Take into account what occurred to an entrepreneur I’ll name Taylor, who shortly soared up the ranks in her firm. Like most of the others I’d spoken to, she additionally poured herself into her firm by working 70 to 80 hours per week, consuming all her meals at work, limiting her social circle to co-workers, till her whole life orbited across the firm. Like John, Taylor had religion that her devotion can be rewarded by a extremely anticipated company acquisition, when the corporate’s worth can be exactly realized.
However when the acquisition fell by way of, she mentioned, it “broke my coronary heart … I couldn’t do it anymore, and so I left.” She spiraled right into a yearlong existential disaster that she described as a “dying of self.” Taylor relied on work so absolutely for her identification and that means that when she left her job, she didn’t know who she was anymore.
“Who am I? What do I worth?” she requested herself. “I didn’t even know these items as a result of I gave every part to work.” Together with her sense of self so lengthy tethered to her firm’s efficiency, the failed acquisition revealed to her the poverty of a worldview that reduces “values” to mere {dollars} and cents.
Worshiping work prices the remainder of us too. Right this moment, the theocracy of labor more and more governs life in different knowledge-industry hubs throughout America like Seattle, New York and Cambridge, Mass. It's hollowing out our religion communities and civic associations — the locations the place various teams of individuals hash out onerous questions of ethical worth, the very questions that Taylor was so hungry to interact with.
Throughout completely different religion traditions, clergy members in Silicon Valley say that their congregations are dwindling as a result of persons are too busy working. A couple of a long time in the past, a pastor instructed me, the standard member attended Sunday service and Sunday college most weeks. Right this moment, that member attends solely Sunday service as soon as a month, he mentioned. And he's scraping for volunteers as by no means earlier than.
Worshiping work can also be weakening our democracy, as well-paid professionals — traditionally among the many most politically engaged demographics in America — take a look at politically. Silicon Valley politicians I talked to lamented the political apathy of busy rank-and-file tech employees who stay in a bubble (the Musks and Thiels are a unique story). “They don’t get entangled,” a public official instructed me. “They don’t vote. They don’t know their native representatives.”
However not everybody will get pulled into the faith of labor. As I performed my analysis, I found that sure teams of persons are much less prone to worship work — together with older tech employees and devoutly spiritual tech employees of all ages. Whether or not it's the native Buddhist temple, a church or a political affiliation, these tech employees belong to communities outdoors of labor that lay declare to their time, vitality and devotion. Tech employees who're spiritual stand out much more from the work-worshiping mainstream. Their religions give them a strong basis to construct a way of self, neighborhood, spirituality and function other than work. And their spiritual communities are sometimes extra various, each racially and socioeconomically, than those they discover at work.
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