“if you love what you do, it’s not ‘work,’” aka "trust the carlyle group..."

... or trust steve jobs! what do you prefer? dig into his graduation speech form 2005:

"You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

In these four sentences, the words “you” and “your” appear eight times. This focus on the individual isn’t surprising coming from Jobs, who cultivated a very specific image of himself as a worker: inspired, casual, passionate—all states agreeable with ideal romantic love. Jobs conflated his besotted worker-self with his company so effectively that his black turtleneck and jeans became metonyms for all of Apple and the labor that maintains it."

"... But by portraying Apple as a labor of his individual love, Jobs elided the labor of untold thousands in Apple’s factories, hidden from sight on the other side of the planet—the very labor that allowed Jobs to actualize his love."

"... In ignoring most work and reclassifying the rest as love, DWYL may be the most elegant anti-worker ideology around. Why should workers assemble and assert their class interests if there’s no such thing as work? 
"Do what you love" disguises the fact that being able to choose a career primarily for personal reward is a privilege, a sign of socioeconomic class."

 link to the full piece

 D  W  Y  L

 (english)

originally published on jacobinmag.com

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