True Freedom in Work: Beyond Winners and Losers

Photo by Ashraful Haque Akash on Unsplash

Four years ago I abruptly left an academic career I had started just a few years earlier. I enjoyed doing research and developing theories but could not study exactly what I wanted. I did not want to study something I was only partially interested in for years or even decades so that I could earn status and finally study what I really wanted. (I saw many academics have their true passions buried and forgotten in this process.) I got to know of independent scholars who were freely following their curiosity, so I thought I could be like them.

Although this decision has brought many challenges, it has also brought many unexpected and invaluable experiences. In fact, these experiences have brought me deeper insights into reality than any of the studies I did in academia (however, see Footnote 1 for an important qualification).¹ One such experience is “loser jobs” I have done.

The Interdependence of All Helpful Jobs

After leaving academia, I decided to do flexible jobs so I could pursue my curiosity in my spare time. I found an app where companies with labor shortage offered work. Most of the jobs listed did not require any special skills: delivery, stacking and sorting in a warehouse, planting and harvesting on a farm, and so on.²

Before I did these jobs, I had almost never thought about their roles in society. Worse, I had thought of them as jobs for “losers.” But I realized how essential they were to our lives. We can eat three meals a day, find things we need in shops, and do our daily routines without interruption, thanks to these jobs.

When I was a kid, I loved pizza delivery workers. I thought they were doing such a cool job delivering happiness to people’s homes. But as I grew up and learned which jobs were for “winners” and for “losers,” I stopped seeing work as helping people and making them happy and started to see it as competition for status and money.

One of the most absurd things in our society is that while many essential workers are considered losers and often paid poorly, there are many jobs that do not offer any benefit to society (i.e., bullshit jobs) and yet tend to pay much better. This absurd situation has placed a great burden on essential workers. Since people avoid “loser jobs,” there is a shortage of essential workers. In my country, people go to big cities for work—many of which are bullshit jobs—which, ironically, is regarded as a winner’s move. So there is a severe shortage of workers in the countryside (especially farmers). They work very hard to meet heavy demand. (These workplaces are often filled with immigrant workers.³ In my experience, many of them are very pleasant to work with despite the often intense working conditions.)

Meanwhile, people with bullshit jobs tend to buy a lot of things with their excess money. So essential workers are doubly under pressure: They are understaffed but need to meet tremendous demand. If bullshit jobs disappeared and more people started to do essential jobs, the burden on essential workers—in terms of both time and intensity—would be significantly reduced. Since bullshit jobs do not provide any benefit to society, such a shift would not be disruptive. It does not seem to be a coincidence that AI has been eliminating these jobs. Accordingly, more and more people are starting to appreciate jobs that truly matter.

We have been dealing with problems like social discrimination, extreme income inequality, poverty, and so on, and politicians are busy developing policies that could solve these problems. But unless we change our views of one another and realize our interdependence, no policies will truly solve them.⁴ It is more important to cultivate a culture of gratitude, not the superficial and transactional kind but that which comes from the realization that our lives are literally impossible without each other.

True Freedom in Work

“Work for money and status.” Most people do not find this idea absurd. As we grow up, we learn to see work as competition for money and status. Consequently, most people work for the wrong reason, with the wrong intention.

Many people are striving in work to avoid becoming losers. (The fear of becoming a loser exists inseparably with the desire to become a winner.) I often meet people who stick to careers they hate simply because they are afraid that if they walk away from their careers, they end up becoming losers. If you have a “winner job,” having to do a “loser job” would feel like receiving a death sentence. This reveals how powerful concepts are. It is not so much jobs themselves as concepts and attitudes attached to them that make them fulfilling or unfulfilling. If you view work not as competition (making yourself happy and others unhappy) but as cooperation (making everyone happy), the concept of winners and losers evaporates, and whether you do a “winner” or “loser” job ceases to matter. Above all, if your intention in work is solely to make a happy society, you will be untouched by arbitrary social concepts. Last year I watched a movie with this theme:

Freedom is not doing “winner jobs.” As soon as you believe freedom exists in doing certain kinds of jobs, you have created a prison for yourself. Many people with “winner jobs” are as much or more imprisoned by their jobs than those with “loser jobs.” They are constantly stressed out about losing their positions and becoming losers.

I am not advocating for “loser jobs.” My point is that if you have the right view of work and work with the right intention, you can do any helpful jobs without feeling like doing chores. This is true freedom in work.

Still, you might wonder how we can do mundane tasks like washing dishes, putting boxes on a conveyor belt, and planting seedlings for hours without getting bored. But are these activities really mundane? Isn’t anything happening at all wonderful? Do you really see what is unfolding moment by moment, or are you looking for something else? If you are fully present, it is impossible not to feel wonder and awe for whatever is happening. This is probably the most conscious form of motivation. This is also what real meditation is: full engagement with and as reality.⁵

1. It is important to note that I do not dismiss any of the experiences I had in academia. On the contrary, precisely because of these conventionally successful experiences, the contrasting experiences I have had afterwards (e.g., doing “loser jobs”) have been insightful and transformative for me.

2. Incidentally, I am physically active in many of the jobs I do, so I do not need to do exercise outside work, let alone go to the gym. I have always found it unnatural to go to the gym and robotically push and pull weights or run on a treadmill like a hamster on a wheel. Above all, most people go to the gym for a purely selfish reason: to look good. If you have time to go to the gym, perhaps you could help farmers or warehouse workers that need a hand. You would not only be fit but also receive the joy of helping people and learn our interdependence.

3. The irony is that many people with bullshit jobs complain that there are too many immigrants in the country.

4. Ultimately, we are not just interdependent but we are all one Self. However, given the current level of collective consciousness, realizing our interdependence is an important step forward.

5. I would like to note, however, that how people currently work is unnatural. It is excessive and too rigid (due to preoccupation with maximizing efficiency and production, rigid division of labor, and so on). I fully engage as reality, which includes my nature. So I do what is necessary but do not conform to the prevailing excessiveness and rigidity, which severely violate my nature.