Skip to main content

Little Gods

There's a passage in George Orwell's 1984 where the main character is forced to work ninety hours in one week. Beds are brought to workstations, food is delivered desk-side, glasses become fogged every few minutes, and the main character is too tired to care much about his life.

Not many of us, I hope, are forced to work to that extent, but working too much has a definite effect on a person's psychological well-being. Just as a person's non-essential body functions shut down when in an emergency, so all "non-essential" areas of life diminish when overcome with work.

By "non-essential," I specifically mean that relationships lose their value. Even if we may not intend for it to become so, in fact, work can become in us a drug, our single source of purpose, the one unfailing thing to which we can turn where all else-- in our eyes-- fails. Why should this be surprising? Why should it be surprising that testing and retesting our abilities in work-- and overcoming these challenges each time-- satisfies our desire for achievement? Why should it be surprising that we turn again and again to work as one of the few things in life that we can control?

We can, in fact, elevate work to the level of the divine. We worship it, place it unconsciously upon the mantles of our minds as little gods to be adored for their benevolence and provision. We feel that sense of purpose and-- for a time-- believe that it will sustain us forever. Like the other gods, however, this god of work is deceptive, unsatisfying, and exacting in the inhuman expectations it places upon us. When we finally grow weary, and can work no longer-- whether from actual fatigue or from old age-- we find ourselves alone, looking back on our lives and wondering how we could have been so foolish.

It reminds me of the movie Hurt Locker. The theme of that movie is "War is a drug," the idea being that some people need the adrenaline from conflict, and would rather live their lives for that rush than live it for any more important reason. So it is here. Work can be that drug, god, or whatever metaphor you want to use to describe it as that necessary thing to which we turn for security. I choose relationships, however. I will choose friends, and I will choose love. I am grateful that I have a job, but I choose not to let it become all-important to me. I'm crushing the god of work in my life, and replacing it with a cross.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...
Post a Comment
Read more

Comparison

Psychologists and others have studied ways in which we compare ourselves to each other. One man named Leon Festinger argued that we tend to compare ourselves to other people when we don’t know how good or bad we are at something (like football or playing the guitar). One way we do this is when we compare ourselves to those who are not as good as we are, to protect our self-esteem (called “downward social comparison;” example: we’re playing basketball and miss most of our shots, but we feel okay because a teammate wasn’t even given the ball). Another comparison we make is when we compare ourselves to others who are doing much better than we are (called “upward social comparison”). When we see others who appear to be doing better than we are, we can respond by trying to improve ourselves, or by trying to protect ourselves by telling ourselves it’s not that important. There was a study published in 1953 by Solomon Asch, who asked students to take part in a “vision test.” The par...
Post a Comment
Read more

Learning and Change

In a recent article in National Geographic ( "Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science "), Joel Achenbach attempted to explain why humans have trouble believing the evidence laid out in scientific research. In the article, he cited a phenomenon called confirmation bias , our tendency to adopt the evidence that fits what we already believe. Now, I am a feeling person by nature. Subconsciously, I make choices in my environment based on my emotional reaction to it. Similarly, I have found that the information I remember most is the information I respond to with strong emotion, whether that emotion is humor, anger, shock, or something else. This is why I believe confirmation bias exists: we respond to facts emotionally. However, sometimes we learn information that, instead of confirming what we believe, has the opposite effect. We are introduced to facts that shock us out of our complacency. That shock can jar us into questioning long-held beliefs, and even entire worldviews...
Post a Comment
Read more