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American Literature, anthropology, books, Bullshit Jobs, business, David Graeber, health, Life, Literature, mental health, Non-fiction, politics, psychology, review, sociology
Ciao, my dear humans 🙂
It was the deliciously titillating title that prompted me to read this book as soon as I discovered it. I mainly wanted to determine if some of my previous jobs were bullshit jobs. Turns out, according to Graeber, they were just shit jobs. They needed to be done and served a clear purpose—teaching, writing helpful manuals, etc. However, the paycheques were abysmal, the hours inhumane, the conditions appalling, and I even frequently found myself on the receiving end of verbal and emotional abuse.
I honestly don’t know which’s preferable—having a shit or a bullshit job. As Graeber aptly put it: “There are a million ways to make a human feel unworthy.” A million ways to disrespect them, a million ways to abuse them.
One lens through which you can read Bullshit Jobs is that of privilege. If we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we can see why so many of the people who reached out to the author and sent him their complaints tend to live in, well, privileged countries. And why the entire concept of the phenomenon Graeber sought to research mostly plagues wealthy, privileged nations—between the overflowing larders and the shiny Apple devices, their citizens are so privileged that they mainly either reside at or strive for the top of Maslow’s pyramid, self-actualisation. They actively expect it.
The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger.
If I had to describe my neck of the woods, I’d say it’s either a second-world country or the third-world section of the first world. In other words—very few bullshit jobs to go around. And even those are reserved for the bigwigs at the very top of the pecking order.
There is an undeniable privilege to being paid to do nothing, especially if we contrast it with someone working in a Cambodian sweatshop for a dollar a day. These young Westerners are fully aware of the discrepancy, so it’s no wonder many of them experience intense guilt and wonder whether they even have the right to grumble.
So, while on the one hand I feel the urge to call out these people for having the nerve to complain about getting paid—sometimes paid really well—to do next to nothing while those of us in decidedly unprivileged nations are forced to grub day and night for a fraction of the money, I choose to resist that urge. Because, as we’ve established, there are a million ways to degrade a human being.
I won’t lie—reading some of the testimonies had me feeling pretty damn jealous. But then, just as quickly as it appeared, that jealousy would vanish. And that’s because there’s another lens we can use to observe the problem of bullshit jobs, an angle I’ve come to refer to as the Yellow-Wallpaper phenomenon.
Those of you who’ve read The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman know what I’m talking about. Those of you who haven’t… Oh my Gods, what are you even doing?! Go read it this very instant, it won’t take you more than thirty minutes!
Anyways, the point is that the brain demands variety. It demands intellectual stimulations and challenges. Otherwise, it begins to atrophy. So, as much as I feel the urge to scream at privileged people for having the audacity to complain about getting paid to sit around and do nothing, I can’t make myself do it.
I feel their pain and frustration and, honestly, I didn’t expect this book to make me this sad. Frankly, some of the testimonies were gut-wrenching. I can think of few things worse than forcing cerebral inactivity on people for weeks or months or even years at a time. And, while we definitely shouldn’t be forcing it on inmates in the first place, it still makes you wonder why supposedly civilised nations would choose to punish working people and convicted criminals in the same manner.
Bullshit jobs regularly induce feelings of hopelessness, depression, and self-loathing. They are forms of spiritual violence directed at the essence of what it means to be a human being.
Essentially, I expected Bullshit Jobs to be a light read, a humorous dive into the Kafkaesque idiocy of the corporate system that would leave me chuckling and rolling my eyes. I definitely didn’t imagine it would be so heavy, so human. I didn’t expect it to plunge so resolutely into inequality, structural abuse, misogyny and similar factors that maintain said system. I didn’t expect to find harrowing accounts by people who work in positions that not only destroy them, but sometimes actively force them to destroy others.
Throughout the book, Graeber sporadically uses the phrase ‘spiritual violence’. I can think of no better way to describe bullshit jobs.
Have a nice weekend, my dear humans 😉
Wayward Child 