Yes, Productivity is not Working

There is a fantastic article called “Productivity is not Working” by Laurie Penny. Take time to read it here.

Penny suggests that so many of us are addicted to the treadmill of our work lives, not because it takes us anywhere but only because it is comfortable and known:

This is how most of my peers have experienced the modern economy. We were told that if we worked hard, we would be safe, and well, and looked after, and the less this was true, the harder we worked.

The idea that hustling can save you from calamity is an article of faith, not fact—and the Covid-19 pandemic is starting to shake the collective faith in individual striving. The doctrine of “workism” places the blame for global catastrophe squarely on the individual: If you can’t get a job because jobs aren’t there, you must be lazy, or not hustling hard enough. That’s the story that young and young-ish people tell themselves, even as we’ve spent the whole of our brief, broke working lives paying for the mistakes of the old, rich, and stupid. We internalized the collective failures of the ruling class as personal failings that could be fixed by working smarter, or harder, or both—because that, at least, meant that we might be able to fix them ourselves.

Penny comes to the obvious conclusion that “the cult of productivity doesn’t have an answer for this crisis. Self-optimizing will not save us this time…”

Really, you should read the article.

While Penny’s article ends with a word of hope, I would like to offer what might be the Good News hidden in the title.

There are several ways to read this title (“Productivity is not Working"). One way is to say that being productive in the traditional economic sense is not helping right now. There may be a day in the future when we can all be “productive” again, but today is not that day. To put it another way, it is saying that “productivity isn’t working”. Like the refrigerator that isn’t working, in time we can fix it and it will work again.

Another way to read the title is that is productivity equals (is) not working. But how can this be? How can productivity BE not working? This is the mystery of grace in the world. If we want to gain our life, we have to loose it. The only way that God can produce fruit (be productive) in our lives is when we are not working. When we step aside and realize that we cannot save the world. When we submit to the reality that all our works can never fill the deep desires of our hearts and souls. That we will be “restless until we rest in thee.”

You may be tempted to think that what this suggests that the Good News is to live a lazy life of not doing anything. This is the false choice given to us by the soul-sucking economy - we either are working or we are lazy. We are either striving or we are abdicating. We are either growing or we are dying. These are all false choices because there is another way to life - not by working and not by being lazy but by receiving.

We have such a cult of productivity that even today some of the “best” leaders of our time are encouraging us to use this time to think through how we can be better and more productive in the future. These liturgical sermons from the priests of productivity are not new. We have heard them before. And for many of us, we build our lives around their gospel. As Penny says, “There is nothing counterrevolutionary about keeping busy.” There is something that is counterrevolutionary and that is by receiving the Gospel that productivity is not working.

Which can only mean that God is.

Secularism helping religion

Every worldview has gaps in it. These gaps that are exposed when we meet someone with a different worldview and they begin to ask questions of or about us. This is one of the great values of diversity, our strengths may supplement the weaknesses of others and others' strengths can supplement our weaknesses. 

So it is with the religious worldview. Those of us with this worldview understand that we see through a mirror only dimly. The question posed in the previous post is what does the secular worldview have to offer the gaps in the religious worldview? I would like to submit one of the things the secular worldview can help the religious worldview is, perhaps paradoxically, something that used to be the bread and butter of religion - storytelling. 

Jesus was a master storyteller when the people wanted to discuss the issues of the day, he wanted to tell stories. Religious people may be a people of the book, but at the core religious people are people of story. We tell the same story every Christmas and Easter. We use calendars to force us to bump into different stories every year. We are a people who talk about how our story and God's story intersect. 

While we may have great storytelling pedigree, we have moved farther and farther away from telling captivating stories. This is why, no matter how crummy the movie is, some Christians will get excited when a Christian movie is released - we are parched for good stories that we will celebrate even the mediocre stories.

Storytelling is something that the secular worldview is really doing very well these days. Just look at the entertainment industry. From movies to books to video games, the secular worldview understands the power of stories in the same way the religious worldview may, but the secularist worldview makes and takes time to cultivate the storytelling craft.

For instance, there is this great story about a company called the Dollar Shave Club. And in 90 seconds they tell you their story and many of us are compelled to sign up just to be a part of this creative company. A beer company can tell a story in 60 seconds and people talk about it. Even Facebook can tell a great story that borders on sermonizing. 

We will sit through commercials during a sporting event with the full knowledge that these stories are have one goal in mind - get you to buy their product/service. We know these stories are being told in order to get us to open our wallets and we will happily do so. 

Perhaps we are not annoyed at churches that ask for our money or ask us to conform our lives to that of Christ. We are more than willing to do that for companies around the world. Perhaps what we are annoyed with the most about churches is that the stories we tell are just boring and crummy. They are not compelling or engaging. Heck they may not even be interesting! Perhaps we are becoming more secularized because humanity is drawn to stories and we desperately want to hear and participate in the best stories. 

The storytelling monopoly that religion may have enjoyed in the past is now over. And this new storytelling machine, secularism, are telling some amazing stories. 

We religious can learn from the secular by listening to the stories.