Workism: The Postmodern Curse: The Arc of Generations

By Earl Smith

The ideas behind this book began to take shape as a result of a series of interviews which I conducted across generational lines. I sought out, and had extensive discussions with, members of each generation. Men and women. I wanted to understand their world views and how they saw their lives within it. The first section of this book is a discussion of workism and an exploration of its implications for individuals and society. The second is an investigation of the responses to workism by the generations beginning with the Boomers and ending with Generation Z. The final section contains a series of suggestions for recovering from workism. As the subtitles indicate, I believe that workism has been a plague on the generations since the end of the second world war. In the middle section of this book, I chart what I describe as the arc of the generations; the evolving way in which workism was seen and dealt with by each subsequent generation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Earl Smith
• Release date: May 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215003220

Earl Smith

Rev. Earl Smith became the youngest chaplain ever hired by the California Department of Corrections when he was asked to become the chaplain at San Quentin in 1983. In 2000, Earl was named National Correctional Chaplain of the Year. He currently serves as chaplain for the San Francisco 49ers and the Golden State Warriors. He has appeared on HBO, CNN, The 700 Club, Trinity Broadcasting and the Discovery Channel, and has been featured in Newsweek and Time. He was born and raised in Stockton, California, where he lives today with his wife, Angel, and their children Ebony, Earl Jr., Tamara, and Franklin.

Book preview

Workism

The Postmodern Curse

Earl Smith

Raven Press

Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Introduction

Defining Workism and Its Implications for Individuals and Society

Workism and Political Activism

Workism as an Obsession

Workism as a Social Disease

Diagnosing Workism

Work as a Means to the Ultimate End

The Root Causes of Workism

Workism and Degraded Quality of Life

The Vampirish Paradox

Some Authors Who Write About Workism

Workism’s Impact on Society and Culture

A Culture of Overwork and Burnout

Workism and Baby Boomers[34]

Workism and Generation X

Workism and Millennials

Workism and Generation Z

The Arc of the Generations

Recovering from Workism

Workism

The Postmodern Curse

and

The Arc of Generations

A close up of a lizard Description automatically generated with low confidence

Earl R Smith II, PhD

Raven Press 2023

License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to [e-mail] and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do them absolutely no good. Samuel Johnson

The true measure of a man is the degree to which he has managed to subjugate his ego. Albert Einstein

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals. J K Rowling

The measure of a man is what he does with power. Plato

The measure of a man is not what he owns and keeps to himself, but what he shares with others. Anonymous

The measure of a man is in the lives he’s touched. Ernie Banks

If there be any truer measure of a man that what he does, it must be what he gives. Robert South

The measure of a man is not what he does for wages but what he does with his free time. Chuck Palahniuk

or

The value and identity of a man are determined by, and derived from, his work. The true measure of a man’s worth is the amount he’s paid, the wealth he has accumulated, the projects he has delivered, and the hours he’s put in. Workism

Table of Contents

Introduction

Defining Workism

The Root Causes of Workism

Workism and Degraded Quality of Life

The Vampirish Paradox

Some Authors Who Write About Workism

Patterns in the Literature

Workism’s Impact on Society and Culture

A Culture of Overwork and Burnout

Workism and Baby Boomers

Workism and Generation X

Workism and Millennials

Workism and Generation Z

The Arc of the Generations

Recovering from Workism

Introduction

An author of a book such as this is obligated to supply some vague personal information and provide an excuse for writing it. Others might call it a ‘reason’, but I prefer the more direct term. Obviously, such a volume is rooted in how he came to be and his cumulative life experience. I wrote this book because I had to. Call it a compulsion if you will. I’ve spent years interviewing members of various generations. It’s time to put what I’ve discovered in writing. Long has it festered between my ears. It’s time it festered elsewhere. And that’s my excuse. So, I will begin with a bit about me.

I am an old road warrior. Older even than the Boomers. During my coming of age, we brought down a corrupt president, ended a senseless war, held the government accountable for deceiving the people, pushed for, and won, civil and voting rights, and environmental protections. I organized protests, rode buses, and took my share of physical and verbal abuse. But I always thought it was worth the cost. It was my duty as an American citizen.

Generationally, I am what is called a Traditionalist. I accidentally earned that title by being born two years prior to the arrival of the Baby Boomers. Because of that accident of birth, I claim a special perspective. My time alive covers the emergence of multiple generations. I have seen the Boomers come of age through the 60s and 70s. As a young adult I lived through the sexual revolution, the age of Aquarius, birth control, Camelot, LBJ, Nixon, Watergate, Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers, and a whole slew of other major historical events. And left my mark on most of them.

Like many of my generation, I venerated education over almost everything else. This was before STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) turned most universities into high-priced trade schools. We were taught how to think, not what to think. A liberal arts education was still the gold standard at Universities.

I studied chemistry at the University of Connecticut, Business Administration at the University of Texas, obtained a Master’s in Management Science from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and a PhD in political and social theory from the Department of Government and Sociology at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland. The latter achievement occurred when I was in my late 50s. My ladder up was learning. Not money or work. Having a career has always been a foreign idea for me. Having an interesting and challenging life was my goal. The idea that work would define me was a base insult to my human potential to rise above the banal.

I’ve lived all over the world. Twelve states in this country, Japan, Korea, Spain, France, and Scotland. In each place, I undertook to contribute to the society I lived in. In the 60s and 70s, I was an activist for civil rights and voting rights. Organized protests against the war in Vietnam. Joined the effort to drive out a corrupt president. I saw it as my obligation not only as a citizen of the country but as a human being living in the late stages of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. In Scotland I helped to organize the new Parliament at Holyrood.

I believe that human potential is to be found far beyond the labor required to put food on the table and a roof overhead. That the likes of Michelangelo, Socrates, and Abraham Lincoln are higher versions of humanity than a billionaire who perverts a social platform to his own ends or another billionaire grifter who sells hate to his supporters in exchange for their meager savings. Such are the burdens of a Traditionalist in a workism world.

I watched Generation X come of age during the excesses of the 80s and 90s. During most of that time, I lived in Manhattan and had a front row seat, watching excess and greed overtake the Big Apple, then consume the rest of the country. I watched a generation of eager beavers aggressively pursue the Yankee dollar.

Then came the Millennials, with their aspirations echoing Generation X. But the hand they were dealt was considerably sparer. Education was, for them, secondary to making money. Many of their gods – billionaire Gen X entrepreneurs – had left Ivy League universities to found companies that made them mega-rich. The technology revolution was a massive wealth builder. But the big chances had already been taken. The really big money had already been made.

They were followed by Generation Z. To be direct, it was the first generation since my own that I felt much affinity for. True, they were not dealt a hand I was. I grew up during a time of plenty when a single income was sufficient to put a family of six solidly into the middle class. Gen Zeers did not have that luxury. It was double incomes and side hustles that were needed to just keep pace. They faced a job market that