WORK
Why Philosophy Is Important In The Hustle Culture
The art of thinking critically rather than just grinding blindly.
Philosophy is very important today.
In a world where we get endless content and mindlessly accept what is in front of us, the study of philosophy allows us the habit to pause and look into the subject closer.
Philosophy gives us the art of problem-solving. Where it assists us in analyzing, organising ideas and questioning certain values to see if they are truly legit. In other words, it made us pause, think and question if they are truly true or just “too good to be true”.
And that is what we need today. Philosophy of the contents shared today every single second.
I’ll cut to the chase.
Hustle culture nearly killed me. It was destroying my mental health to the point I was criticizing myself relentlessly and becoming emotionally exhausted.
I’ve been in the hustle culture for nearly 2 years, and it was harsh. I was at my breaking point and frustrated all the time, the results I wanted following the advice from the gurus on social media didn’t seem to work or it just backfired.
If I haven’t stopped the grinding blindly, I would’ve killed myself in 2020 due to a lack of health management for myself. The temptation to just end everything was close, I hope I won’t have to ever think of that in the future and from now on. But at that time, it was physically and emotionally draining, my inner demon was killing me.
I’ll be honest, I’ve failed in many of my side projects in the past and still struggling. I’ve done online selling, and freelancing, but it was clear that I wasn’t making it. It wasn’t exceeding my wages, competition is tight and I wasn’t getting enough clients. My expectations were crushed by my reality.
For nearly two years (might be going to three, hope not. Trying to recover), I thought something is wrong with me. I asked these questions myself nearly everyday….
“I did what those ‘successful’ people told me, so why didn’t I seem to go to the next level? What is wrong with me? Am I not good enough? Am I a failure?”
Sometimes I still felt this way, but not as often as before. Thank God.
I also nearly fell into the trap of MLM cults. I thought that perhaps it might help me with my side projects but after learning about their strategies, I realized that the things they taught were pretty much a copy-paste from books I’ve read and things I’ve tried in the past and failed as well.
When I asked what must we do if we couldn’t find other leads or if there are losses in supplies or numbers. Or if we failed. The responses were either:
“You need to work harder.”
or
“Don’t give up! Think positive! The money will come!”
and the worst answer I got was:
“You should buy more of our supplies so that customers will know that you are in stock!”
Their answers were deeply irritating to me. It’s like they were telling me to keep buying Lehman Brother stock dips when the situation is very apparent that it’s dire.
These people are expecting me to praise the scriptures of the Law of Attraction.
I was also devastated that friends from the past contacted me just for the sake of commission sales from these MLMs, and not really for catching up. I don’t blame them for doing this as they need to reach certain targets for income, but at the same time, it was hurting that I was just a number in their eyes.
After those MLM things, they never contacted me again.
If I were to be totally honest, 2020 was a time when I had to do a lot of self-evaluation and self-talks after being emotionally damaged from blind grinds and accepting rather than thinking through it.
Hustle Culture makes you charge upfront non-stop without thinking.
“Remember, while you are sleeping, someone else is working on the dream you’re achieving.”
Sounds familiar? Well, it’s got drilled to my head relentlessly. I accepted those truths instead of looking carefully at the subject.
Social media and self-help books just made it look easy. I don’t have anything against it, nor do I fully support it.
It’s just that these things can be addictive in drugs because of the dopamine of positivity. It took me a year to finally put the self-help book down and actually do something else.
I find that this hustle culture may only work if you know that the thing that you’re working on is the one that your skills and the market demands meet. When we are doing what we love and know that we can make money out of it, that’s breath and life for most of us.
In other words, if we are truly committed to this journey. That could also mean there are things that we may need to sacrifice, after all, it’s part of the meaning of life as Jordan Peterson said:
“The purpose of life, as far as I can tell… is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.”
Now, I don’t recommend people to start blindly finding their own purpose in life. Best to approach it slowly first and examine the things you come across in life and try them out. After all, quality beats quantity and sometimes vice versa.
It’s hard to draw a line when the results may or may not appear. Thankfully, Jordan Peterson's quotes were not taken out of context for business motivation posts.
Hustle culture doesn't teach you that.
They keep rubbing your face about how working hard can help you get the rich level of Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos.
But no one told us that these big people got super-rich in their 40s-50s! They did work hard and smart by doing something that they love, but not after many failures and obstacles they went through. Did they tell you how getting fired by your own company sucks? Do you think the law of attraction works when you are at a low point in your life?
The drive is that their passion to do what they love when the market demands it got them to where they are today.
And the worst part is that the people who are pushing hustle culture are preying on millennials and Gen Zs. Fake gurus on social media are selling self-help equipment for us just so that they can be rich.
I stumbled across this meme on 9gag’s Instagram and it pretty much sums up what’s happening in this type of culture:
I was glad that when this was posted, I knew I wasn’t the only one thinking about it.
The day when my younger cousin messaged me confirmed it to me. Note that my younger cousin never messaged me unless it’s something important, but two months ago, he sent me a Whatsapp text asking for a small pep talk about it.
“Ci (Big sister in Indonesian),” he texted me, and from this point, I’ll be paraphrasing what he said, “I’m really tired.”
“What do you mean?” I texted back.
“All these gurus telling me to work hard and all, I felt like they are all lying to me,” he wrote, “And one of the influencers I admire, Indra Kenz, is facing jail time.”
“Oh really? Why is that?”
“It turns out he was promoting gambling to his followers, they lost a lot of money while he took their money.”
I was appalled that some prick online is targeting young people like my cousin about money. I nearly fell to these people as well back in 2020 and that’s why I took a long break from social media. Thankfully my cousin didn’t fall for this trap too.
I quickly wrote back, “Okay, that’s good. So you don’t have to follow scammers like him again.”
“That’s the thing now, ci,” he texted back, “I can’t trust anything influencers say anymore! They told me to work hard and these people turn out to be scammers! What do I do?”
At that moment, I didn’t really know what or how to answer him.
Philosophy encourages critical thinking
The only self-help book that I really admire is 12 Rules for Life. That self-help book is the only book that doesn't force you to think like them, rather asks you to improve the small habits in your life and “consider the cost of continuing.”
That book touches on a lot of philosophical and psychological aspects of doing simple things that can cause bigger impacts. It got me thinking a lot.
My favourite rule from his book is “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not others.”
In summary, that part of the chapter told us to be careful who we compare ourselves to as we don’t know what they had to sacrifice behind our backs or what they had to go through.
After reading the entire book, I had a lot of rethinking to do and watched his lectures and other philosophical videos to get more insight into the life we do and, his favourite topic, “What’s the meaning of life?”
Hack, even Pewdiepie’s philosophical aspects about happiness were starting to make sense.
I won’t tell you how many videos, and articles I’ve watched and read about philosophical topics, but it really helped me rethink some choices that are offered to me nowadays.
Critical thinking in philosophy is just another level. And it’s not something self-helps have.
Self-helps nowadays are getting bad reputations because of their repetitive copy-paste works from other books.
But for philosophy? That’s not something you can copy-paste. It’s clear you have to experience something in life that drive you to really think rationally and morally.
They really question the 5 Ws and 1 H. What, when, where, who, why, and how. They truly question the subject of something to get a clearer answer rather than just touching the surface. Sometimes, they made you think too much. But at least it wouldn’t be too over-dramatized.
I recently watched an interview of Douglas Gresham, the step-son of CS Lewis (Author of Narnia), where he talked about what Mr Lewis taught him in life. And that is:
“He (CS Lewis) taught me to look deeper into the millstone than simply the surface. Everything that comes across in life should be examined, not simply accepted. And that includes religion and personal problems.” — Douglas Gresham, 1998.
When I watched it, I realized how philosophy kind of saved me from blindly accepting what people might call “Great” or “Please buy it!”. Plus, it saved my pocket from blind investments too.
I also find that listening to people is much more interesting than just blind preaching too. I was guilty of obnoxious preachings in the past, now I try to tone it down. If my school friends were to see me now, they’d think I’ve turned into an introvert or something.
That genre truly taught me to really think carefully instead of just touching the surface.
Philosophy opens doors to discuss deeper and sensitive topics without having hell break loose.
I recently spoke to a Muslim colleague of mine about religion (I’m a catholic). Long story short, it was interesting and fun. We were not preaching to each other about the religion we were in, but rather having an open discussion about it. In the end, I was interested to listen to what they preach about and she was also interested in what we preach about.
We went so deep into the rabbit hole of religion that I missed the road I had to turn.
Even though we had disagreements about who Jesus is, we believe that He’s an important figure to us all and that He taught us about love and peace. We praise our Gods differently, but at the end of the day, it’s our actions that speak on the morals we follow.
Today, she is a very close and reliable colleague of mine. We helped and covered each other at work.
Philosophy helps you to pull the reins of blind grinding and preaching
I recently got back to social media, and spotting bull crap ads or self-validating posts became more apparent now. Sadly, there are still many of those posts that would make people turn away from social media at some point.
Once again, I’m not for social media, but I’m not against it either. There are some rather good posts by really humble people like Sadhguru, Jordan Peterson, and even Robert Downey JR.
But the majority of people on social media are doing it for the notifications or to be some kind of influencers by showing flashy or luxurious objects.
Recently, I caught someone lying to me that they were prideful of the business they made and how successful it is in two years, some even less.
True, the business is running well, and I’ve seen it. But after I asked several questions about the process to make the business run, I found out that they were either helped by their parent’s money or by creating some repetitive self-help words on social media.
For the social media platform where they create posts about self-help, perhaps I can still tolerate it there. But there are some that are clearly in it for your follows.
I read a comment section somewhere where it says:
“You can make money online by making content about how to make money online.”
I remember that quote got tons of likes.
Now, if I want to spot a businessman, and I mean, a true businessman, I look for the older people or people who are humble. Because from the stories I heard from them, it’s clear that they had been through a lot of stuff and they had to swallow a lot of their pride, and it’s not easy to do that.
Balance & Inner Peace Through Chaos
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still working after my doing my own full-time job. I still want some things I create outside work to grow. The difference I made now is that I toned down the concept of “working hard for the sake of working hard”.
I find that if our vision doesn’t align with the result we expect, we’d be disappointed.
And the feeling of disappointment is really tough. I remember crying after giving my heart and soul for something and the result I got was shot down and burned.
I wouldn’t say that we should lower our expectations, but at the same time, putting high expectations is the chaos that breeds disappointment.
It’s sort of in-between. The Yin and Yang. You work hard, but don’t be too hard to the point you’re risking your own life. But also don’t be lazy to the point you’re risking your own future.
So how do we know what’s the right thing to do for our own life?
I suppose, thinking rationally first instead of blindly going after it makes more sense.
And philosophy could come in to halt our blind grind.
