There is a Reddit sub that is imploding at the moment called Antiwork. I didn’t really follow it before the extremely online moment where one of their mods demonstrated that internet people don’t generally have media training. But one of the amusing bits of antiwork culture got into my feed because someone had an awkwardly worded tweet about young people demanding at least two days off of work in a week.
Before I became a member of the capital class I wasn’t really much of a weekend person. Or even a time off person. I was in a constant battle to get over the line of survivable earnings in America.
But then the magic of Silicon Valley shined on me a few times and I’m suddenly no longer desperate about medical bills or having enough savings for an emergency. This has had the dramatic effect of completely reordering my priorities. Now I take restorative rest time seriously. Knowledge work and good judgement rely pretty heavily on be clear headed. There is no premium afforded for being exhausted. If anything it will lose you money.
So the antiwork folks might have a point. If so much of your life is spent in survival you never have a chance to really be human. And being human is oddly more lucrative. I stand a better chance of doing even better because I can orient my life around bigger outcomes. That attracts more people and more money and improved my chances. And yeah success compounds if you are lucky. If you can get out from under survival. Which is I suppose the hard part.