“Bullshit" Jobs? - Thinking about Finding Meaning at Work

Do you feel like your job is “bullshit?” Do you feel somehow disconnected from what you “should” be doing as a good worker in our capitalist economy? Do we work more, or less, than we ought to? Join the Syracuse Philosophy Meetup as we sift through these interesting and difficult questions.

This week, we’ll be discussing two thought-provoking essays about work, written about a century apart. The first is On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant by the late anthropologist David Graeber, and the second is In Praise of Idleness by the great mathematician Bertrand Russell. (It should take less than 1 hour total to read both - But if you don’t have time to read them, it’s 100% OK, it’ll all be explained).

In On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant, Graeber argues that our modern economy is one in which “real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited,” and that a new class of “bullshit jobs” has arisen in which people “are basically paid to do nothing.” The reason, Graeber argues, is not economic, but “moral and political.”

In In Praise of Idleness, Russell challenges the assumption that working is good for people and that without it, we wouldn’t have anything good to do with our time. He believes this is a kind of propaganda of the upper classes who benefit from the laboring of the lower class. He proposes a reduced workweek, with more free time spent on engaging cultural activities, the result of which would lead to “happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia.”

Here are the links:

Bullshit Jobs:
https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

In Praise of Idleness:
https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

Happy Thinking and see you there!