The Busiest Bee

    Human life is arguably the greatest wonder of the world as we know it. The idea that life could become so organized in a universe that so heavily favors disorder continues to baffle mankind’s most prestigious thinkers. Humanity has seized life by the helm, making the entire Earth (and soon enough the cosmos) its sandbox. Despite having all of human knowledge and experience at their disposal, most find difficulty in simply assigning themselves function. The most common method to bide one’s time until death is working. Essentially, every human being on the planet partakes in some form of employment. The United States of America, in particular, very largely and openly builds its society around the principle of “hard work.” A life in which one spends about 22 years of their life preparing for work; then spend the next 40 or so years in that job. Next, you either die or are so physically and mentally incapable of carrying out basic human function that you may as well be dead. There exists an extremely viscous and unhealthy work culture in America, one that destroys lives and swings a sledgehammer at efficiency.

This culture first begins to root its tendrils of despair and manifest during school. Elementary school is preparation for middle school, which is preparation for high school, which is preparation for college, which is preparation for employment; everything from senior finals to kindergartners picking daisies in a field ultimately is to form a future career. High school is arguably where the connection between your performance academically and your future as a member of the workforce begins to become obvious. One could argue that high school work culture is even more venomous than that one would experience in full-time recruitment. In a high school setting, often every aspect of your existence within the school is assigned a grade: a number determining that action’s worth. All those grades together come to be seen as a person’s worth. The drudgery and endless labor that is seen seeping from the pores of the average office still exists in a competitive high school campus, but with an added layer of stress in the form of being able to compare worth extracted from each individual action. This experience has had an extremely adverse effect on my life. I have come to view every portion of my time that does not contribute to bolstering my grades in some manner as wasted or invaluable. At every moment in my life there is a constantly throbbing fragment of my being that perceives me as lethargic, inefficient, and delinquent. This has lead me to enroll myself in a myriad of extracurricular activities, not because they particularly spark my interest, but because they are the only way to offer solace to my overworked mind without unleashing the hell-storm of anxiety that my conscience often does while I partake in my hobbies. The worst part of the entire situation is that behavior is rewarding. By adopting such a lifestyle I am measured above my average peer. The high school environment is one that rewards detriment to one's well-being, trapping one in an unhealthy relationship of eternally searching for the most “useful” way to spend one’s time. Sadly, this is not just a problem for me.

As the world becomes more and more connected, it becomes more and more competitive. Every citizen of the world can apply to almost any institution of one’s choosing with relative ease. The amount of educated individuals continues to expand violently with the passage of time (9). Now, a citizen of almost any country can qualify to enroll in an institution that has accepted exclusively nationals of the country in which it is located for most of its history. This situation creates constant battle to appear to not only be the best performer in one’s class, in one’s school, in one’s country, but to perform among the best students of the world. In this conflict, students are subject to an almost insurmountable level of stress, more than that experienced by adults (3). This stress conquers the lives of high schoolers, impeding their academic performance, shattering their mental health, and leading them down dangerous paths of life (7). This pressure is so constricting, a large number of students are simply unable to endure it any longer. As of 2017, suicide is the second leading cause of death for Americans 15 to 24 years of age (11). The almost infection-like American work expectation to outperform one’s peers is worming its way into the lives of students: people who hardly know how to be themselves, let alone superior to the entire human population. Childhood should not be a negative part of the human experience. Youth should not be enslaved by the cruel master that is stress, it should be a time to learn, grow, make mistakes, and most importantly be young. 

Despite teenagers being victim to more stress than adults, one is not able to escape the claws of the American Dream after completing education. Labor determining wealth is a concept etched into the core of capitalism. Knowing this, it is reasonable to conclude that the United States, the self-appointed embodiment of all things capitalist, represents this behavior fervently. The United States values the concept of labor to such an extent that its government does not find it necessary to require any paid vacation or holiday leave (8) nor some form of  paid maternity or paternity leave (5), seemingly because such things are deemed contrary to the prospect of “hard work.” Americans work the most among others living in industrialized countries. While the “American Dream” and the work that often accompanies it have long been considered the ideal, it is time for both the government and inhabitants of America to seriously reconsider if the American obsession with success being a product of extreme and draining effort  is advantageous for the country. Many countries (namely Western Europe) have adopted many workers’ rights policies much more robust than America’s, working fewer hours (2), having more paid breaks (5,8), and demonstrating uncomplicated behaviors such as appointing  eating lunch while working and receiving emails outside of work hours socially frowned upon activities (1). This has brought great success to Western Europe. Europeans work much less than their American cohorts, meaning that they are happier (2,4) and are at a lesser risk of death (10). While this seems obviously  beneficial from a human perspective, on the surface it seems such practices would harm overall productivity. The University of Warwick believes this is not the case, hypothesizing that happiness actually increases overall productivity (6); thus, cultivating happiness would consequently support efficiency. Western Europe has maintained these work habits for a significant amount of time without immediately obvious detriment, begging the question of why the United States has not adjusted to an employment system that is entirely better in almost every possible facet? The American system of working longer hours has no tangible benefits, it stifles productivity, increases misery, and, overall, is pernicious to American society as a whole.

The solution to this issue, like most, is not simple. There are many factors that make it so we, as Americans, cannot directly replicate the work cultures of other industrialized countries. America is a much more populous country than those of Western Europe. The United States of America has a larger population to support; subsequently, a greater focus must be allocated to efficiency in order to ensure that American civilians are adequately provided for. While the path to creating United States legislation that is more inclusive of workers rights and ensures a decent living standard for every working person is abstract and wrought with difficulty, that should not deter the American community. By exercising their rights to petition and participate in government, American residents can cultivate a future less fixated on work and more fixated on people. On a personal level, Americans can create more value around self-care and refrain from interfering in the private lives of others. Each person can combat the pressure one feels to illicit use from each one of their actions merely by not granting one’s self the authority to decide which actions are “useful” and which are not. Simultaneously, it would be constructive to abstain from internalizing said pressure to begin with. Although it can be troublesome to overlook criticism due to the human mind’s yearning to conform to social structures, it is important to realize that one deems what is important to one’s self, and that importance should be derived from one’s own feelings rather than anyone else’s. The evidence of the toxicity of the American Dream exists in great detail. Is it not time that we, as a society, begin to remove the wool from our eyes and take meaningful action that this country so desperately requires?

Humans have won the game of life. We triumph in every conceivable measure of dominance; while other species hunt for survival, putting all their energy into simply existing throughout their usual lifespan, humans do not. Humans hunt in the plains of supermarkets, compete for dominance in the deadly forests of internet comment sections, keep warm by wearing clothes that look like they were fashioned by an intoxicated donkey that was locked in a room with nothing but socks and a stapler; humans do whatever we please. The monumental effort that most species expend by simply existing is banished from human society. Technology has made it so every basic function of being can be carried out with a capability that grows marvelously daily. With such advances in automation, why should this tremendously adverse work relationship exist? Is it not time for humanity to relax? Within each person lies the choice of organizing those around us in whatever abstract, wonderful way that comes to mind. People have fought endless wars and endured countless arguments attempting to infer the right for citizens to enforce their choice. Take advantage of the ability to add opinions to the ever-growing global melting pot that is human knowledge. We, as a collective, have the power to mold the world and how we function within it in whatever way we like; let’s mold it into something pleasant. 

Works Cited

Abadi, Mark. “11 American Work Habits Other Countries Avoid at All Costs.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 8 Mar. 2018, www.businessinsider.com/unhealthy-american-work-habits-2017-11. (1)

“Americans Work Longest Hours among Industrialized Countries, Japanese Second Longest. Europeans Work Less Time, but Register Faster Productivity Gains New ILO Statistical Volume Highlights Labour Trends Worldwide.” Americans Work Longest Hours among Industrialized Countries, Japanese Second Longest. Europeans Work Less Time, but Register Faster Productivity Gains New ILO Statistical Volume Highlights Labour Trends Worldwide, International Labour Organization (ILO), 6 Sept. 1999, www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_071326/lang--en/index.htm. (2)

Bethune, Sophie. “Teen Stress Rivals That of Adults.” Monitor on Psychology, American Psychological Association, Apr. 2014, www.apa.org/monitor/2014/04/teen-stress. (3)

Helliwell, John F, et al. “World Happiness Report.” Https://Worldhappiness.report/, Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2019, worldhappiness.report/. (4)

Livingston, Gretchen. “Of 41 Countries, Only U.S. Lacks Paid Parental Leave.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 26 Sept. 2016, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/26/u-s-lacks-mandated-paid-parental-leave/. (5)

“News & Events.” New Study Shows We Work Harder When We Are Happy, University of Warwick, 21 Mar. 2014, warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/new_study_shows/. (6)

Nyu. “NYU Study Examines Top High School Students' Stress and Coping Mechanisms.” NYU, New York University , 11 Aug. 2015, www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2015/august/nyu-study-examines-top-high-school-students-stress-and-coping-mechanisms.html. (7)

Polland, Jennifer. “25 Countries That Actually Require People To Take Vacation [Infographic].” Business Insider, Business Insider, 1 May 2013, www.businessinsider.com/countries-that-require-vacation-2013-5. (8)

Roser, Max, and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina. “Global Rise of Education.” Our World in Data, 31 Aug. 2016, ourworldindata.org/global-rise-of-education. (9)

Ross, John. “Only the Overworked Die Young.” Harvard Health Blog, Harvard University , 7 Dec. 2015, www.health.harvard.edu/blog/only-the-overworked-die-young-201512148815. (10)

Santhanam, Laura. “Youth Suicide Rates Are on the Rise in the U.S.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 18 Oct. 2019, www.pbs.org/newshour/health/youth-suicide-rates-are-on-the-rise-in-the-u-s. (11)