A strange mindset I see in others and myself is the tendency to glorify struggle rather than doing anything tangible to improve circumstances, or accept them when they cannot be addressed right now.
For instance, people will talk about how stressful their work is, how much it drains their time and energy, but rarely do you hear them talk about what they are contributing to through their efforts. I don't think it's particularly hard to see why they do that, first of all it's a cheap way to get approval, something which chronic complainers intuitively know, and second of all, most (corporate) work these days adds very little value to the world besides maintaining the current structures of power in place and keeping your current lifestyle as a passive consumer.
But to come back on the subject, this whole mindset on a collective level is incredibly toxic because it essentially tells us to be more stoic with regards to adversity, as opposed to choose more meaningful forms of struggle. I am not opposed to pain, or work, but I am opposed to meaningless pain and bullshit and evil work.
This resignation from a meaningful life has become so absurd that Camus' figure of Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill on and on, out of sheer punishment, is supposed to be an inspiring figure of virtue. Apparently we are supposed to just accept that ridiculous fate, instead of looking for work which can build communities that we want to live in, or appreciating the people and the beautiful things in our life which we so easily take for granted.
This focus on struggle is yet another instance of narrow awareness, just like how we focus on maximizing GDP instead of making sure the economy actually helps us get what we want, how technological "solutions" are built to solve narrow problems but end up creating new ones in other domains, or how people focus on impressing the other person on a date instead of making sure they actually love spending time with the other person—after all what is the point of impressing someone you hate?
In the language of ethics, we have different views such as deontologism, where ethics is duty-based, focused on maintaining principles which tell us how to live well, we have consequentialism, where the morality of an action is purely based on its consequences, and we have virtue ethics, which focuses on character and how to grow virtues, which are neither purely consequential nor deontological.
There are of course many, many other views of ethics, and most people use a mix of those 3 as expected, but I think that these form a good basis to have some more refined vocabulary.
Broadly speaking my problem is that people unconsciously adopt a form of pain-based deontologism which doesn't really help anyone thrive or grow. The implicit idea is that "pain is good" no matter what this pain leads to. Again, I do not have a problem with pain, discomfort and struggle, and I will be the first person to be suspect of a worldview which tries to eradicate any of those no matter the cost.
But this pain deontology has grown to such a point as to become what Nietzsche would call a slave morality, an inversion of virtues performed by the weak in order to justify why their position is morally superior to those who can uphold power.
In this inverted value system, it is not just power which is seen as inherently bad, and thus weakness upheld as "good", but also anything which leads to thriving. Don't you dare enjoy your life through some pleasurable experiences, occasional rest and a healthy dose of play, don't you know there are children starving in Africa!
Thus we can see another component to this crabs-in-a-bucket situation, a deep sense of guilt with regards to enjoyment, which has a very deep root in organized religions. It is interesting to note how the lineage of Judaism, Christianity and then in particular Protestantism all carry with them a significant charge of guilt, as can be seen by the fact that they are against what they call worldly pleasures, those of the flesh, whether it is food, material comforts or sexuality, but what I find most interesting is how they carry aspects of the slave morality we still find in our times.
One of the core event told in Judaism is of course the Exodus, where the Israelites enslaved in Egypt decide to flee under the command of Moses to the promised land. In this we see the identity of the persecuted and the exiled, something which interestingly enough still persists to this present day, with Israel's desire and struggles to establish a national state in Palestine. 1
Moving on to Christianity, one of its core symbol is of course the cross, reminding us of Jesus' crucifixion, when he supposedly died for our sins. This means that the central symbol of Christianity glorifies martyrdom. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it is asking Christians to do the same as Jesus did, however there is still this undercurrent in Christianity which has a way of venerating pain and structure—particularly the very worldly aspects of Christianity, i.e. organized religion—over love and generosity.
Protestantism then emerges as a response to the widespread corruption of the Church, and seeks to have a more direct connection with God, through faith in Christ, and most importantly to my point here, the Protestant work ethic. Even though a lot of people have no direct contact with protestantism, it was significant enough to create changes in people which still ripple to this day in the modern world, in the form of the cult of productivity.
Many people feel like they are wasting their time, and by extension their life, if they are not being productive. To some degree I think this is important, because yes the modern world is filled with distractions and you want to align yourself with something more important than time fillers which will fill your mind with bullshit and make you unable to focus on important tasks, but at the same time it has a way of infiltrating people's lives to the point that they do not allow themselves to rest, or even enjoy anything without the constant nag of the clock ticking by, and feeling guilty for not doing more with their time. 2
One notable consequence of the modern cult of productivity is that it reliably leads to burnouts and people who go through the motions. It does not lead to satissfaction but rather guilt, it does not lead to a sense of peace from knowing that you have done what was important for you and the future generations, but rather constant busy-ness and anxiety, and it does not lead to people who are consciously engaging with their work out of care, but rather people who are kept doing things through incentives or momentum.
Thus we come back to Aristotle's Golden Mean, otherwise known as temperance, which indicates to us that a healthy attitude towards work cannot come from a place of excess, which has a way of promoting guilt, burnout, and people who focus more on their struggles than what they contribute and can change in the world, and neither can it come from deficiency, from those who reject any form of work whatsoever, any difficulty or pain, as if somehow shouting a series of shoulds loud enough could rearrange reality itself.
Deeper than mere balance in ourselves however is the fact that meaningful work is inherently a collective endeavor, because Life also is. Scientists, artists, engineers, craftsmen, parents and many others first of all lived in a world built by the people before them, and their contribution then became part of the world they left behind. Thus the real virtuous relationship towards work and struggle is not merely individual, though of course it can and should always start at that level, but it is more importantly collective.
Can groups of people who are not motivated by guilt or external coercion, but instead by the inner desire to bring about a flourishing world, emerge to an extent that it becomes the norm? It might be idealistic to expect that it will happen quickly, but I think that it is at the very least very worthwhile to cultivate that vision. A vision of participation and thriving as opposed to one of automation or delegation—work is bad therefore we need to engineer conditions where we never do any of it whatsoever—or one of guilt-ridden duties—work is a moral imperative and I am bad if I don't spend all my waking time on being useful.
1 I also have read some theory that the Star of David at the center of the Israel flag, the hexagram made of 2 equilateral triangles, can be seen as a combination of one triangle symbolizing the pyramids (Egypt), and another inverted one, symbolizing the inversion of power, the slave morality of the jews. I don't know if this theory holds any historical validity, but damn if it isn't interesting.
2 Lewis Mumford argues in his book Technics And Civilization (which I have to admit I have not read) that the birth of the clock is found in monasteries, where they allowed the monks to structure their day through a rigid schedule, and that this was one of the key inventions that kickstarted the modern industrial age. Another religious connection to our modern cult of productivity.
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Essayworthy Suffering Narrowawareness Slavemorality Temperance Soullesswork Justification
2025-08-29