[Ah, but that fails to recognize the advent of "ecstatic capitalism" and "x-treme work," as described in the following from City Journal. This is truly a stunning development and one that raises the question, is this the most demented era in *all* of history?]
Ecstatic Capitalism's Brave New Work Ethic
By Kay S. Hymowitz
In 1969, I dropped out of college and drove to San Francisco with my boyfriend in a wheezy Ford Falcon to join thousands of other bell-bottomed post-adolescents hanging out in Golden Gate Park and the streets around Haight-Ashbury. It was easy enough to tell what these people stood for, but impossible to know how they made a living. Rejecting what they viewed as the soul-killing demands of bourgeois life, they were there not to work but to play, to seek what Hillary Clinton called, in her now-famous Wellesley graduation speech that year, "more immediate, ecstatic, penetrating modes of living." My boyfriend and I were no different. We shared the same career aspirations—which is to say, none. To put food in our mouths, he would take a temporary teaching job, though he thought that driving a cab sounded cool; maybe I would get a job in a store. We weren't worried: rents were cheap, we were young, we had a safety net in the form of suburban parents, and heads swimming with the utopian dreams of our generation.
To go to San Francisco today is to be struck with a weird kind of déjà vu: hordes of the idealistic young, acutely conscious of being part of a revolution that their elders only dimly understand, still dominate the city. But there the resemblance with the youthquake of 30 years ago ends. These Banana Republic-clad revolutionaries work like immigrants. They talk of nothing but work; they spend 10, 12, 14 hours, or even more at work; they dream of work. ...
It's in the more innovative sectors of the new economy that work has taken on the most existential quality, the naked self realizing itself in a test against the elements. Tom Ashbrook's memoir The Leap, a title combining athleticism and faith, is a good example of what we might call X-treme work. Nearing 40, a happily married suburban father of three, a writer and editor at the Boston Globe, Ashbrook nevertheless felt himself "a hungry soul." But if midlife crises led men of a previous generation to love affairs or sports cars, Ashbrook looked to the new economy to awaken his deadened spirit: he decided to start an Internet company.
Like an athlete, he gives up coffee in order to seek "a natural high." He wants his adventure to take him "from security to risk. From the known to the unknown. From well-grazed limits to open vistas"—and in a way it does, when, after superhuman hours, salaryless months, and reckless borrowing, he nearly lands in bankruptcy and divorce court. But by the end of his story, this reporter, who had once traveled to third-world countries with his social conscience on his sleeve, now sheds the tears of a champion in the new-economy marathon, a wholehearted convert to ecstatic capitalism, when his dot.com business finally takes off.
Though few Americans will probably ever experience the thrill of X-treme work, ecstatic capitalism's blurring of work and play affects all areas of the economy. Younger companies sponsor capture-the-flag games or afternoons of paintball tournaments. Other firms boast putting greens, horseshoe pits, and game rooms with pinball machines and Ping-Pong tables. People walk through the hallways in socks or bare feet; they decorate their cubicles with their favorite toys. Work is so fun and cool that it has even become a fashion statement. A recent Banana Republic ad campaign set in an office shows a svelte young woman holding a phone to her ear with her head thrown back, laughing hilariously, as a hand holds out another phone toward her. What's so funny? The only text is the same as the other ads in this campaign: the word "Work."
[Full text: http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_1_ecstatic_capitalisms.html]
Carl
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