Endless recognition

A couple of days ago I read an essay by Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman extracted from his 1998 book "Work, Consumerism and the New Poor" where I found some interesting insights but had trouble digesting the final conclusion. The idea of the ethics of work, its conception not only as a means to sustain yourself but also to contribute to society by filling a necessary role, implies that all jobs are equally important in the sense that all of them would leave a hole if they were not done, and I can agree with this statement in principle. However, as we have clearly seen during this pandemic, some jobs are more important than others because their potential impact in the lives and livelihoods of others are much bigger: truck drivers and supermarket cashiers might soon be replaced by machines, but until then they are absolutely essential to the society, whereas scientists and artists are just "nice to have" they might improve the society in the long term but they are not essential to keep the society running.

Bauman continues to talk about the aesthetics of work, in particular the appreciation the we make of our own job and the ability of others to do so. Jobs that are stimulating, creative, varied, are much more appealing than the ones that are more repetitive, tedious or dull, so much so that anyone with some amount of decision power will always choose the former over the latter, what Bauman calls the "vocation as a privilege". Upon reading it, I could not say that I agreed with the idea, but neither could I explain why I did not agree. But a conversation with Karen over lunch today just changed everything.

Photo: Naomi Lir

Looking at the work in perspective, it was written in 1998 when the millennial generation had not been born yet, we still has keys on our cellphones and the globalization had only started to happen, which also means that there were still many industrial jobs in the Western countries, precisely the kind of jobs that Bauman suggested could be rejected as "not cool" in favor of other jobs that could be seen as "filled with experiences".

Karen's remarked with a great insight that this kind of jobs are not an option anymore for many citizens of the developed countries. Globalization and corporate greed has led to an impoverishment of the working class that makes these jobs insufficient to live on. Back in the 20th century one could work in a factory from 9 to 5 and earn a decent living, but workers now are not competition for the factories in Southeast Asia, where wages are one tenth of what we expect. But even in the creative jobs there has been a significant reduction in compensations: it is not that rare to see journalists working for free at newspapers just to get exposure, graphic designers giving away logos, copywriters maintaining websites just in exchange for their internet access. Never before has a generation had any problems to reach and surpass the standards of their parents, but it is happening now.

The millennials have simply read the market very well: the are aware that they are going to have a hard time making enough money with a normal job (even a creative one) so they have now set their sights on getting other rewards that are not monetary. With the increasing importance of interpersonal networking, having the right aesthetic qualities could be more important to success than the actual pay.

This brings me back to a TED talk that I watched many years ago but I have not been able to track. The speaker pointed out how there is a physical limit to the amount of work that we can do: even the most devoted worker, assuming they do not sleep at all, cannot do more than three times as much work as the usual 8-hour per day worker. There are just not enough hours in a day to accommodate more work. Even accounting for differences in productivity the number could go to 6 or even 10, but it is hard to justify that someone is 100 or more times more productive than an average worker as is the case in many companies. This, the speaker argued, is due to the fact that recognition can be virtually infinite: every additional person brings, in principle, some recognition, so some people could get thousands and millions of displays of appreciation for their work where others barely receive any.

In this context it is easily understandable that many kids aspire to be a famous athlete or youtuber instead of a clerk or a factory worker. Not only the pay is better, but also the recognition is much better. And if they do not have an option to reach the top tier, titles like doctor, lawyer, engineer, architect, professor do actually look very nice hanging from your office wall. Recognition does not have to be endless, but it is good if it is at least some. Have a nice evening.