The Introduction; or, Who the Hell am I and What are We Doing Here?

Behold! The introductory episode. Take a minute, or 20, and get to know a little about me and the point of this podcast. I discuss some of my philosophical, educational, and working background as well as a bit about myself. I also discuss the questions, themes, and method of the podcast generally.

Obligatory bibliography, or books you may also want to check out. I've not included links to purchase since, one, I recommend checking your local bookstore or library, and two, Amazon isn't about to go out of business because I didn't send them a few extra clicks.

Graeber, David. Bullshit Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.
Dennis-Tiwary, Tracy. Future tense : why anxiety is good for you (even though it feels bad). New York, NY : Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublilshers, 2022. 

Transcript

Hello, welcome, and thank you for checking out the first episode of Philosophy Versus Work, the podcast that examines the Ethics of the “Work Ethic” and other existential, phenomenological, mythological, ontological, and socio-political questions regarding Work (Life and Death). I am Michael Murray and I’ll be your guide on this philosophical journey. 

Episode 1: The Introduction; or, Who the Hell am I and What are We Doing Here? 

So, you may be asking, who am I that you should take your most precious commodity, time, out of your day to listen to a complete stranger wax on and wax off philosophically? Given the nature of the show, let’s start with the academic Bona Fides. I am not a professor and I don’t have a PhD, I do; however, have an MA in Ethics and Applied Philosophy. I picked up that degree from UNC Charlotte – which has a small but very practically oriented Philosophy department whose faculty’s research focuses on big data, medical and bioethics, aesthetics, pragmatism, and, dare I say, feminism and critical theories of race and social justice and economics. My MA research was, what is now the jumping off point for this podcast, a query into the potential for “Meaningful Work” as an Ethical (and Political) project to combat the ethical and moral faults that thoroughly permeate our working lives in a late-Capitalist economy. Central to this project is an Existentialist ‘turning-towards-death’ that reframes Work in terms of our mortality, aiming to short circuit the idea that work has value, specifically moral value, in itself, separate from our lived experience, and that, thus, gives our lives meaning. Then questioning what kind of work is being done in this economy, by whom, how, why, and, critically, who benefits? And, finally, how does the “Work Ethic” and, more importantly, a Work Ethic culture shape our attitudes towards work? I’ll note quickly that to limit this question to workplace or political rhetoric is, I believe, short sighted and distracting. At least in the US, both prevailing sides of the political debate have shown a deep and longstanding commitment to the Protestant and/or Capitalist Work Ethic. And as far as workplace rhetoric, well, it should go without saying that your employer being interested in work ethic is in their own self-interest regardless of what it may do for you or society as a whole. 

Now, let’s jump way back and set up how I got here. 

Thinking to back to High School, as a graduating senior, we were given an assignment to write about a paragraph of where we saw ourselves in 10 years, slap this on some construction paper, and provide some illustration or art of some kind, for the school to decorate the halls in advance of Graduation Day. I don’t remember all of the details, but I know I drew a cartoon of myself fit, as skinny with long hair in a ponytail, a dignified Obi Wan Kenobi beard, wearing circle-framed John Lenon glasses, a Metallica t-shirt, waistcoat, jeans, and Chuck Taylor hi-tops. I presumed I’d be a professor of Eastern Philosophy, and fairly nomadic, like an 80s TV styled Philosophy mercenary traveling the world and solving problems – TNG meets Quantum Leap meets the A-Team, but without the guns. Suffice to say, that didn’t happen – to be fair, I hadn’t really set myself up for that to ever succeed (I had also not yet discovered Dr. Who). I wanted to be a comic book artist, a writer, a Navy fighter pilot, Batman – no, really, I thought “Batman” was a realistically attainable career at that time, a stretch goal, sure, but still realistic – but I never committed to any of those paths.

Within those 10 years after High School, I had, with one set of paperwork left to go, changed my mind about joining the Navy, failed out of a community college Business Admin program and a Restaurant Mgmt. program, worked every position at Chuck E. Cheese (yes, including the costumes), sold men’s clothing, failed at a few relationships, and gone back to CEC as a manager. Oh, and my hairline had receded, not enough to be “bald,” but, beyond the point that a ponytail would ever be possible. Granted, along the way I made some lifelong friends that are still dear to me and I’m still close with now, even 20 years after that. But the Philosophy nomad-warrior had become an idea of the past. Until I went back to school as an adult. This time though, I wasn’t going to waste my time on a “pointless” degree like Business Administration – now, to me, it really was pointless. I absolutely hated it. I thought High School was less boring, and After-Elementary-School Catechism (our Church called it “religious education”) was less dogmatic. Not to mention it was never what I wanted to do. The idea was to do the thing, get the degree, and then earn enough money to “actually go to school” and finally get my Philosophy degree. My parents hadn’t gone to college, so my whole idea of college was shaped by uninspiring Guidance Counselors and Movies like Revenge of the Nerds, Animal House, and PCU (if you’re not familiar with this semi-obscure 90s gem, go check it out – Gutter is a tool, and the backbone of both Marvel and Star Wars). The thought of majoring in Art or Philosophy, or any of the classical Liberal Arts for that matter, was something only “rich kids” could afford to do, or so I thought, so I needed to get rich first, since we didn’t come from money – which isn’t to say we suffered or anything, far from it, my parents actually lived (as discovered later) well beyond their means so we could have a ‘normal middle-class’ childhood. But, I don’t want to turn this whole episode into a memoir. Point is, my career plan, if you could even call it that, sucked. 

So, given the opportunity to go back to school thanks to the generosity of a family friend, I enrolled in an Associate of Fine Arts program at CPCC, intending to pair that with certificates in 2D Illustration and Game Design, as I saw it, basically a vocational art degree that could get me in the door somewhere like Blizzard as a concept artist. Now, this was December 2007 (for Spring semester 2008). World of Warcraft was still huge, the Iraq war was a royal clusterfuck, the economy was just going into the Great Recession, I was still, by registration anyway, a Republican, though deeply dissatisfied with the party and some friends were telling me to check out this young Senator from Illinois named Obama, I was working as a Service Bartender (I’d made drinks and deserts at an upscale/casual spot where all my interaction was with servers and kitchen staff), smoking was, for a little longer, still permitted in bars and restaurants here in Charlotte (where I worked was thankfully smoke-free, indoors anyway, as the owners wanted the only smoke smell to be from the hickory wood grill and tobacco smoke is hell on the inside of a wine glass hanging upside down at the bar – note, if you’re at a bar and people can smoke indoors and you see upside down glassware – do NOT get a glass of wine), the Transformers of my youth had become Bay-Splosions, Dolores Umbridge proved Lawful Good characters can indeed be villains, oh! and the birth of the MCU was just on the horizon.  February 2008, one month into my new life as an actual art student, my mom passed suddenly. Queue events that redirected my academic and intellectual life henceforth. 

Death has a way of doing that. 

My grandmother passed 2 years later, and my father another year after that. 

It’s long been one of my great regrets just how long I put off college chasing what I perceived I was qualified to do to earn a paycheck, and that my academic successes came so late. As I said, my parents never went to college. I’m the first, and so far only one in my immediate family to do so. I eventually earned the AFA, but I dropped the certificates. I decided to finish a full 4 year program and enrolled at UNCC, initially as a Political Science major – the declaration requirements for an Art and Art History major, in 2010 anyway, were a bit wonky due to the Art major portfolio requirement, so I picked my second choice, originally intended to be a second major, Political Science – like my dad, I’m a politics and history junkie. I was also at that time binging The West Wing and entertaining thoughts of going to law school, getting into Democratic politics (talk about a 180), and becoming a real Josh Lyman . I soon enough changed majors to Art History, and eventually graduated from UNCC Summa Cum Laude with Departmental Honors in Art History, with minors in Political Science and Philosophy. I was trying to pursue a PhD in Japanese Contemporary Art, but needed more language credit and got derailed – the professor I was going to work with took a position as a Dean and couldn’t take on new students for 2 years – so I re-enrolled at UNCC for a Graduate Certificate in Ethics (while taking “free ” Japanese classes). Life happened, I missed a round of PhD applications, I wasn’t getting any younger, and in 2016 decided to go back to UNCC one more time and finish a Master’s program, adding to the credits from my Grad Cert. to get an MA in Ethics and Applied Philosophy.

When I finished my AFA, I didn’t walk in the ceremony or even request a formal diploma, just the official transcript. I considered not walking for my BA, my parents wouldn’t be there, but ultimately decided to do it for myself, to give my thanks to my professors, and get my sisters to maybe bring their kids so they could see a college campus and maybe be inspired to go that route – side note, that part didn’t happen, yet anyway, I suppose it still could. If I went as an adult, why can’t they? As for my MA, I graduated in December, and I was the sole representative for my program walking among a lot – a lot – of engineering and data science grads. 

Well, that was December 2018. At this point, I was still considering PhD studies, in Philosophy now though, but my GRE scores were expired, my student loans from Undergrad had been manageable, but became pretty bloated by the time the MA was done. I wanted to put some money in the bank, needed to retake the GREs, I was able to stop the “employed” bartending after getting hired on as a paid undergrad Art History TA, though I kept up the occasional bartend for caterer friends as a side hustle, and I had a part-time, IT Asset Management, permalancer office gig. For those of you not familiar with the term “permalancer,” I was a contracted third party – what would traditionally have been a temp – except I’d held the position for 5 years at this point with two different temp agencies no less after the company cut ties with the first one. I received a regular paycheck, with taxes withdrawn, was not considered 1099 independent to the government, but as far as the client company was concerned, I was independent contractor and owed no benefits. I knew there was prior interest in hiring me on, so I started talking with my supervisor about doing so, figuring a several month long trip to Japan was completely off the table and I would be in Charlotte for at least the next year and half. Well, that did not go to plan either. Long story short, my supervisor took a lateral “promotion” to a different department, my team got shuffled from Finance back to IT Support, we got buried in work over the next year due to a mandatory, company-wide OS conversion and device refresh, and, there was something else… oh, yeah, Covid. 

I did eventually get brought on as a “real” employee and made okay money – markedly below industry average for the position, but the benefits were generous and I had had my own health scare going into the pandemic (spoiler, no longer an issue, but I advise against eating, drinking, and working too much, not exercising at all, and being generally sedentary… surprisingly that lifestyle is not actually conducive living), so I accepted the tradeoff of wages for benefits. Granted, the wages were a good jump from contracting… if you’re seeing the foreshadowing, congratulations, your faster on the uptake than I was, and I literally wrote a thesis arguing against what I was doing. 

Now, here we are. I’m no longer with that company. In fact, I’m in about as precarious position as ever; though, perhaps predictably, also as least stressed as ever. I’m currently “between jobs” – though that’s completely dependent on whatever happens next. I’m writing, I’ve started my own freelance voiceover business – which is still in its infancy, though I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback I’m cautiously optimistic, and I’m working on this podcast. 

So, what are my credentials? Work history? Check. Academic history? Check. Personal experiences of death and loss? More than I care to think about, though likely less than are to come – you have to figure every relationship is ultimately going to end either one of two ways, either they go or you do, but this way too big a thought for right now, so we’ll save that for another time.

Or maybe you just wanted the ‘Which Hogwarts House are you?’ version of my profile? Well, I’m a Xennial (with an X), I’m told I saw the first Star Wars in a drive in theater (I was an infant), I was raised on 80s and 90s cartoons, Nintendo, doing homework on paper (when I did do my homework), and the general duck and cover law of safety that lining up in the hall of my elementary school with my head against the wall and curled up in vertical fetal position would protect me if Regan and the commies ever lost their shit and started the apocalypse of flinging thermonuclear missiles at each other. My first job was almost at a comic book store (I was running errands and doing odd chores for the owners in exchange for swag and video game rental) but we moved before I turned 15 and they could legally hire me and pay me in actual money. REM’s Out of Time and Aerosmith’s Pump are simultaneously the most impactful album of my youth – I picked up REM, decided I didn’t actually like anything else on the album after Losing my Religion and returned it (i.e., I broke it in half and claimed it came that way), exchanging it instead for Pump, which launched me down to the road to hard rock, metal, blues, and Beethoven (and an oft skeptical opinion about the value of the ‘Rules as Written’ approach to rules). I have gone through about every style of sneaker hiking or goth-style boot, but ultimately still prefer Chuck Taylors. The flannel over t-shirt with jeans remains my go-to aesthetic of choice for comfort. I wear far less black these days, but far more grey. After almost 40 years of 20-10 vision, I do now wear glasses, to read. I have seen every Godzilla and Star Trek movie, multiple times, including the bad ones. I have read the entirety of the Wheel of Time – Mat’s my favorite character, though Perin is a close second. I have a cat, Kiyo, she is my shadow, my familiar, and my baby. I love DnD, and I enjoy being either a player or a DM. Dragoncon is my happy place. If you don’t know what Dragoncon is, hit pause and look it up now. It’s okay, I’ll wait. I have 4 Starfleet uniforms, if you include the Cocktail/Lounge attire, they are all Blue. New Years is my favorite holiday. I prefer small, fun Japanese cars, though I’m not mechanically inclined enough to have ever bothered modding them. I play bass guitar, poorly, I have been in a band, even played a gig once at a real bar – okay, it was a convenience store slash bar, but they had a big patio with a stage. Oh, and I’d like to think I’m Gryffendor, but if I’m being honest with myself, I’m Ravenclaw. 

Still here? Great! Now that you have an idea of who I am, lets get into where this podcast is going. 

As I mentioned earlier, the target of this project is confrontation with the ethical and moral faults in the landscape of our current working lives, especially those disguised, concealed, or even inverted as values by the concept of “work ethic,” the political projects (by the right and left) committed to employment-as-a-solution, and what I am broadly, for now, calling work-culture – this includes, but is not limited to, how we are socialized to work; how work is made a social, moral, and political imperative; the social organization of work and its economic overlays – capitalism, socialism, communism, etc.; how capitalism has transformed from an economic overlay to social substrate, to borrow a term from Deleuze and Guattari, a socius upon which our social lives are now organized, rather than how we organize resources; it may be fair to consider this component a sociocultural anthropology of work.

This confrontation takes two forms, the first is a philosophical-critical analysis of the issue at hand, whether that’s work under conditions of capitalism, socialism, etc., broadly speaking; or more narrowly focused, such as work requirements for social benefits (entitlements), artisanal work versus mass market manufacturing, shit jobs versus bullshit jobs (nod to David Graeber), on-demand scheduling, surge pricing of goods (without, it’s important note, *cough* Wendy’s *cough*, dodged a bullet there, a correlative surge adjustment to wages), imposed systemic poverty, culture war politics; challenges to work such as global capitalism (No, China is not a communist economy, it’s state managed capitalism) and the transference of labor to impoverished and/or developing populations – as we, in the “developed” world, seek to simultaneously unburden ourselves of these menial jobs, while demanding cheaper products and higher profit margins; doing so, are we creating an Omelas problem? Not just allowing the suffering of some for the benefit of others, but baking it into the global economic model? Is this kind of ‘economic development’ any different from earlier colonizing modes or saving the savages? Resource exploitation, climate change, bloodied commodities? What does it mean, as a worker and a consumer, to take seriously to imperative to “do no harm.” What about automation (an old question, but perennially relevant, and do we need a “new Marxism” to address the information economy? Or as McKenzie Wark put it, the Vectoralist class) and AI? What happens to the “value” of work once even the creative and intellectual jobs are automated away. What of the possibility of overcoming ‘traditional work’ entirely through AI and robotic automation? Can we achieve an economy based on care, creation, and collaboration, rather than greed for profit and individual ownership? Do we still need money? Do we need UBI, universal basic income, do we need it now or later? Is money just a control mechanism? And so on.

The second form is Existentialist, and, specifically, and borrowing from Heidegger – I know, he’s super problematic, and we’ll get to that when we get to him – in turning-towards-death. This, I believe, is how this project can be taken from theoretical philosophy and economics to ethics and an actionable political project. In all considerations of work (and life in general for that matter), we need to take our own mortality, the finality of death, the lack of any form of afterlife (or, for the faithful, at least the possibility of the lack of an afterlife (as believers are often quick to point out to athiests, what if you’re wrong?), and the lack of any external force, such as a god, or other divine/alien arbiter, as giver of meaning to life, and, critically, the anxiety, (the Angst) felt in facing mortality head on, as first principle. This part cannot be understated. To confront the ethicality of the “work ethic” we need more than to know its origin and utility, its weaponization, how it developed and how it continues to be wielded by, for, and against us. We need a way to get to an alternative. A genealogy of the work ethic, and the development of a new, better, affirmative and empowering value of work. 

The subject of the modern, consumerist, informational, capitalist society is bombarded at every waking moment by demands on one’s time and attention. Financial demands (rents, mortgages, utilities, healthcare, education, debts), sensationalism and fearmongering in the media (again, on right and left, though fears exploited generally being different – the left typically driving toward unity in opposition to anxiety to ‘power’, in contrast to the right driving division through development of in-groups and fear of “the other,” that which is not ‘like us’), and distraction – the old circuses part of ‘bread and circuses – Sports, movies, concerts, anything and everything “spectacle.” And, of course, marketing – if you’re not keeping up on the current tech, the current trends, clothing fashions, etc., well, then, what are you doing with your money? And if you don’t have the disposable income, then there’s always credit. And if have neither money nor credit, there must be something wrong with you. And finally, social media. The promise of democratization of information and easy maintenance of personal relationships, commodified, advertised, and mined for profit. A pandora’s box of possibility and toxicity. 

These are just some of the questions and themes we’ll be addressing in this podcast. We’ll also be looking into the Philosophy-as-genre aspects, unpacking the texts and thinkers that have informed this discussion of the ethics of work. Contemporary thinkers such as David Graeber, Mark Fisher, James Livingston, as well as the “canon” – authors such as Locke, Mill, Marx, and Weber. We’ll be digging into questions of life and living, art and technology, suffering and joy, so Deleuze, Foucault, Benjamin, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, Marcuse, Camus, Fanon, Bataille, Roland Barthes, well, it’s a long list, and I imagine it will only get longer. If you know these names, then you probably have an idea of where I’m coming from philosophically, and probably where I’m trying to go. If you don’t, well, I hope you’ll stick around and come to think of this as a gateway to approach these texts yourselves, and pursue your own investigation into these questions, issues, and these authors. 

Finally, a word of warning. This isn’t a “neutral” discussion. Obviously, I have an agenda – which, I’d like to think, I’ve made pretty clear. I believe Capitalism and the Work-Ethic are not just economic problems, but ethical problems. When asking the question, “what does it mean that… what are the impacts of… accepting work, choosing to fill my time in the service of something and/or someone else,” I mean to put that question forward in the face of inevitable-but-unforeseeable death. The future is not guaranteed. In a state of constant contingency, working towards something holds no guarantee it will ever be achieved, now matter how reasonable the goal. 

Now, I don’t intend for this to be a doom and gloom podcast. In fact, quite the opposite. My aim in thinking about death is to draw focus to the sublime, the beautiful, and joyous that lies at the heart of one of the oldest philosophical questions, “What is the Good Life?” Taking that a step further, how can we employ Ethics socially, politically, to make life “good” for all? 

Understandably, there will be some, many even, for whom this project is too dark, too morbid, too sad, too haunted or perhaps even triggering, and while I hope you’ll give it chance, I understand if you can’t. Though, if this is your stopping point, I encourage you to check out Dr. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary’s Future Tense: Why Anxiety is Good For You (Even Though It Feels Bad). 

As for those for whom this podcast is too heretical, too atheist, too liberal, too leftist, etc., well, first, if you made it this far, I hope you’ll consider hanging around. You may never agree with me in full, but maybe you’ll discover something that pushes you to question your own values and see if they hold up to scrutiny.

Dogmatism is a dangerous thing. Beliefs can change, mine certainly did, and they should change if they can’t withstand scrutiny. Being observant, analytical, creative, but more importantly, being curious, that has never done me a disservice. 

I struggled for a while to come up with a title for the show, though I suspect that’s a common thread among podcasters. The original thesis title, “Towards Meaningful Work: Labor-Time and the Turn Towards Death” is too long and too narrowly focused for what I’d like to do here. Work, Death, and Ethics felt like a decent pun on the old certainties of life joke, and there were a bunch of others that just aren’t even worth mentioning. I finally settled on Philosophy vs. Work as it was quick, open ended, has something of a call to action, and, to be honest, has a little bit of a Godzilla vs. Kong feel to it – I mean, even if Work loses, Work wins, because someone needs to do the work of philosophy for it to win. I’m a strong proponent of the idea of Philosophy as a Toolbox and a Method, that, like Art, good Philosophy does something – the point, after all, is to change the world – anyone? Anyone? 

Next week, we really start. I’ll be discussing, if you’ll forgive the self-indulgence, my previously mentioned MA project. Don’t worry, I’m not going to sit here and read the whole thing to you, but I am going to lean on it, for the next few episodes, to preface the work to come. To provide a conceptual framework and vocabulary for this first… chapter… of episodes, the authors, the questions, and what I thought, in 2018, was a potential solution to the problem of work as an ethical project. 

If you enjoyed this episode of Philosophy vs. Work, well, you know the schtick. Please like, subscribe, follow, leave a review. It really does help to grow the show. You can stare all you want into the algorithm, but it’s doesn’t stare back without likes and subscribes.

Don’t forget to check out the show notes for details on any authors, texts, etc. referenced directly in this episode.