Why do we hate our jobs?
Alain De Botton explores this issue in his latest book “the pleasures and sorrows of work” released globally in April/May and dancing near the top of the non-fiction best-seller lists since then.
De Botton is a highly influential best-selling author and philosopher of modern life having tackled topics such as love, travel and, most famously, our addiction to success in Status Anxiety.
In “the pleasures and sorrows of work” he paints something of a masterwork portrait of work in the 21st Century- using both his insightful, witty, writing style and in an accompanying photographic essay. De Botton does this through looking in detail at ten very different careers. From this he tries to draw the threads of his observations together in a few profound snapshots of the nature and meaning of work in modern society.
His basic premise is that the bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century caused a tectonic shift in our understanding of work: we began to see work as a great source of meaning and potential fulfilment rather than the chore to be avoided at all costs.
In pursuit of answers and pithy observations De Botton follows tuna from the ocean to the warehouse to the dinner table, tags along with a career counsellor, watches a rocket being launched and visits a plane graveyard.
And what does he find? As we have come to expect from De Botton, he is capable of some profound and revealing insights into the modern psyche. Two that spring to mind are that through work we exercise an intrinsic need to impose order on our surroundings, in however a small way, and at the same time, almost paradoxically, “thinking you can transform the world” is a massive pitfall.
But overall he finds something which is both a massive challenge to yours and my approach to work but at the same time something that is astoundingly, well, very ancient.
He discovers that attempting to find fulfilment in your employment is beyond the reach of most and condemns us to feelings of shame and persecution.
After spending time with Symons, the career counsellor, De Botton says
“I left Symon’s company newly aware of the unthinking cruelty discreetly coiled within the magnanimous bourgeois assurance that everyone can discover happiness through work and love. It isn’t that these two entities are invariably incapable of delivering fulfilment, only that they almost never do so. And when an exception is misrepresented as a rule, our individual misfortunes, instead of seeming to be quasi-inevitable aspects of life, will weigh down on us like particular curses.” (The pleasures and Sorrows of Work, p. 127-128)
So there you have it, we cannot expect to find happiness in work. Didn’t the author of Ecclesiastes (most likely Solomon) conclude the same? After “undertaking great projects” and “becoming far greater than anyone in Jerusalem before” he summarises: “When I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 2:11)
The remarkable similarity between De Botton’s and Solomon’s conclusions on work don’t of course reveal that De Botton has adopted a Christian worldview by any stretch. While launching the book at an event in Melbourne, which I attended, De Botton explained that he is “a secular person.”
He seems to reach the primary reason for his bleak (or realistic?) conclusion in the final chapter while surveying a jet aircraft graveyard in the deserts of the USA. And it’s based on good old fashioned existential angst!
There is no point expecting soul-quenching fulfilment in work when all our endeavours will one day disappear and mean nothing. His solution though? Get lost in the small-scale goals of work, to distract us, at least for a while, from the big picture questions of death and eternity.
Now I don’t know about you, but I am happy to get lost in the detail of small-scale goals, but I need to know that they are contributing to in the big picture. Any alternative would lead me to spiral into despondency.
Solomon also sees his achievements against the background of his demise: “my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labour under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it” Ecclesiastes 2:21. But Solomon reaches a far better conclusion: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commands, for this is the whole duty of man.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).
Casting our notions of work in the light of a loving God of eternity allows us to embrace the frustrations of the impermanence of what we do, without needing to disappear into a black hole of despondency. Once we know the certainly of our future through a relationship with Jesus, we can grasp our purpose in the present- to serve God in any occupation, and be free to enjoy the good and satisfying parts of our jobs. Doesn’t take away the sorrows though, simply puts them in perspective!
Mark Holland