On the Subject of Bullshit
I recently read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. The premise of the book is that a lot of corporate jobs serve very little purpose and provide employees with little meaning and/or fulfillment. This lack of meaning combined with pretending a bullshit job is important, creates a lot of psychological turmoil for people. It’s an interesting read and got me thinking about bullshit in general. Let’s start with work.
Is Your Job Bullshit?
According to Graeber, in order for a job to truly be bullshit, the employee has to know their job is pointless but also, as an unspoken condition of their employment, can’t ever admit their job is bullshit. I think a lot of corporate employees fall into this category. Almost every job I’ve had before Sun Potions was total bullshit. It was a contest to see how busy we could all pretend to be after getting our real work done by 11am. Some people make up pointless work for themselves to fill the rest of the day. Every email or meeting becomes urgent. Some people scroll on social media all day. Some people, if they’re lucky, might be able to use the time to do something that isn’t bullshit. This is why remote work is so cool. For a lot of employees the lack of meaningful work and being forced to hang around an office all day pretending create angst and depression. Even in high paying, socially prestigious jobs, a lack of real meaning in one’s work and a day filled with pointlessness is hard to shoulder.
Our Food is Definitely Bullshit!
Maybe your job is bullshit or maybe it’s not. If you’re a doctor or firefighter it’s not. If you’re a corporate videographer, it probably is. But our food is definitely bullshit! It’s engineered to be addictive and make us just sick and fat enough so we keep on showing up to our bullshit jobs in order to keep paying for bullshit medications. You know why your blood pressure is high? Or why you feel anxious all the time? Because you’re sitting under fluorescent lights all day eating pop-tarts and Papa John’s Pizza. Go outside and walk around, buy your food at a local farmer’s market, and figure out a way to carve out some meaning. Other places in the World, like Europe or Australia, have better food. I don’t mean better in the sense of it tastes better or is prepared better. I mean better like it isn’t filled with bullshit. I spent eight days in Iceland last October and felt incredible. Even the candy there is made of less bullshit. It’s still a Snickers bar so eat sparingly, but it contains a fraction of the bullshit compared to an American Snickers bar.
Our Healthcare is Bullshit!
Before we get into this, this isn’t about doctors. Doctors aren’t bullshit. They’re awesome. I believe all doctors become doctors because they’re driven to help people. In fact, being a doctor is a surefire way to not wind up with a bullshit job. But the U.S. and a lot of the industrialized world has a treatment over prevention mentality. In recent years it seems like this has started to shift, but there’s still a ton of emphasis on treating diseases instead of arming people with the tools and knowledge to prevent them altogether. Not to mention healthcare is typically tied to employment. So you keep showing up to your bullshit job because you need bullshit healthcare. Our bullshit healthcare system makes it difficult to justify leaving your bullshit job because if you do, you won’t have any healthcare, bullshit or not. It seems to me that small businesses and entrepreneurs would really thrive and flourish if healthcare wasn’t contingent on working for a bullshit company. This leads me to my next rant.
Big Corporations are Bullshit!
Amazon, Walmart, Tyson, DuPont, etc., are killing us. Literally not figuratively. These mega-corps are perhaps the greatest proliferators of bullshit on the planet. DuPont has been putting PFAs (forever chemicals) in our air and water for fifty years! And they lobby against environmental policies to protect our drinking water and food from these carcinogens. That’s some real fucking bullshit right there! Amazon has single-handedly put so many smaller operations out of business, all in the name of capitalism. This isn’t capitalism. It’s bullshit. True capitalism is being able to start your own business without the fear of losing healthcare, or choosing which hardware store in town to buy hinges at. Being forced to shop at Amazon and Home Depot is just bullshit.
Our Skincare is Bullshit!
If you’ve been following Sun Potions for a while, you knew this section was coming! Whatever you’re buying from CVS or wherever, be it sunscreens or lotions or body washes, it’s all bullshit. Next time you go shopping for some skincare items, read the label and look up the ingredients. You’re gonna be appalled. There’s a great app called Yuca that allows you to scan a product’s barcode and see how it ranks in terms of safety. This isn’t a sponsored thing. I’m not affiliated with Yuca. You can also use it on food so I apologize for not mentioning it earlier! That’s bullshit (not really)! You already know I’m very passionate about using skincare items that aren’t bullshit so I won’t put too much of a product plug for Sun Potions in here. Turns out, the world we live in happens to be a ton of fucking bullshit. Everything from our jobs to our skincare. The best we can do is to carve out our own meaning, spend time with our friends and families, and try our best to live healthy, authentic lives.