Nowadays, the anti-hustle culture rhetoric has permeated in social media forums and real-time conversations alike.
People now refuse to glorify working 25/7. It's unhealthy, they say. It's toxic, they add. Work-life balance is key!--they protest.
The part that confuses me about the anti-hustle culture rhetoric is that it can seemingly smother a culture that is still rooted in deep mental health and addiction issues. Saving dogs and plants, posting your latest kale salad and oat latte recipe, stretching and meditating for the Gram, and criticizing others for failing to make the same priorities in their lives and lifestyles has become the norm.
We have found ourselves in a society where one-upsmanship does not so much revolve around working ungodly hours, anymore, but about working on out-me-timing others. Pictures of cars and lavish trips are now replaced with content surrounding massages, candles, yoga, meditation, climbing rocks, and similar "me-time" activities.
Indeed, perhaps the society that is promoting the work-life balance rhetoric is also creating a society devoid of professional responsibility and financial accountability. I agree that the hustle culture mentality can potentially be toxic to one's physical and mental health---but so is glorifying a lifestyle that may not be attainable or sustainable for others. Imagine being depressed because you can't have your massage today. Imagine feeling lesser-than because you couldn't make your instagrammable Zion hiking trip that you've been planning outfits for the past few months.
Telling a working professional who strives to achieve to provide for themselves and their family that what they're doing is wrong and too-much work, is like telling someone who is a Coachella fanatic to stop attending music festivals, because it's too-much fun and play.
Too much mental healthy goodness rhetoric, can also be toxic. Because it's unintended effect can be attempting to rework or rewire another's brain and shame them on what they're apparently doing right or wrong.
Perhaps this is why the candidates I interview at my firm take their phone interviews at the coffee shop--because coffee is life and takes priority over making a good, professional impression to your future employer. That oat milk latte better have been worth it, Ashley!
Every person's definition of ambition and professional/life success is different. It has to be. My definition of work and play ought to be different than yours--unless one of your favorite pastimes is blogging and talking shit about the anti-hustle culture rhetoric, too.
Consider the fact that a lot of people around you are a product of immigrant parents and guardians who hustled and worked ungodly hours to provide a better life for their kids. Perhaps we simply repeat what we know, we're hardwired to. And perhaps, identifying our own mental health issues makes us realize that it's not all about work. Now we have the resources and money to understand that sometimes you just have to live a little. But, at what cost?
Anyway, I'll end here. I'm late for my weekly facial.
1 comment:
In the not too distant "sustainable" future of the 21st century, hustle culture will go through a dystopic renaissance. We will all work from home doing menial tasks with our personal assistant mini drone AI robots that will orbit around and above us like a moon to our planet. We will be assigned a personalized AI drone and digital passport at birth, sort of like a new digital baptism of the 21st century. Our homes will be tiny homes and boxes with everything we need in one cube. Indeed, it will be a different kind of “hustle” culture. It will be a "green" future with no carbon footprints, and all we will do is eat GMO bugs and “impossible” meats and even “impossible” vegetables with our CBDC coins. Our orbiting AI pals will monitor not only our evil ways, but our compliance with norms of positive virtues! They will see all our movements, and hear all our sounds, and soon, they will know our thoughts too. We will own nothing as everything will be leased, shared, and provided for in a throw-away society of safety and fairness sponsored by Tesla and Meta. Our cars will be emissionless and emotionless as it will be ride share for all, and even the “drivers” will not own the cars they are transported in. Self-driving cars will make driving obsolete so we can play games and interact socially through anti-social social media and make meaningless purchases of digital items (physical ownership won’t be outlawed but will be obsolete). To ensure we are always complaint with our thoughts and behaviors, our personalized drones will be perpetually filming and cataloguing every instance of our breathing moment so if we ever get accused of some nefarious misdeed from over hustling or under hustling, we can pull up the data and prove our innocence and compliance. Judgement and justice will be swift, instantaneous and a click or voice command away. There will be no need for lawyers or laws, only laws that maintain the digital integrity of our drones, our fondle slab devices and the tech oligarchs that own them. You can hustle only according to the prescribed amount decided by some AI hive mind/Elon Musk – not more and not less than. If you complain about hustle culture, you will be forced to listen to endless loops of Rick Ross’s “Hustlin’” until the AI drone has determined you’ve had enough. If you endorse hustle culture, you will be penalized by having your “impossible” rations of bugs and vegetables reduced for the month. If you declare you are outside of the paradigm, your CBDC coins and digital wallets will be deactivated, and you will decompose into oblivion in the fringes of digital finitude.
Post a Comment