Conversation

Not done yet, but the first part is a really solid interwoven tale of his own journey into and out of the cult, told with almost painful honesty, and reflective commentary drawing on things like academic literature on burnout and eclectic philosophical sources.
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I hadn’t prioritized reading it since I assumed I’d know what it was about from his newsletter, but no… this is polished and fresh content. It really should be a mainstream airport bestseller type book, not niche subculture blogger self-published book.
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The cult of work extends down to high school, into retirement, and sideways to “non-working” spouses, and deprogramming out of it is 3x harder than a normal cult because it is an overwhelming majority rather than a minority of crackpots in a compound. Never thought of this angle
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It’s not that jobs and workplaces are bad, or that we don’t need the outputs of the industries that are within the cult of work. Paul is careful, where many are not, to not demonize paycheck work itself. What’s toxic is “success culture” for powering its labor needs.
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Not sure how to define this separately, but “success culture” as in: — people who are paid more are more worthy — jobs are in a hierarchy of prestige and that’s good — prestige is a good variable to maximize — spreadsheet-optimizing job-hunting is healthy Etc etc
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It’s tough to thread the needle here. Critiquing the cult without sliding into “tear down capitalism and let’s all live on organic farm communes/trad communities” bullshit. This book is so far managing it. I’m guessing the last chapter won’t devolve into BTFSTTG polemics 😆
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I’m not sure why I was never really into this cult side of work. Possibly because they didn’t want me. Unlike Paul, I was rejected by McKinsey and didn’t bother trying again 😆 The one real job I had for a few years, I enjoyed well enough, but never got attached to.
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My own writing on the topic has mostly been about free agency as a macrotrend that seems destined to eat the paycheck economy, reverting to a historical mean of say 80% non-paycheck. Sort of ideology-neutral trend-riding. I didn’t consider this cult aspect or take it seriously.
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