On the Meaning of Life and Bullshit Jobs

Something isn't right about the way we live our lives.

“We have become a civilization based on work — not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

Have you ever sat in your office chair or on your couch contemplating the meaning of life? Wondering why you do the things you do? Maybe you’ve thought it over with earplugs in while you carry boxes in an Amazon warehouse, or while you meander down a backroad, making your way to the next hungry customer to deliver their food.

Am I really here to spend 8, 10, or even 12 hours every day doing menial tasks for wealthy men or women, only so they can increase their wealth?

Does my existence boil down to that of a servant, forced into labor that draws away my spirit and my life force, all so I can pay exorbitant rent prices and spend my few hours of freedom in the evenings watching Netflix or Hulu?

It seems to be accepted by society that this is our lot.

Everyone has a side hustle these days.

The average person spends one third of his or her life at work. Unless you are one of those mythical people who find your work stimulating and exciting, that means you will spend one third of your life in drudgery.

And people are working more all the time. Someone recently told me “everyone has a side hustle these days.” It has become normalized to work a full time job and pursue freelance or a part time job on the side.

And all that time spent at work is just in order to pay rent to the landlord or to pay a mortgage. Basically, to keep a roof over your head and some food on the table.

Wake up. Go to work. Come home. Eat the dinner you’ve earned and sleep under the roof you’ve paid for, but if you don’t wake up and do it all again tomorrow, you’re out on the streets. When you get too old or sick or suffer an injury and can’t do it anymore, you are out on the streets. When an economic crisis hits and your bullshit job gets cut, you’re out on the streets.

I am not writing this to suggest that we should work less. I am writing this to question why we work at all.

I know. That’s blasphemy, especially in the United States. But as David Graeber’s book Bullshit Jobs clearly lays out, many of our current jobs are entirely useless. And if we spend one third of our lives doing bullshit jobs, doesn’t that make our lives bullshit?

“It’s hard to imagine a surer sign that one is dealing with an irrational economic system than the fact that the prospect of eliminating drudgery is considered to be a problem.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

As Graeber also points out, the many people left out of the workforce are in an equally bad, if not worse, situation. What are people who don’t have jobs to do in a society absolutely obsessed with work? In our capitalist society, self-worth is tied up with the work you do.

Where does that leave the other half of the equation? The people who take care of the house, who do the laundry, childcare, petcare, and cooking? Housework is work too. Unpaid work is still work. Yet it has no meaning in our society.

The robots are coming.

To top it all off, the competition for bullshit jobs becomes fiercer every day. Automation continues to replace workers on a regular basis and competing billionaires and mega-corporations drive wages further and further into the dirt, creating miserable poverty even among those rewarded with jobs.

2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is a convincing voice when it comes to the realities of automation, and ran his 2020 campaign on adapting society to the technological shift:

“I am writing from inside the tech bubble to let you know that we are coming for your jobs… we’re about to do the same thing to millions of retail jobs, call center jobs, fast food jobs and, most destructively, trucking jobs in the coming years ….When I talked to other mainstream political candidates, no one seemed to want to focus on the enormity of the reality that’s ahead for America.’’
— Quotes from Andrew Yang: the 2020 candidate warning of the rise of robots. Published by The Guardian, Feb. 24, 2019

So, if we are not needed, if the majority of us are unhappy (the majority of Americans admitted to being unhappy in their jobs while our country celebrated the success of the economy last year), why do we keep doing it?

We are living, thinking human beings with our own ideas and realities, and we shouldn’t be beholden to a bullshit job for our existence.

I have a 40-hour per week job currently and I can tell you right now that I do not contribute to society. In fact, society would be better off if I stepped out of the way. We could provide for our citizens and the world in a more efficient manner if our goods went directly to the people.

Not only does our current system not work for the many. It simply doesn't make sense. We are living in a system that is entirely inefficient; destroying food when we grow too much instead of feeding hungry people, withholding needed goods so they can sit on a shelf in a warehouse, waiting on the right price, and leaving people to freeze to death in the streets when there are empty homes all over our country.

Property is theft

As Pierre-Joseph Proudhon so controversially stated, “Property is theft!”

It has never been clearer to me that he was right. Every empty home and every destroyed food item is a theft of life. We have marked the land, the housing, and the food people need to survive as property. We have stolen it.

So I propose, as many have done before, a change not in our work habits, but our life habits. The changes must be drastic. And they must be swift.

Free housing for all.

We are entirely capable of housing our entire population.

We choose to allow homelessness to persist.

Food for all.

We already produce more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet.

We choose to allow hunger and starvation to exist.

Work that matters.

Human beings are entirely capable of working without capitalist motivations. We are capable of working together in a way that matters to create a society that allows freedom for all of us. Freedom to eat, live, and thrive in a society that needs and treats us as human beings, not as machines.

A healthy environment.

Without the overconsumption capitalism creates, we could live in a healthy environment. Right now, we are in the process of destroying other life forms and the planet itself with our busy but unproductive lives. It’s not only a selfish way for human beings to live, it is unsustainable.

Human beings love to celebrate great achievements. How about these great achievements?

Living without the threat of eviction hanging over your head.

No more wondering if you’ll have access to food tomorrow.

Never seeing a human being sleeping unhoused again.

If this seems crazy to you, consider FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, which was created over 75 years ago and includes the above rights and more. These are not new ideas. They are simply ideas yet to be made into realities.

It is time that we create this new reality together. But we have to give up our current ideals. We have to give up our goals and aspirations under our current capitalist system. No more “hustling”.

We must move forward into a more humane existence and find new meaning in our lives because bullshit jobs just don’t cut it anymore.

To quote Graeber:

“If we let everyone decide for themselves how they were best fit to benefit humanity, with no restrictions at all, how could they possibly end up with a distribution of labor more inefficient than the one we already have? This is a powerful argument for human freedom. Most of us like to talk about freedom in the abstract, even claim that it's the most important thing for anyone to fight or die for, but we don't think a lot about what being free or practicing freedom might actually mean. The main point of this book was ... to start us thinking about arguing about what a genuine free society might actually be like.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

What do you say? Are you ready for a new, free society?

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