How Dangerous It Is to Define One’s Identity by Work: Workism

Following up from our previous post ‘How the Balance of Work Time Between Rich and Poor has Dramatically Changed‘, this excellent Atlantic article highlights concerns about workism: ‘Workism Is Making Americans Miserable‘. Workism is about work becoming an identity and pervading all aspects of our lives, becoming an obsession.

“The economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production. They failed to anticipate that, for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity; but for the college-educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion, promising identity, transcendence, and community. Call it workism.”

Specific american aspects are quoted in the post – with which I do not agree totally: in my travels to the US I have observed that while american engineers don’t take holidays, their working day is generally shorter and ends on a fixed time, which may not be the case in other countries.

Nevertheless, the issue of work having become a means to personal identity is an important issue; and the article also develops the case of millennials trapped in student debt exhausting themselves at work. Advice like finding your passion to justify long hours at work may be subject to caution.

In any case it is certain that if work is your only identity, you face a problem, because you may get retrenched or face a substantial issue some day. In that case it is better to have one’s identity defined in a more robust way.