Most of us have a love-hate relationship with paid work. We love it because we feel grown-up and because it’s fun to get paid. But we hate it because with employment (in the modern sense) comes a whole mess of mind games and power dynamics. Many of us have put up with bosses that treated us with indifference, with disrespect, with contempt. We tolerate this treatment for two main reasons. First, we’re worried about what might happen to us if we quit. Jobs are often difficult to come by, and a decision to stay in an unhealthy work environment can be based on very practical concerns.
I would argue that more often than not our teeth-gritting has more to do with internalized power structures which place our employers on a pedestal above us. A pedestal which makes ours brains jumpy and our hands clammy, and which forces us to endure harangue, harassment and humiliation with our tails between our legs. It’s important to note here that this dynamic can even occur with good bosses. The loyalty to your employer is less artificial, but it still is rooted in a deeply hierarchical power dynamic, in which you are expendable and your boss is in control.
What I’m trying to demonstrate is that quitting your job or even voicing your discontent takes a lot of self-possession and nerve (even in the worst circumstances). Confronting authority, both the external authority of your boss and the internal authority you’ve bestowed upon him or her, is no easy task. It often takes a catastrophe, like sexual harassment or blatant exploitation, to quit.
What is true in this micro scale should be true for the macro scale as well. An economic system is a composite of endless interactions and decisions we make as we go about our business. The choices we make are what makes our society more or less prosperous, sustainable or just. And just as we passively internalize the rigid hierarchies of a workplace, we yield to what we’re given in terms of societal norms and values. We float along with the tide, numbing ourselves to the inequities and aggressions embedded in our culture just as we train ourselves to repress our resentment of the impotence, the disenfranchisement, of our modern workplace. There are many slaps in the face, and for many of us these slaps are growing stronger and harsher and more frequent.
You have expectations of your government, your financial system, and your community. And either you have lines, beyond which transgressions will not be tolerated, or you don’t. If you don’t set up tripwires for these entities, you run the risk of being taken by surprise when your government becomes an autocratic police state, your financial system becomes a mechanism the wealthiest people in our society use to stay the wealthiest people in our society, and your community lets you fall through the cracks. Either you will tolerate this, or you won’t. I think it’s likely you don’t think you would.
But on the other hand, our government now makes a regular practice of imprisoning activists on no charge, either by association or for intimidation. Our financial system, after greedily rotting the global economy, is back on track even as it supports austerity programs around the world. One in four Americans live in poverty. And the collective response is indifference, disrespect and contempt.
Draw your lines in the sand, both for your own life and for your society, and then hold your ground.
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