The Social Contract is Broken, And No Amount of Self-Care Will Save You
Finding sanity in a world of unsustainable hustle
Last month, I wrote about the pervasive feeling of tiredness that Millennials and Gen Z have with respect to their work.
In a world where work is always “on,” your salary is rarely enough to meet basic needs, and job security is nonexistent, many have become disillusioned with their work and have turned to commoditizing hobbies as a means of increasing financial security.
Since then, I’ve also touched on how finding your voice as a creator can serve as one means out of or around this dichotomy - Though working for the algorithm certainly brings its own set of problems.
These posts seem to have resonated a lot with you all, and it’s gotten me thinking about more radical ways to address the root problem.
To be frank, our way of living is in a state of complete freefall.
Salaries haven’t kept pace with inflation for generations now.
Minimum wage in every state will leave you in abject poverty.
Our communities have been uprooted by social media.
We are digitally stalked by multibillion-dollar corporations harvesting us for our data.
AI now undermines the very fabric of what it means to be human.
All of this has culminated in an economic bubble that is popping before our eyes and that will leave hundreds of thousands without a job, community, or health insurance.
Our government has abandoned us, choosing instead to pick at the carcass of the global middle class for whatever meat remains.
Is it any wonder, then, that so many of us find ourselves completely disillusioned with our work?
After all, what is the point of work if it doesn’t improve our immediate communities OR provide us with a living wage?
In a previous post on the subject, I posited that taking time to step away from the chaos - Finding even small moments for yourself - Could help solve these problems.
But to be honest, it’s never really sat right with me to put solving communal problems onto the individual.
I mean, you didn’t cause these problems, and frankly, you can’t fix them, either.
Taking five minutes away from being pulverized by the brutal nature of our reality to meditate isn’t going to stop you from being pulverized again the second you turn off Headspace.
So here I am, thinking about the deeper problems with our work and how we can possibly face them down, and the only realistic conclusion I can come to is: Together.
The Isolation Problem
Modern work is an incredibly isolating experience.
I’m not talking about remote work - Which for the record, is great for a vast number of people. I’m talking about the actual nature of our work.
In Business 101, they taught us that the primary function of any business is to improve the community that the business is rooted in.
Even a decade ago when I took the course, this idea struck me as quaint and foolish.
The purpose of business, clearly, was to become a multibillionaire oligarch to whom the rules of society no longer applied. I mean, that’s why all of the businesspeople we see in the news got into the game.
If Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, or Whitney Wolfe Herd got into business to improve their communities, they wouldn’t be hoarding billions of dollars while making their workers crunch through unpaid overtime and pee into bottles.
So, at the time of reading that Business 101 textbook, I took the idea that businesses were meant to improve their communities as an intentional lie; A misdirection, or even a salve that the reader could use to distract themself from their true motives for starting a business.
“I’m not starting my business to become a billionaire! I’m starting it to help people!” - It’s a lie that we see repeated on pretty much every multibillion-dollar company’s website, right underneath their “mission".
It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve returned to that quote from my old textbook.
With a fuller context of our history, I’ve realized the idea that businesses should help their community wasn’t started as a lie. It was, at one point in time, the actual truth.
A family owned cafe on the corner, for instance, might provide its neighbors with high-quality, healthy food and stable employment opportunities.
Over time, though, laws changed to favor those with money and power, and so the idea that a business should actually be helpful to someone got thrown out the window as cultural and legal incentives started to change.
That family-owned cafe serving healthy food was replaced by a Starbucks that serves bare-minimum slop and that fires employees for even whispering about unionizing.
So when I say that modern work is isolating, I don’t mean that we’re literally working by ourselves.
I mean that we have become disconnected from the inputs and outputs of our work.
The clothes on your back, the food in your fridge, and the furniture in your home would have all at one point been made by someone in your local community.
Maybe it would’ve even been you.
Now, the disparate parts of each are made in separate factories, by nameless workers on the other side of the globe.
They are assembled at a second company, shipped overseas by a third, shipped across the country by a fourth, sold to you by a fifth, and marketed to you by a sixth on the social network of a seventh.
How could we not feel isolated in our work, when that work is stripped of its dignity and reduced to a component of itself?
Our jobs have become one decimal point added to millions of others to achieve an unimaginable sum.
It’s no wonder we’ve all become so brutally dehumanized.
Individual vs Communal Solutions
Individual solutions are those of the likes I’ve posited in previous posts. They’re easier to digest and give us a fleeting sense of optimism. But like the junk food served up by that corner Starbucks, they aren’t long-term, healthy options.
Here are a few examples of individual solutions:
Take up mindfulness
Join a gym
Get prescribed a medication
Quit your job to get a better salary, title, or work/life balance
Monetize your hobbies to increase your financial security
None of these solutions are inherently bad. In fact, some - Like working out or advocating for yourself at work - Are necessary components to living a healthy life. We should all meditate and go to the gym.
But our mental health and economic wellbeing should not balance on the pinhead that is our own willpower.
As of writing this, I’m sick, so I can’t go to the gym and I can barely do any hobbies. Things like that will happen. They shouldn’t derail our lives.
But for many who lack a community, simple breaks in routine like this can feel derailing.
This is why I’m choosing to focus on larger solutions in today’s post. Because our wellbeing actually isn’t an individual problem - It’s a communal one. And to apply an individual solution to a communal problem is a form of insanity.
After all, if your body is wracked with disease, you don’t put a Band-Aid on your elbow and call it a day.
💡 More Like This
A Few Insane-Sounding Actions That Will Actually Solve Your Problems
The actions we must take in order to truly solve the problems of modern life are so large and so bold, they may sound kind of nuts.
This is a good thing.
After all, playing things by the book, living life the “normal” way, and letting businesspeople and politicians steer the narrative is what got us into this mess to begin with.
So here is a brief list of all of the wildly decisive, community-focused actions I can think of that could contribute to solving our real problems. I don’t have time here to do a full post on the benefits of each, but I’ll try to briefly explain my thinking for each.
Move back in with (or move in next door to) your family.
We see this as a sign of failure in the United States, but many of the world’s healthiest and longest-lived peoples live together, either in the same home or on the same street.
Having your family close at hand provides stabilizing forces like childcare, shared meals, and a community to talk with.
If you have an unstable family situation, replace “family” in this instance with “close friends” - I certainly do not advocate for living with or near destabilizing people.
Start a physical business, like a store, restaurant, or cafe.
Take it back to Business 101 and think about how you can best provide for your local community.
An online business is almost never going to help your actual community - The people who live with or around you. (I hope that I’m helping you here on this Substack, but I honestly have no idea, because I will probably never meet you.)
Starting a local business will help you get to know your neighbors. You’ll start to see the same faces. You’ll start to develop a community.
Volunteer more. If you can, change careers to actually work for a nonprofit.
Volunteering is great - It roots us in our local communities in a way that genuinely helps the people who live around us.
Volunteering is also inaccessible for most people, because it doesn’t pay. That’s why I’d recommend looking into how your particular skillset might be of use in a salaried position at a nonprofit.
If you do work for a nonprofit:
Your salary will be shit
You will be stunned by the disarray and disorganization of your workplace
You may become disillusioned by the rotating cast of CEOs who use your workplace as a launchpad for a career in politics or lobbying
This is pretty much a universal story with nonprofit employees. It’s frustrating in its own way. But your work will have purpose in your community, and this may sustain you in a way that other work can’t.
Start or join a collective.
If you have a particular skillset but struggle to connect with others in your industry, try starting a collective that brings multiple professionals together to support one another.
Collectives can offer support in creating and finding jobs, and can also offer structures for splitting profits from work among multiple members.
You can also search for pre-existing collectives in your area of interest - There may already be one in your local community.
Don’t settle for joining a Meetup group or some other community filled with anonymous faces from your industry. This is not the same as an actual collective.
Anonymous, random people never show up consistently, and showing up consistently is a fundamental component of community-building.
Run for office.
I’m serious.
No, really, I’m not kidding.
Would you rather be governed by career politicians, or by people who actually have experience living and working in your community? You could be one of those people.
Our current situation was created by bad politics fueled by bad incentives. Changing these incentives - Things like getting corporate money out of politics - Is going to be an inside job.
I recognize that beginning a post by saying “so, you’re unsatisfied with your job, huh?” and ending it by saying “run for office” is… Well, it’s a leap.
But there are no shortage of posts here on Substack telling you to meditate, call your family more, or go to the gym.
It seems like we’ve been doing these things for an awfully long time, and the situation in our workplaces - And our country - Has yet to get better.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for different results.
So right now, maybe the most sane thing you can do is actually the most insane thing you can do.
Big problems are going to take big actions to solve - From all of us, not just a few.
But in my experience, those big actions become a lot less scary to take when we root our motivations in our community, rather than in ourselves.
What do you think? What is one big action you can take to help in your community?
🌟 Writers Worth Reading
Relevant writing from some of my favorite Substackers for when you need to harness that “things need to change” energy, but don’t know where to put it.
“The Crucial Difference Between ‘Running From’ and ‘Running Toward’,” by
A great article on what we give up when we run away from shitty situations instead of running towards our ideal future.
“3 Frameworks to Figure Out What You Want to Do With Your Life,” by
A great and exhaustive post by Lia on the same topic - this one focused more on the internal, soul-searching process which must take place if we are to transform ourselves and our communities.
Another great read—and such a good reminder that these are systemic challenges, not just things we can snap our fingers and solve. Thanks so much for including my piece—and excited to dive into the one from Shannon!
There are so many things I like about this post that I don't know where to start. I'll say two things:
COMMUNITY!
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