'Millennials', work, and social change in the insta-age.

Simon Sinek thinks people should be taught to behave in the workplace. But maybe it's time for the workplace to grow up and behave like a millenial?

The Insta-age

 

Ah, the irony of having to check facebook while watching this. The usual line of fire - we're all addicted to our phones, we ignore 'real' life and relationships in favour of 'Face-crack', life was better when we knew how to make eye contact. He may be muddling cause and effect in some places (e.g. facebook use and depression), and overlooks that social media is a relationship with other humans. I keep hearing this about our 'addiction to our phones' in relation to so-called Millenials. Personally though I see two types of 'users' of social media, and two types of usage.

 

Addicted?

 

There is a problem with the psychological aspects of the design and marketing process that has made people dependent on, as he says, the dopamine hit and keen to trigger it. So people put up stuff that will be liked, and send out provocative messages. I know this only too well. People will ignore boring or difficult conversations/messages and engage with 'light' or interesting stuff. Put up a picture of your dog and everyone hits like. And the profit-making side of the industry needs to pull itself together and take action to self regulate this, like every other industry does.

 

People aren't drugs

But that rhetoric overlooks the amount of social interaction that is going on via phones and social media. The amount of relationship that are actually deepened and enriched across what were previously communication boundaries. When I get a dopamine hit from a gambling win, I'm not creating a human-human relationship. When I get a picture of a cat from my daughter I am. My daughter, or my friend, is not a dead-end high. She and I are mutually supportive. I always send messages to my daughter. She tells me, when we are hugging on the sofa, "I read them mum, I just don't reply." So I keep sending them. Social media has changed the way that we conduct our relatiosnhips, made them in a sense more asynchronous, but if you are being ignored by the guy next to you who is texting then perhaps you are the one who has the problem, not him. Perhaps you have to catch up with the world and find ways to accept that some of the people you will interact with physically are interacting digitally too. 

 

A little help from my friends

An anecdote from the pub the other night. A very close friend was messaging me about a traumatic experience. I was able to offer a little support. The friends I was physically with were sympathetic. We were a small group, so they were still in company while I messaged for about ten minutes; the friend in my phone was alone and potentially in shock. Was it wrong of me to prioritse her over them? Does that represent a breakdown in society, a social addiction, a wrong turn? Or just a valuable broadening of the social sphere from the merely physical?

 

Work to live

As for instant gratification, no. You can be insta-gratified, but not physically gratified through social media. You can indulge fantasies but not realities. If you want to know what it is like to ride a mountain-bike down the Himalayan mountains at sunrise you can only experience this by doing this, and there are no quick fixes for that. What I see in my observations of 'millenials' is that they aren't finding 'Joy' in the workplace, that much is true. But that they are going beyond the workplace, writing new goals for themselves that don't align to capital wealth, product consumption, or even health-as-longevity. They are seeking (and finding) joy in experience, in social engagement, in community. This is a problem for businesses who are stuck in recruitment, management and retention patterns that assume a job is everyone's measure of social self-worth. Artists have long had to explain this mentality.

 

Work-life balance

So I agree that corporate environment are a bad fit for these individuals and their skills. But I can't endorse the view that the people should adapt, not the corporations themselves. Cell phones in meetings? In an all day workshop damn straight I'm going to keep my phone on and check to see if my baby sitter needs my attention. The workplace of the future is built on trust. Relationships are built on mutual respect. Workplaces need to begin to respect and understand that employees are beginning to see their employment as a choice - they can no longer expect loyalty and obedience from their staff in return for a monthly pay check and a chair. This guy contradicts his own point. He says that these 'millenials' need to learn to build relationships, develop trust, but he describes a situation between employer and employee which is based on fear and authority.

 

Post-capitalist paradigm

Sinek makes a comparison between the conference room and the dinner table. Of course, with friends and family (my 10 year old son's rule actually): no phones. For the course of the meal we eat and share our resources together, with those we are with. On occasion a remote friend will join us on skype - as part of the group. A group. But this mutual respect and appreciation is not something I and others feel we should automatically extend to our working environments. I have lost many many many hours to endless pointless meetings, locked in conference rooms and hyped up on coffee unable to be productive, sacrificing my time and presence often for nothing but the ego of the senior member of staff. By maintaining contact with the rest of our lives and our communities through our phones we are making active choices to reclaim power in this situation. Milennials will work, but they will not enslave themselves, for money.

Oh, and as for alarm clocks... ask me about it!

Art, independence and the liberty of consumption.

Recently I've had to pack up or give away all of my possession. This has naturally made me quite reflective: going through items one by one, remembering where they came from, the part they've played in my history.

Some of the first things I 'saved' from this bonfire of my vanities turned out to be pieces of original art that I had either bought or had been gifted to me. This surprised me at first. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that these items, more than any thing else, were an expression of myself.

Art = waste of money

By its very nature as a non-functional item, purchasing art is an anti-capitalist act. It is a waste of money. To buy art is to purchase something that cannot be used in any way as a tool or to produce anything else. It cannot provide physical comfort, assist with household tasks, enable the owner to improve their own appearance. Unlike clothes, food, furniture, tools, toiletries, toys, vehicles or almost any other purchase, spending money on art is a complete waste of the utility value of money (let us ignore the art-trade for the time being and assume all art purchases are made for aesthetic reasons only).

As such, our choice to spend capital on art is assertion of our individual freedom. Our liberty.

Consumption as freedom

To understand why each of these art purchases was so signficant on my personal journey, it's best just to examine their circumstances one by one:

'Jazz'.
This large magenta chalk abstraction on a black matt board cost me hundreds of pounds. It was a reckless selfish purchase, at a time when being reckless and selfish was strictly forbidden. A close friend and I visited the art fair in Brighton and I saw this picture and was just absorbed by it.
Being able to buy direct from the artist at a price that (I think it was £350 in around 2004) I felt was fair compensation for the effort and materials that went into the piece, this was something I just wanted to do. I worked hard, and always had. I was at least a 50% contributor if not more to the finances of my household. I rarely bought personal luxuries (haircuts, toiletries, shoes etc.) that would be considered 'normal' to other women. At the time I wasn't really cognizant of the control that I was being subject to in my relationship but this painting put those issues to the fore. I got in a LOT of trouble. But for the first time I was resolute and that painting has hung in my home forever since, and has grown into a symbol of my right to control my own expenditure and enjoy my own taste.

'Storm'
I have a beautiful small oil painting of an abstract seascape during a storm. It was a gift from a militant feminist artist friend of mine for helping her with a website. Because I can do that, despite being a girl. I love the painting because I love the painting. She is more known for her 'craft'-type punky objects and zine work but this painting is her being the kind of artist no-one can deny as incredible. And it resonates with me in so many ways for the emotions and outlook it captures. I earned that picture. I earned it through loyalty to that woman and her family when the voices of normalcy were threatening us both. I earned it through generosity with my time and skills which were given with no expectation of reward. And I earned it through my own self expression because I appreciate it as a work of art.

'Bandstand'
This mixed media on board is another gift from another female artist and close friend. It brings together a triumvirate of women, myself included, who battle daily to maintain their grace and purpose while being dragged down by the noises of men whose children we have birthed but can never value us. Will never value us. It is a spray and brush paint neon representation of a photograph of myself and my two incredible children. It was taken as we were watching my young friend perform in his punk band at the bandstand in Eastbourne by the third woman whose dervish of a daughter was rocking out in her pushchair to the music as we got a shout out from the lead singer. Every thing about that picture reminds me that I am loved, I am respected, I am part of something bigger and I am not alone. That I am one of many creative women who bring energy and dynamism to our world. That even when I can't, others can see that dynamism in me.

'The Warlocks'.
This is an original print of a poster from a gig I went to with my friend Polly Miles. Polly is 21 and runs her own promotions company with her boyfriend Ollie. We got close when I spread a bit of social media and audience love about her gig in Eastbourne. She has amazing taste. She is exactly the kind of person I would never had in my life had I stayed married, stayed subservient. I bought this poster because I wanted it. It is beautiful and I am legitimately part of the community that created that night. I was backstage and helping out with stuff. I spend evenings helping her with gigs whenever I can. Some years ago, even when I was getting paid, I was unable to go out in the evenings without my partner as it would result in objections, sulking, attacks on my fidelity, and claims I was causing him physical harm. So yep. This is something I want to keep.

We chose what we value

The points here are this:

- what I place value on is up to me. In having to sort through and discard my possessions, I found the things I placed most value on were not those that I could use, or that would have any monetary return if I sold them, but things that I felt defined who I was, that reflected my tastes and my experiences.

- to chose what I value requires freedom. A freedom that I haven't always had and many don't. Some forms of oppression (for want of a better term) are subtle. The freedom to choose how to spend our resources and capital is a powerful aspect as it ripples out from the individaul - we ultimately are defined by what we do (or don't) buy.

- buying art is a political act. Really. To spend money for reasons other than creating more wealth or accessing utility is contrary to the logic of the capitalist consumer economy. To value something that has no monetary value even more so. When we invest in non-material items (the joy of art) we undermine the resource and skills based economic systems that control society. We throw money away. We devalue money. We say 'this is more important to me than money'.

What is art for?

Essentially this process raises two big largely unanswerable questions. What is art for? and What is money for? I'm going to have to save answering those until after I've made the dinner at least, but it's beginning to feel like they are crucial considerations for the future of our society. I have been required to make a big shift toward a non-monetary lifestyle in 2016, and for the most part it has been art that had kept me on track, sane an positive during that time.

If others need and desire to move their lives in similar ways, will we need to readdress the value we place in society on the non-profit making activities, on opportunities for self expression and the appreciation of other's expressions, on freedoms over things?