Hustle. Culture.
If you would’ve told me a decade ago that the majority of humans within North America would define their worth, content, and activities by how much they were doing at a given time - I would’ve said “I’m 14. I don’t care." (That’s a lie, I would’ve cared.) By that age I had an immense sense of empathy for any and all around me, and had just come out of a long affair with poetry. Words had become my microscope into the minute details of human nature.
What does it mean to be a good human?
Do the metrics we measure ourselves against truly matter?
Are we all just actively becoming dust with each and every firing synapse?
These were things I worried over and pondered when I should’ve been studying Othello or Their Eyes Were Watching God. I had grown up in a relatively small and slow-paced town. One where I could walk to the grocery store or bike over to friends’ houses with ease. The people were the embodiment of ‘southern hospitality’ and ensured that everyone who wanted a seat at the table had one. To think that being busy would define the people around me would’ve sounded incredulous, and yet.. We fast forward to the mid 2010’s and it seems that if you don’t have a personal brand, a website, or a billion other side projects going on you are somehow less. Being busy has become a covert term for “cool, coy, and successful".” It is the latter word that we humans tend to focus on SO much - this idea of our time being occupied equating success.
We create hustle culture in order to insinuate that we can do it all effortlessly and without thought. Those two words have come to define a lot of how we interact with ourselves and with society as a whole. Our self worth is no longer tied to the image of ourselves, but to the things we can create and manifest. The people around us, the projects we work on, how aware or educated we are on issues, how skilled we are, how caring, empathetic, our stamina, our ability to NOT ask for help… These things are supposed to be indicators of how valuable a human is - a have versus as have-not, if you will. They say nothing about a person but we take them for intellectual, emotional, and monetary gain.
A person should not be defined by what they can create for they are at the mercy of pomp and circumstance. Were they born in a country without war? Where there is a premise of equality? Are they lighter in skin tone, or are they expected to use lightening creams? Do they have access to clean water, sanitation treatment centers, food, the internet? These things all affect how “valuable” a person can become by today’s metrics because if you do not KNOW about the things going on in the world through projects and people who have access to these tools, then those people without do not matter nor do they exist. This is the issue I take with Hustle Culture. It is the glorification of circumstance outside of our control to give structure to the things we think we can control. Humans are constantly trying to do more and evade the thought of slowing down. Of being bored. Of being with their own mind. We neglect curiosity for the pursuit of societal clout. We deem success to be those with eyes on them and confer amongst likes and comments that these people must be valuable in some way because they’re in our feeds. We don’t see the intrinsic value in each other, and that is something that haunts me daily. People shouldn’t matter to you because of what they can provide or add to your life - they matter because they’re human.
Occam’s Razor dictates that the simplest answer is the one most likely to be true, and in this instance I believe it to be so. Humans are intrinsically valuable. Simply for being human.
*There is a lot of nuance within this conversation, as Occam’s Razor has a lot of issues, as does the idea of intrinsic value. When I say humans are intrinsically valuable, I mean those who are alive and have been born - not fetuses. Those who have died were intrinsically valuable, but are left to be interpreted by their works, legacy, and family who succeed them. This is just my personal opinion and the issue I take with North America glorifying being busy. It’s seen with a positive connotation and I think this should be examined further. Rest is just as important, and knowing how to build those boundaries is key to not buying into this idea.
