute something valuable to this world, Want to experience the satisfaction brought by "living", which is a huge inner motivation. The work of leaders is to help their employees find "meaning".

The "meaningless work" recommended today, the author's anthropologist David Graer in the book sharply pointed out the problem of "meaningless work". It's a warning.

"Meaningless work"

Author: [beauty] David Greber

Press: CITIC Publishing Group

Publishing Year: July 2022

The following content is the recommendation preface of "meaningless work", the author Yan Fei, and CITIC Publishing Group authorized the Yangtze River Business School to publish, only represents the author's independent point of view, and does not represent the college's point of view.

In the past two years, when everyone talks about work, they can't help but mention a keyword- "volume".

When chatting with young friends, they found that they would name themselves a "cabbage". Although they were unwilling to participate in meaningless internal competition, they would face the fate of being eliminated at any time because they were afraid of stopping. Set in.

Why do we seem to be busy today, where artificial intelligence is becoming more and more popular, and working hours are getting longer and longer? Do you really create great value for our personal and society every day?

Faced with these questions, the anthropologist of the London School of Political Economics David Graber sharply pointed out in this book that many people's "the whole career consumes things they actually know and do not need. Whether it is moral In terms of mind, the damage caused by this situation is deep ", and it can even be called" a scar on our collective soul ".

Graber found in the study that those meaningless and even harmful tasks occupy more than half of all jobs and become a "bullshit jobs", and such a work is constantly expanding.

The so -called "shit work", according to the definition of Graber, refers to a profession that is meaningless and often harmful to receive salary, which is meaningless or harmful. Find the right reasons for it.

Although there is a condition to be engaged in this job, that is, the existence of this job is completely reasonable. While knowing that your work is meaningless, the working environment of the level system is increasingly unbearable, and many sufferings in the daily life of office workers are directly from this.

Graber quoted a theory proposed by Russian writer Dostaevsky during the exile of Siberia's labor camp in the book:

The most cruel torture in the world is to force people to do a significant meaningless job.

Dostoevsky found that although the work that was escorted to Siberia did not seem so hard compared to farmers, these prisoners were "hard work" in the real sense because "when farmers work, At least some of them are for themselves, but the reason why the hard work is 'bitter' is because the workers are not available from this work. "

As early as 100 years ago, in the era of German sociologist Max Weber, people's pursuit of wealth was almost crazy.

Under such social success standards, factory production has become more planned, and workers constantly urge themselves during their work: Only when working all day and all night can we obtain more wealth.

They work on the assembly line day after day, they are no longer a complete person, but alienation becomes part of the machine; their every move is no longer controlled by themselves, but is mastered by the machine.

At the same time, the institutional framework of organizational operation is also changing quietly. People's behavioral standards no longer rely on the charm or the authority of the elder in traditional society. Operation.

This highly divided and highly rational organizational structure is undoubtedly adapted to the social and economic development of high -speed development.

Under the sector system, people’s duties are to deal with the division of labor they deserve, do the "assembly line" work on each layer of the sectarian system, and handle the endless documents in a highly rational organization, which leads to The organizational system has become a huge machine. This machine is cold -blooded, suppressing everyone's emotions.

Such a system allows the first people who step in to experience a sense of confusion and urgency of being thrown into the turbulence, which will inevitably breathe in breathing -the kind of enthusiasm to win everything and the fear of everything, push people to continue upward upwards Climbing, despite limited resources and cruel competition, no one wants to fall. Everyone looks like a stimulant, trying to get more money. By the 20th century, with the continuous progress of science and technology, people were looking forward to liberating from high alienation and rationalization. But in fact?

In this book, Graber pointed out that after the 20th century, work has transformed into a form of self -discipline and self -sacrifice. No matter what class is in, it will fall into a state of rest:

Now we rarely hear the story of the leisurely life of the rich class (not the rich who have no leisurely life now, but that everyone no longer praises the idleness).

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the poor people liked to watch movies depicting high society. In the film, Playboy has millions of wealth, romantic and unruly, and is not wrong. Such stories have been popular.

Now, people prefer to listen to the story of the chief executive officer of the workaholic. Everyone talks about the perverted work arrangement of the CEO of Superman who does not sleep much.

In the UK, newspapers and magazines even publish the extremely compact schedule of royal members. Through these reports, we know that the royal family members spend so much time every week in preparing and attending various ceremonies, so that they can almost have a little private time to leave them.

Economist Keynes had predicted as early as the 1930s that by the end of the 20th century, high -level machine automation production can replace most of worthless work. Time to find the fun of life and the dream of chasing life.

However, real development is very different from Keynes' predictions. Automated production does not bring predicted relaxation and superiority. Instead, it gradually spreads away to form a fear of being worried about being replaced by machines.

Under this psychology, people's self -evaluation is slowly changing, running in the trajectory we never imagined, seemingly on a stable track, but full of bumps in a set of contradictions in balance work and life. Essence

Graber pointed out that people do not regard personal occupations as the main source of evaluation of themselves for future generations.

When we left this world, we could not find a tombstone such as "steam pipe decoration workers", "clerk", "clerk", and "forest guard" in front of the cemetery. The names of the descendants, and these are proofs we have existed in the world, a testimony of love we have paid and harvested, and a kind of emotional transmission that is closely related to life itself.

But in worldly life, people do not ask each other's questions about love and commitment when they meet, but ask: "What do you do?"

Since the 1970s, with the further skills of labor, workers have become more and more like machines, and labor has lost a certain creation sacredness.

As a result, people will no longer identify their identities (such as teachers, workers, and civil servants) as they are engaged in the work and occupation they are engaged in. tribe:

"Your identity can be science fiction, dog lovers, egg shooting fans, addicts, Chicago Bulls fans, or Manchester United fans ... but you will never use dock workers to define I will not use the risk analysts of the disaster to examine my existence. "

In Graber's view, this can be called "paradox of modern work":

On the one hand, when asked about the significance of life, people often answer, which is the ultimate significance to give them life. Most people's sense of dignity and self -worth are closely related to work. Psychological psychology caused devastating blows.

On the other hand, many people hate their work. They think that the busy things they are busy do not only create corresponding social value, but also torture their minds.

Therefore, to some extent, most of us want to define ourselves through things other than work.

Each of us seemed to be sitting in the cockpit of the Ferris wheel, always running at a uniform speed, taking a ride of an inertia to complete the daily prescribed actions, and the lights in the daytime, the lights at night made us unable to fall asleep.

Once the Ferris wheel is pressed on the start key, it seems that it is difficult for us to get the opportunity to stop, work overtime, stay up late, day after day, fatigue and even burnout become the norm of life.

The gear of the city symbolizes the gear of society constantly. Once it stops, people are worried that they will be left, and they will rather curl up in a closed small cockpit.

The towering ferris wheels were suspended without root bases. We regard the life inside as a matter of course. We are obsessed with such a model. We think that the difficult things are valuable. It is reasonable to eat more hardships. Essence

Just as the young friends told me in this article, if you have to roll, you also want to work hard to make a "cabbage" climbing up, instead of the "cabbage" of going downhill. After getting the ideal work and salary benefits, after completing the monthly KPI (critical performance index) assessment goal, today's younger generation is still full of panic and confusion. It is worried that the scenario that can be reused in the industry is very limited:

"I will make a data perspective table, and I will write daily newspapers and weekly newspapers, but if one day I am layoff and forced to leave the Internet factory, what else can I do?"

Like the screw, if you change the machine one day, will it not be twistled?

More and more people are aware that the busy work of ourselves all day is meaningless. As an individual, our time is meaningful. We need to respect, appreciate, and nourish.

In the cockpit of the Ferris wheel, a small number of people are awake. They began to reflect on their dilemma in the system, and even boldly re -examine themselves. Thinking about what is worthwhile and what is done without doing it. Such a kind of life breaks out.

I hope we can be those who open the cockpit windows to shout out and take everyone to sing together.

The picture in the article comes from Tuwu's creativity, and the reprint needs to be authorized.

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