work as god

James Hillman likes to write about polytheistic approaches to the psyche, as an alternative to our worship of the One God of Ego. He says that with a polytheistic approach, the other voices within us can be heard, not demons vis a vis the Ego and its rationality, but as equally important spirits. He urges us to let these voices speak, and be heard, rather than rushing to label them as pathology and supress them in favour of the Ego and its gospels of reason and success.

The monotheism/polytheism dichotomy is enlightening. We fall into the montheism trap SO MUCH, in so many areas of our lives. It's pervasive. Perhaps not surprisingly, as the struggle between the two modalities lasted many centuries and resulted in the Spanish Inquisition, the massacre of Jews and Cathars, and the burning of thousands of so-called witches and satanists. We learned the hard way that there is only room for one truth, one guiding principle, one way.

One area which this has affected is that of what we do for a living--in the US, work is a jealous god. We are supposed to live to work, we define ourselves by what we do ("I'm a manager".). And we squeeze a meagre existence around the edges of that. It's a weird ethos. A classic case of an ideology obscuring the economic base of exploitation of the worker, Marxists would say. Classically Protestant work ethic, a philosopher might opine.

The French, who are historically Catholic and Revolutionary, have a different set of ideologies. They work 400 hours less than Americans per year, but are much more productive--because they have a life too and time off to live it!

Here in the US, however, where work is God, if you ask for time off without pay, or try to negotiate extra holiday, they look at you askance--you've just revealed yourself to be a Blasphemer, a Heretic. It makes them uncomfortable. They disapprove so profoundly that they don't even wonder about the cause of that disapproval, or wonder how reasonable your request is. They just know it's a sin to do what you just did. They feel it in their bones.

Where are the Cathars of the world of work?