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Plague of overwork stems from ills of consumption
By Wan Lixin |
May 8, 2010, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
WE do not usually associate US citizens with overwork, or time poverty.
Today the word overwork more often evokes the image of laborers toiling in sweatshops in China's Pearl River Delta, or fresh university recruits who are lucky enough to work for western accounting firms in China.
By holding up materially encumbered life as the only kind worth pursuing, Americans are outsourcing their enormous manufacturing capacity to the rest of the world, and starting a global race for high, and higher, standards of living.
In doing so they are also exporting such by-products as overwork, poverty, time poverty, "affluenza," and stress.
But judgment depends on the frame of reference.
As John de Graaf observes in "Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America," Americans work longer hours and more days than the citizens of any other Western industrialized country.
Graaf is also co-author of the best-selling book "Affluenza."
He claims that Americans have little choice but to work longer hours for fear they might be replaced by others who work harder, or for less pay.
I believe that Americans can be made to slave willingly at the office or other places because they have been trapped in a life whose worth is measured by consumption only.
Unless you have more clever means to finance your consumption, like American investment bankers, you need to earn your wages to pay for all the symbols of good life.
Failure to keep up with your friends in terms of consumption is the No. 1 fear in this rat race for greater accumulation, even though the majority can only be losers in the end.
Depending on the stage of your "development," the symbols of wealth so eagerly sought can be a new brand of mobile phone, an expensive car, a town house, membership to a club, or a private jet.
As philosophers demonstrated long ago, satisfaction derived from material consumption or sensual pleasures are ephemeral, thus actually owning these symbols of the good life soon lose their allure, unless this possession can be made conspicuous to others.
A status symbol handbag is an ideal example: it is overpriced, and the label can be easily recognized.
This incessant race for more is kept up at considerable social and personal cost.
"Overwork, over scheduling and time poverty threaten our health, our marriages, families and friendships, our community and civic life, our environment, and even our security," Graaf observes.
Specifically, these problems include:
Kids are "over-scheduled," and families "under-connected." Parents drop their kids off because they have to work.
Civic participation has declined. Exhausted citizens, having little energy to spare after the daily grind, prefer to spend more time before the idiot box.
Overwork contributes to such crimes as road rage, child and spousal abuse, and drug abuse.
Speed to produce leads to poorly designed products, and increased waste. For example, when sonar technology makes easier the tracking and capturing of large schools of fish, about a third of the 30 million tons of fish caught each year is wasted. Most fish are killed and thrown back into the ocean.
A vicious circle in transport is spurred by the quest for speed.
As roads become wider and cars move faster, offices, schools, and restaurants become more scattered, resulting in more time being consumed in traveling anywhere.
This condition has many consolations.
Dual-income families become the norm.
The standard perception is the emancipation of mothers as they are liberated from their limiting domestic drudgery -- it's strange that even mothers have joined in the praise of "liberation."
But the industrialized era would not have been so successful had it not been supported by a militant ideology celebrating the era as progressive, liberating, and democratic.
The author has proposed many solutions, but none of them would work if people do not abandon their mad pursuit of the "good life."
As people work more to buy more, the real solution for this undesirable state is to reduce consumption, reject the common definitions of success and simplify aggressively.
Today the word overwork more often evokes the image of laborers toiling in sweatshops in China's Pearl River Delta, or fresh university recruits who are lucky enough to work for western accounting firms in China.
By holding up materially encumbered life as the only kind worth pursuing, Americans are outsourcing their enormous manufacturing capacity to the rest of the world, and starting a global race for high, and higher, standards of living.
In doing so they are also exporting such by-products as overwork, poverty, time poverty, "affluenza," and stress.
But judgment depends on the frame of reference.
As John de Graaf observes in "Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America," Americans work longer hours and more days than the citizens of any other Western industrialized country.
Graaf is also co-author of the best-selling book "Affluenza."
He claims that Americans have little choice but to work longer hours for fear they might be replaced by others who work harder, or for less pay.
I believe that Americans can be made to slave willingly at the office or other places because they have been trapped in a life whose worth is measured by consumption only.
Unless you have more clever means to finance your consumption, like American investment bankers, you need to earn your wages to pay for all the symbols of good life.
Failure to keep up with your friends in terms of consumption is the No. 1 fear in this rat race for greater accumulation, even though the majority can only be losers in the end.
Depending on the stage of your "development," the symbols of wealth so eagerly sought can be a new brand of mobile phone, an expensive car, a town house, membership to a club, or a private jet.
As philosophers demonstrated long ago, satisfaction derived from material consumption or sensual pleasures are ephemeral, thus actually owning these symbols of the good life soon lose their allure, unless this possession can be made conspicuous to others.
A status symbol handbag is an ideal example: it is overpriced, and the label can be easily recognized.
This incessant race for more is kept up at considerable social and personal cost.
"Overwork, over scheduling and time poverty threaten our health, our marriages, families and friendships, our community and civic life, our environment, and even our security," Graaf observes.
Specifically, these problems include:
Kids are "over-scheduled," and families "under-connected." Parents drop their kids off because they have to work.
Civic participation has declined. Exhausted citizens, having little energy to spare after the daily grind, prefer to spend more time before the idiot box.
Overwork contributes to such crimes as road rage, child and spousal abuse, and drug abuse.
Speed to produce leads to poorly designed products, and increased waste. For example, when sonar technology makes easier the tracking and capturing of large schools of fish, about a third of the 30 million tons of fish caught each year is wasted. Most fish are killed and thrown back into the ocean.
A vicious circle in transport is spurred by the quest for speed.
As roads become wider and cars move faster, offices, schools, and restaurants become more scattered, resulting in more time being consumed in traveling anywhere.
This condition has many consolations.
Dual-income families become the norm.
The standard perception is the emancipation of mothers as they are liberated from their limiting domestic drudgery -- it's strange that even mothers have joined in the praise of "liberation."
But the industrialized era would not have been so successful had it not been supported by a militant ideology celebrating the era as progressive, liberating, and democratic.
The author has proposed many solutions, but none of them would work if people do not abandon their mad pursuit of the "good life."
As people work more to buy more, the real solution for this undesirable state is to reduce consumption, reject the common definitions of success and simplify aggressively.
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