Episode post here. Caroline Wall does it again, folks! We are grateful for her efforts as transcriber.
Matt Teichman:
Hello, and welcome to Elucidations, an unexpected philosophy podcast. I’m Matt Teichman.
Yuezhen Li:
I’m Yuezhen Li.
Matt Teichman:
With us today is Frithjof Bergmann, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and Director of the Center for New Work, and David Helmbold, a retired public servant and close collaborator of Frithjof Bergmann’s. Frithjof Bergmann’s new book, New Work New Culture, is out now from Zer0 Books, which is an imprint of John Hunt Press. And the Center for New Work is located in many different countries around the world. They are here to discuss New Work New Culture. Frithjof Bergmann and David Helmbold, welcome.
David Helmbold:
Thank you.
Frithjof Bergmann:
Thank you very much for having us on this program.
Matt Teichman:
So one thing I think is really interesting about the topic of work is that when you talk to people about it in everyday conversations, you kind of get two conflicting stories. Sometimes, when you talk to people about work, they say, oh, work is such a slog. I hate it. Mondays, am I right? It’s such a drag. I wish I didn’t have to go into work every day. But other times, when you talk to people about work, they praise it as something honorable and venerable. It’s really important to do work, and to work hard—that’s part of what it is to live a great life. What are we to make of the fact that there are these two inconsistent pictures of whether work is good or bad?
Frithjof Bergmann:
I can make something of that fact by mentioning, right at the beginning of our conversation, that I started to focus on the subject of work many years ago. And everybody told me that I was making a big mistake—that I had a very excellent career in philosophy at Princeton, and Stanford, and other places, and that work was a waste of my time—that there was nothing interesting to be said about work. And I disagreed with that from the beginning, and said that far from that, work would soon become a very interesting subject. And of course, among all the other things, this is one thing that I was not wrong about—that it has become much more of a subject than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Not just the way one usually thinks about work, but there have been many efforts recently to turn work into something more exciting, more interesting, more plausible than work had been before. And that is one of the things that stimulated me into writing a book called New Work New Culture.
Matt Teichman:
So would it be fair to say that the goal of the New Work movement is to try to get meaningful and fulfilling jobs for everybody?
Frithjof Bergmann:
Yes. That’s putting it rather mildly. The idea has been from the very beginning that New Work possibly would be a new movement, and it would be a new movement in many countries. And I’ve traveled in many countries, including Russia and India and so forth, and in all of these countries I have tried to sow the seeds of New Work. And I don’t mean to brag, but I have failed in any number of ways, but I’ve not failed in this. It has turned out that work has become an extremely important and central subject in many different countries, and that many different countries investigate how work could be different from how it has been in the past.
Matt Teichman:
I think this is something that’s really striking about your research, which is that you don’t just sit around in the armchair and idly speculate about how society could be set up, or what work could be. You’ve actually done a lot of trial and error in practice in some of these different countries that you’ve talked about. So what would be an example of a New Work program that you did in Russia, or India, or one of these other places? How did it work, and what was the goal?
Frithjof Bergmann:
Well, I’ve done projects in many different countries. I didn’t mention Austria, where I grew up, in the city of Steyr, which is a famous, famous city for manufacturing. New Work was taken up, and one of the very first major projects were electric motorcycles that we manufactured in Steyr. And that created a great deal of excitement, because at the point at which we were doing this—and that’s now over 10 years ago—electric motorcycles were unheard of. But now, they have become very common. So I would say the idea of altering work into something far more satisfying, far more interesting, far more intriguing than work had been in the past—that idea has, for better or worse, caught hold, and now is discussed.
For example, I was very interested when I went to India. I thought, surely in India, New Work would not fly at all, because of Gandhi and all the things he stood for. But that was one of the things I was very wrong about. Actually, in India, people were extremely interested in technologies, and the sort of technologies we were talking about. And that became one of the things that happened in India—that the technologies of work were eagerly sought and eagerly discussed. They were much, much more receptive than I had ever thought. Because I had thought that in India, this would just be a nonstarter, but it wasn’t.
And similarly, in Russia, I went to Russia with misgivings, with a feeling that maybe nothing exciting would happen in Russia, given all sorts of things that we all know—but that was wrong. Actually, the people in Russia that I met treated me with extraordinary politeness, and handed me around. And I lectured in Moscow and I lectured in all kinds of places. And wherever I went, people made it obvious that they were interested in forms of work different from those that they already had, that they were moving in the direction of New Work very much as we are in Germany, and in Austria, and in the United States. So I was very surprised at the reception in India, and I was very surprised at the reception in Russia.
Matt Teichman:
So one thing that’s interesting about this is that normally, when we think about technology—maybe to take your motorcycle example—normally, we think about: what does it take to build a motorcycle? Well, we think about a big factory. We think about the thing that was caricatured in Charlie Chaplin’s film, Modern Times, where masses of people are doing boring and repetitive work, one person is doing the same thing all day, and this is the standard process by which we make something like a motorcycle. But what are some differences between the actual manufacturing process that you did versus the traditional one that we have in the back of our minds?
Frithjof Bergmann:
Thank you for asking me that question. And I would say there is a key difference, which has to be mentioned fairly at the beginning of this conversation. Namely, New Work, as opposed to other forms of work, or other things that one discusses under the heading of working, New Work is an effort to create a different approach to work. And central to that different approach is the idea of making it possible for people to do work that they really, really want.
And that has become a phrase that has taken wings. Lots of people in many different countries now talk about work as something that one really, really wants. And I sometimes get invited to conferences where the whole subject of work is painted on a large screen. And what happens is that again and again, people emphasize that there has been a shift. There has been a movement. There is something in the works that one hadn’t anticipated. And that is that now, in many countries, people want work that they really, really want. And making it possible for people to have work that they really, really want has become one of the flags under which New Work flies.
Matt Teichman:
So maybe one difference, then, versus the traditional assembly line way of building some piece of technology like a motorcycle might be: well, maybe we’re only going to build this thing if this is the thing we’ve decided we want. So it’s not like, hey, I and friends in the community are out of work, and we’ll just take any job, because we need a job. Rather, you show up somewhere and you ask somebody, hey, what do you need? And let’s work together to help you build whatever you want to build—not just like you need any old job at all. So the worker getting to choose what they’re working on, maybe, is part of the difference.
Frithjof Bergmann:
That is part of what’s changed. People are much more ready to say: I want to have some say in the work I do, and it has to be work that I want to do. And that shift away from doing work because one is told to do it, because one is coerced to do it or is forced to do it—shifting away from that into a mode of work has become something that people want to have a say in. They want to say what kind of work they want to do. And I would say—and I hope that doesn’t sound bombastic—that that is a change that is virtually worldwide. Now, people in all kinds of countries make different demands on work, as opposed to what it was 20 years ago or 10 years ago.
Matt Teichman:
So it’s like you’re reconnecting the desire to accomplish the goal back up with the person who is actually accomplishing the goal, whereas if those are two different people, if I’m just doing this for somebody else, it just feels weird. Why am I even doing this? Whereas if I’m doing it because it’s a goal that I set for myself, then the work becomes more meaningful.
Frithjof Bergmann:
Yes, that’s essentially correct, and is one of the things that has made New Work a plausible title. People don’t constantly ask me, what do you mean, ‘New Work’? On the contrary, it’s very common to think of work as something that is now being reinvented, and that is now new from what it was formerly. And people want to find out what this New Work is about. And so the interest in New Work is extremely great. And that has excited me greatly to participate in this movement towards work that is being done by people who want to do work that they want.
Yuezhen Li:
So in your book, New Work New Culture, you talk about New Work not only as an alternative, but also a reversal to the job system, which is what we have right now. So I’m interested in hearing more about what, exactly, is the job system? Is it just the fact that people are paid to do their work, or is there something more to it?
Frithjof Bergmann:
Oh, there’s much more to it. To my mind, if I may be somewhat braggadocious, the idea of doing work that people really want was a new idea. It’s not something that 20 years ago they took for granted and allowed it to pass. On the contrary, that work could be something that people decide on, that they would have an intention attached to it, that work was something they cared about or they wouldn’t do it—they would only do it if it had meaning. I have come to address so many different conferences, in I don’t know how many different countries. But in all kinds of different countries, that has become the key word.
The key word has become, whether it’s India or Russia—the United States in all of these respects is somewhat behind other countries—but the idea of making it possible for people to work in ways that they find not just all right, but that they find sensuous, and exciting, and the best part of their life. The idea that work is the best part of life, that good work is, so to say, more exciting than sex—that idea has become common. And it’s been something of a surprise to me that work should go through this transformation—being exciting, and sensuous, and intriguing, and meaningful. And it’s not the same words over and over and over again. But it’s very much new words, new ideas, new approaches, new expectations. There’s something very different about how work is now organized and structured and wanted from how it was 20 years ago.
David Helmbold:
To get back to the question of what is the essence of the job system, Frithjof and I were talking about it this morning, and I think my objection to the job system isn’t so much that people work for money as it is that people work for other people in a relationship which is somewhat coercive. Because if you find yourself getting up in the morning, probably to an alarm, being shocked into wakefulness so you can make your deadline of getting to a certain place on time to do some work, and you find yourself just not wanting to do it—you’re dozy. You’re woozy from sleep that was inadequate to begin with. You were forced to awake. You find yourself looking forward—dreading the day, actually. You dread the day that you’re going to have to go through. And then, you think about doing something else—not going to work.
And then, you think about the people who are dependent upon you—your spouse and your children—and you end up saying, okay, time to get up and get around. And you shower as quickly as you can, and eat an inadequate breakfast in a rush, and kiss your spouse goodbye. And you head off to work in a car that probably is—you don’t know how you’re going to pay for it. Because you know that if you don’t go to work two Fridays from now, you won’t be able to make the ritual trip to the grocery store for the supplies that you need for the next week, and to pay the other bills around town for things you need.
In this kind of situation, the person you’re working for has control over you which is, to my own mind, not dignified human life. And the job system has large numbers of people trapped in this mode of life, and there’s got to be something better. There was something better 300 years ago. And why can’t there be something better 20 years from now?
Frithjof Bergmann:
That hits the nail on the head. That is, work in the past was something to which people didn’t have the feeling there was an alternative. They were controlled. They were coerced. They needed—they must do this. Just as David describes it, the alarm clock rings and they have to get up, like it or not. And that is very much the rhythm, that is very much the organization around which the work revolved. I would argue that that has fundamentally changed. Work now is different from what it was 20 years ago. And we are at the cutting edge of making that obvious and known. And now, it is the subject that lots of people want to hear about, and think about, and talk about. And that’s, of course, an enormous confirmation of what has happened.
Matt Teichman:
So when I think of a job that doesn’t fit this mold you’ve been talking about, where your alarm wakes you up, and you roll your eyes, and you’re like, oh, man, another day at work, the first things I think about as the opposite of that would be either creative professions—that’s the way people talk about them. So being a comedian, or being a filmmaker, or maybe being a fine artist who’s able to have a career in the art world—that’s one type of job where people who at least are successful don’t talk about it that way. They talk about it as something they really want to do.
And then, another example that jumps to mind is in certain, maybe, small companies, like successful startups in their early days, people also often talk about: yeah, this is a passion project. That’s why I’m not even getting paid for the first few months. It’s something where I’m really excited about what the company’s doing. Those are two examples that jump to mind where, at least, people talk about it as being a bit different from the, ‘Oh, no, the alarm clock went off, I have to go into work again’ type of job. So would those be examples of New Work? Or are those still not quite all the way there yet?
Frithjof Bergmann:
I’m glad you asked that question, because I think it’s central that we answer that question, and address it, and not avoid it. That is, it’s not quite New Work. The essence of New Work is that somebody does work that he or she really, really wants. And we have made a habit of repeating the word ‘really’, and saying it has to be really, really what you want. Otherwise, it isn’t New Work. It’s still the old work. We are trying to make something happen that is different from that. And the idea of working at something that I seriously, intensely, passionately, really, really want has proved itself to have enormous power. People really flock to that idea, and want something like that. And that was not the case 10 years ago.
Matt Teichman:
So what’s missing from the case of, for example, a really successful comedian who gets to put all their creative energy into coming up with new material, and is able to have a career performing live, and so on and so forth?
Frithjof Bergmann:
What is missing? Quite possibly the answer is nothing, that he is doing fine. What he does could be New Work, and could be very satisfying—and not just satisfying, but could be what he really, really wants, and nothing less than that. And that is maybe one way of capturing the greatness of the shift that has happened. Work used to be something for which I coined the phrase, ‘a mild disease’. It was not cancer, but it was a mild disease in the sense that it was really not what one wanted. It was a drag. It was something one suffered, one put up with. That’s the quintessence of what work was, but that’s no longer the essence of what work now is. For many people, now, work is something that they had time to think about. And they decided that maybe, becoming a comedian would be a way of being passionate about one’s work. And I have met some comedians that did feel passionately about their work as comedians. And that’s New Work.
Yuezhen Li:
So is there a problem of ‘the poverty of desire’, as you put it—that a lot of people are struggling to find out what they exactly want out of their life?
Frithjof Bergmann:
Yeah. My own feeling is that yes, of course that is one of the key problems. People don’t—I mean, I ran constantly into people—all the way back in Flint, I ran into people who said, nobody ever asked me that question. Nobody said to me, think of something that you really want to do, and do something you really want. That was the opposite of what people expected me to do. They expected me to fit in, to stay within the pre-fabricated notions of what work should be.
Matt Teichman:
I feel like ‘know your place’ is something people used to say a lot. That’s my impression, when somebody would ask that question.
Frithjof Bergmann:
That now has fundamentally changed. Not completely—it’s still a process—but it is a process that is underway, where people approach work with entirely different expectations, wants, desires. And of course, the way we talk about work, as something that you might find exciting and wonderful—many people have trouble with that, and say, I don’t know what there is. Maybe other people have something that is as exciting as that, but I don’t. But it turns out that that is temporary, that very many people, not at the beginning, but somewhere down the road, have decided they understand what is meant by New Work, or work that they really want. And they do that, as opposed to merely suffering it.
Matt Teichman:
Yeah. This is something I’ve never heard anybody talk about before. But I think you’re absolutely right. For a lot of people, the question, ‘What do you really want to do?’ is impossible to answer at first. They have to do these mental calisthenic exercises to get themselves into the frame of mind where they can even come up with: what do I want to do, really?
Frithjof Bergmann:
Right. It’s a fact that many people that are in the transition to adulthood—their experiences, that they have been told again and again from different sources, whether it is the pastor or the parent or the teacher—but they have been told not to make demands, but to adjust themselves to what is expected. That creates part of the difficulty you raised. For many people, the idea that work could be something that they passionately want to do is a new idea. And it’s a stumbling block, and they don’t know what to do with it.
David Helmbold:
Our entire society has entire huge institutions (education and religion come to mind) but they’re all set up around—and parenting in many families is centered around—compliance and survival. And you don’t do what you want. You do what you have to do to get past the policeman, to get past the teacher, to get past the school, to get into an employment relationship without challenging, or doubting, or questioning whether or not these things should be challenged and questioned. And as a result, there’s large numbers of people—one person cynically and cruelly referred to this group of people as a ‘basket of deplorables’—they think that it’s wrong to have aspirations, and they’re very resentful of being in this situation, and they become in many ways asocial or antisocial. And it ends up being a serious problem for society, but also a serious problem for them. And when you try and give them permission to want something—
Frithjof Bergmann:
Maybe that is a point—excuse me for jumping in—but maybe that is a point that should be emphasized. Very many people grow up with parents, or with teachers, or with pastors, or with whatever, who try to tell them that wanting things is a bad thing, that one shouldn’t want things. And that is still quite common, although it is on its way out. It was worse, but now it is abating, and people now have more the feeling that maybe, it is okay to want something intensely. But that’s relatively new. That’s not what was the case 20 years ago.
Yuezhen Li:
So what could be done such that people have an easier time finding out what they really want?
Frithjof Bergmann:
Oh, what can be done? Plenty. In my experience—and I have many years of experience with this—people say: nobody ever has asked me what I really, really want. That was a completely new—especially with the car workers in Flint. Car workers didn’t expect to be asked what they really want. In fact, that was precisely the opposite of what they had experienced. Their experience was: you don’t ask for things. You accept things. You fit in. You make do with what you get.
In contrast to that, we started to encourage people to ask themselves, what is it that I really, seriously want? But for many people, this is absolutely new. I can say I have met more people than I can think of who have felt that that was an illegitimate question. It just wasn’t what one should do. One shouldn’t ask for something like that. It’s more than one should do.
Matt Teichman:
Often, it’s framed as being irresponsible. The adult thing to do is just suck it up and do what you have to, rather than think about what you want to do. At least, that’s the way people talk about it.
Frithjof Bergmann:
Yeah. Right, very much so.
Matt Teichman:
Yeah.
David Helmbold:
I would just say in addition to this, that not only is it a psychological injury, it’s a moral injury when you’re kept from—because I believe that people, in their essence, are decent people. They want to do the right thing. And when you are kept from realizing what the right thing is, you’re less likely to do it, and to achieve that moral goal.
Matt Teichman:
So let’s say I’ve had an awakening, and I realized I don’t find my job every day that fulfilling. And I’m finally asking for the first time: what do I really want to do? And let’s say I even find an answer. I really want to do X. What do I do then? How can I get a job doing this thing I’ve decided that I want to do? It’s not like I can pay myself a salary. So how can I get paid to do this thing that I really want to do without it turning into the coercive relationship to an employer that David was talking about earlier? We want to avoid that situation, but how can I make it happen?
David Helmbold:
Frithjof and I were talking this morning, and one of the things I said was that we need to have a basic—what we call a social safety net. A person should be able to know that he doesn’t have to give into the coercion in order for his children to eat. A person should know that he doesn’t have to give into the coercion in order to have a place where his children will be safe at night, and be able to sleep in relative comfort. He shouldn’t have to give into a system of coercion in order to have medical care for his children that will assure their good health for their lives. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but it’s got to be adequate. And then, he should also know that his children will be educated, not only so that they’re able to be productive, but also so they can contribute to the democracy that they’re expected to participate in.
Give them these four things without coercion. Do that, and then, all of a sudden, deciding to quit the job and going after what you really, really want is not so foreboding. It’s not such a terrible obstacle to overcome. But as long as you’re feeling trapped, the idea of quitting your reliable Friday paycheck, so you can buy the goods for the next week that you need—as long as there’s coercion that you have to do that, any hope for discovering yourself is dashed.
Frithjof Bergmann:
Let me underline what David just said. I think for some people, the idea of New Work New Culture is somehow startling—what is possible in the way of a new culture—but it’s not. It’s exactly what now is happening. People now, for the first time maybe in many years, have the feeling that something radically new is possible. They can ask for something that has not been asked for before. And that does represent a new culture, a culture in which people demand things that they did not dare to demand before. And we encourage that, and we foster that, and we build things around that. And I think that ultimately means that without using words like ‘revolutionary’, we actually are at the cutting edge of a revolutionary movement. Yes.
David Helmbold:
We live in revolutionary times—that’s for sure.
Matt Teichman:
So one question that I have about that is, following David’s point, a certain baseline of economic stability, it would seem, is required for person to be able to have the freedom to ask this question, and then to go out and try to get the work they really want. Well, one striking thing about the work that you’ve done in this area is that you’ve gone to various nations in the Global South where people don’t generally have that level of economic stability. And you still made New Work happen in those places. So how did you do it?
Frithjof Bergmann:
It fell into my lap. I didn’t do it. But the thing was much more that to my surprise, I was asked to go to Russia. I never thought of Russia as a place where I would have anything to say that would be of use to people. But it turned out that actually, precisely in Russia, people said: no, what you are trying to do in the United States is what we are trying to do in Russia. In Russia, we want more of an idea of people desiring, and insisting, and making something happen. That was, to me, a big surprise—that people in Russia felt that that was what they wanted to do next.
But that is the answer to your question. I didn’t do it. I didn’t preach, particularly. They said, you are doing something that we care about, and we want you to make it clearer to us what it is. And so explain it. Do it. And so I was asked, from one place to another place to another place, to explain these things. And that is what people felt was okay.
Yuezhen Li:
So when we’re thinking about alternatives to a capitalistic job system, we usually think about socialism. How would you compare the New Work movement to socialism, be it Marxist or unionist or otherwise?
David Helmbold:
Well, Frithjof and I were discussing that this morning, at Matt’s prompting. And for the first time, this morning, Frithjof gave me the clear realization that socialism concentrates on making for a better society. New Work, on the other hand, tends to concentrate on the individual, and making the individual better. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that the two conflict. Because in fact, in order to have a better society, you’re going to have a better society if you have better people—more productive, more moral. I don’t see any insurmountable barrier between being a socialist and seeking to live New Work. The two can go hand in hand. But certainly, they are distinct things in their ultimate goal.
Frithjof Bergmann:
Yeah, very good.
Matt Teichman:
Yeah, and I think this is one of many examples in your work where you have certain commonalities with stereotypically left-wing political views, and also certain commonalities with stereotypically right-wing political views. In everyday conversation, we typically assume that being critical of the job system goes along with not focusing on the individual—instead, focusing on structural, societal patterns. So it seems like you’re opening up a new position in logical space here, where we can critique the job system, but also critique it from the individual’s point of view.
Frithjof Bergmann:
Very true. Actually, as far as I can tell, many people who claim that they have revolutionary ideas really don’t think in terms of changing the job system. And changing the job system is the most obvious revolutionary thing you can do. But it’s not constantly in the discussion. What’s in the discussion is much more other things that people can change, but not the job system.
Matt Teichman:
Frithjof Bergmann and David Helmbold, thank you so much for joining us.
David Helmbold:
Thank you.
Frithjof Bergmann:
Thank you very much for the conversation we had.
David Helmbold:
—for coming here.
Matt Teichman:
Our pleasure. Hope to have you back.
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