In pursuit of growth, we have whittled our systems down to the most lean versions of themselves. In the name of lowering taxes on the rich, we have pushed our public apparatuses to the point of bare functionality. We are living in a moment of untold abundance yet so many have opted to survive on the gristle of human experience. (Most) salaried workers are so much more financially stable than so many, but I find us to be far less generous. We are bad, fearful neighbors; we funnel terror of downward mobility into competitive parenting practices; we are fiercely protective of the little time called our own after navigating the demands of our paid and unpaid labor. We’re flaky, we’re bad at showing up, we have little tolerance for even slight inconvenience, we stew in our own dissatisfactions without acting, because who has the time or energy to act, to do something, when you’re working all the time? People who aren’t gaslit by the ever-expanding demands of their jobs, and with far healthier relationships to work — that’s who.
When it’s left to the individual to resist a system like this, these jobs will continue to expand their expectations of what a single worker can provide. And who will survive the gauntlet? The same people who are able to survive it now: men — in particular, white, cis-gender white men with wives — but also anyone who can lean in or acquire the grit or girl boss in a way that approximates those men. The bar for acceptable and expectable work loads will just keep moving higher, as everyone else keeps stretching themselves as thin as possible to reach it before collapsing on the ground, convinced the failure was theirs alone.