'Do What You Love': Elitist and anti-labor

[Newsjock]

Source: Jacobin
by Miya Tokumitsu

... There’s little doubt that “do what you love” (DWYL) is now the unofficial work mantra for our time. The problem is that it leads not to salvation, but to the devaluation of actual work, including the very work it pretends to elevate — and more importantly, the dehumanization of the vast majority of laborers.

... By keeping us focused on ourselves and our individual happiness, DWYL distracts us from the working conditions of others while validating our own choices and relieving us from obligations to all who labor, whether or not they love it. It is the secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-betterment. According to this way of thinking, labor is not something one does for compensation, but an act of self-love. If profit doesn’t happen to follow, it is because the worker’s passion and determination were insufficient. Its real achievement is making workers believe their labor serves the self and not the marketplace.

... One consequence of this isolation is the division that DWYL creates among workers, largely along class lines. Work becomes divided into two opposing classes: that which is lovable (creative, intellectual, socially prestigious) and that which is not (repetitive, unintellectual, undistinguished). Those in the lovable work camp are vastly more privileged in terms of wealth, social status, education, society’s racial biases, and political clout, while comprising a small minority of the workforce.

... Yet arduous, low-wage work is what ever more Americans do and will be doing. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the two fastest-growing occupations projected until 2020 are “Personal Care Aide” and “Home Care Aide,” with average salaries of $19,640 per year and $20,560 per year in 2010, respectively. Elevating certain types of professions to something worthy of love necessarily denigrates the labor of those who do unglamorous work that keeps society functioning, especially the crucial work of caregivers.

Read more: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love/
Miya Tokumitsu holds a PhD in art history from the University of Pennsylvania.

[Ilsa]

1. This is why I couldn't listen to Jane Pauley

on Morning Joe the other day. She has written a book on retirement or working after retirement. I think she's blind to the fact that most Americans will never get to retire.

[El_Johns]

2. KR. I posted the same article in GD, where the consensus seemed to be "Of course you can do

what you love!" Or else learn to "love what you do."

I walk about 50 miles a week. I have had a persistent low-grade infection I can't shake since I started this minimum-wage job. We get no benefits whatsoever, & are at risk of being fired if we ask for time off because of the job requirements and weird corporate billing structure.

[malthaussen]

3. The problem is that it is impossible for everyone to "do what they love."

Yeah, the other points are valid. But "do what you love" is the ideal of someone who still thinks that the world is disposed for his convenience. And it carries with it an implicit criticism: if you are stuck in doing something you don't love, then boy are you inadequate.

-- Mal