Ergophobia
From work-shy to workaholic
November 23, 2009 17 comments
I have just acquired a copy of The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, and though I can’t pretend to have grokked the classification scheme in the hour I have spent with it so far, it is a thing of beauty. Consulting it with regard to our discussion about professionalism, I happened upon this pair of entries, in which a sweeping historical narrative is poetically condensed:
03.10.01.04 (n.) Attitudes to work
solidarity 1885– · work-shyness 1904– · ergophobia 1905– · work-mindedness 1960– · technophobia 1965– · Luddism 1967– · workaholism 1968– · technomania 1969– · Ludditism 1971– · technofear 1980–
03.10.01.04 (adj.) Attitudes to work
laboursome 1551–1620 · workful 1854– · work-shy 1904– · work-minded 1954– · Luddite 1957– · workaholic 1974–
Interestingly, professionalism does not appear as “an attitude to work” in HTOED, ((Browsing through the various cognates of “professionalism”, I did learn that professional has been applied to monks, and that the practice of calling tools or equipment professional dates from as long ago as 1955.)) but I think that is really the contemporary sense we were after in the case where a boss asks an employee to “be more professional” — what is being demanded is not mere skilfulness in doing the job, but an attitude towards the job. You will not only do this, the boss instructs, you will commit more of your being to it. It seems to me at least possible, however, that such psychic totalitarianism is likely to lead to an increase in ergophobia (delightful word!) and thus turn out to be self-defeating?
‘Ergophobia’ is a good one (and new to me). Words ending “phobia” tend to connote an irrational fear. For example here’s one medical definition I came across:
Why irrational? Perhaps there’s an element of Unspeak here? After all, we wouldn’t say bombphobia, car-crashphobia, decapitationphobia, etc, but the last time I looked at the stats, more deaths were caused by work than by war. Two million workers die each year due to occupational injuries and illnesses, more than double the figure for deaths from warfare. Work kills more people than alcohol and drugs together. (Source: UN International Labor Organisation SafeWork programme, April 2002).
Linking professionalism to ergophobia:
Professionalism has two main connotations for me: establishment and competent. You don’t have to belong to an establishment to be competent, but perhaps being recognised as competent requires “belonging” (in an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers sense) – a cause for anxiety, for me at least.
I initially thought this might be an irrational hatred of ergative constructions, which as an Englishman living in the US, I have to cop to. But I find Ergophobia is also an iPhone app through which purchasers of surfwear can “keep up to date on new product releases” – that is, a voluntary marketing spam signup “utility,” which strikes me as, if not rich in unspeak, at least a perfect product of unthink.
But wait, there’s more – how Ergo presents itself in the business press:
ERGO is committed to creating core, quality products for consumers who live a lifestyle marked by originality and distinction. ERGO’s team of designers thrives off natural progression and building a classic line that will mature over time. In addition, ERGO has cultivated a solid team of riders that support the brand’s image and raw style.“ (emphasis added)
Now I ask you; if you are marked by originality and distinction do you wish to see yourself as a follower of cultivated riders that support the brand’s image, no matter how solid? Are Ergo offering us a peek behind the curtain of their advertising Unspeak? Respeaking for another audience? And finally, what are the philosophico-sartorial implications of a classic line that will mature over time?
So it would be safer to be soldier in, say, Chad or Colombia, than to work at Tescos or as an advertisement manager in Twickenham? I’d fly to Baghdad for safety, but I just learned that I am more likely to die in a plane crash, a car crash, or boating accident than from an explosion in Iraq, so how do I get there?
I am partial to the idea that “ergophobia” is unspeaky: a disinclination to work cannot be accepted as a reasonable view (or where would we be?), so it has to be pathologised.
Can anyone think of any terms for a disinclination to work that are even neutral, let alone positive? So far it’s all “workshy”, “lazy”, “ergophobic”, &c…
I was hoping The Idler would come to my rescue, but after I found Alain de Botton there I couldn’t really be bothered to go on searching.
Once you have found Alain de Botton your search is surely over, whatever you were looking for.
sw writes:
What I had in mind was the kind of take on the subject expressed by T-shirts which say “WORK KILLS”. (“War kills” wouldn’t have the same effect).
I like the term “ludic”. Here’s to a ludic revolution. Frankly, I’m not even convinced that work is a cure for poverty, never the mind the other things it’s supposed to do for us (hold communities together, stop us watching daytime TV, prevent our souls from being playgrounds for Satan, etc).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludic
I think the Idler is great. I don’t care if they feature airport philosophers – so there!
Work doesn’t kill people, lazers do.
I really can’t disagree?
Didn’t de Botton just write a whole book about work? Surely the answers to the questions that have come up today – and many, many more – are thus available, right?
Almost certainly?
To shift from professionalism to the pedestrian, which may really be being professional in my way of thinking:
I was envious you have the new Historical Thesaurus of the OED, so immediately flipped to my country’s Amazon site to see the cost. Not bad $CAN 452.50 (GST aka VAT included) in 3 -4 weeks. Then I thought, I’ve accounts with Amazon in both the states & UK and my dollar is doing well so, from where to order. Then I became professional.
Key elements to consider (all prices include shipping):
To get from the states in 7-10 days it would cost $CAN 363.32.
To get from the UK in 6-8 days it would cost $CAN 374.27.
To get from Canada in 3 – 4 weeks it would cost $CAN 452.50
Other considerations:
Coming in from the states Canada Customs usually nails me for the GST/VAT whereas flying in from the UK my books usually get a pass.
What to do:
Decide between $CAN 374.27 (out of the UK) or $CAN 381.49 (out of the states which includes the 5% GST/VAT with which I know I’ll be hit)
Decisions:
ORDER from Amazon UK
Out come:
Done
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Sorry for the poor formatting my PowerPoint package has crashed on my new MacBook Pro
re: #1 The definition quoted by Bruce puzzles me: it suggests that fear of work and fear of the workplace are the same thing; but they’re not. And I suspect that many people suffer from fear of particular kinds of work – jobs that are routine and offer little space for exercise (intellectual or physical), or that put you in contact with bitter, impatient members of the public. Fear of any kind of work at all is something different.
“After all, we wouldn’t say bombphobia, car-crashphobia, decapitationphobia, etc, but the last time I looked at the stats, more deaths were caused by work than by war. Two million workers die each year due to occupational injuries and illnesses, more than double the figure for deaths from warfare. Work kills more people than alcohol and drugs together.”
Whether we say bomb-phobia, etc, depends on context and degree of fear displayed: if a teacher living in Chepstow refused to leave the house on account of the bombs, that would count as irrational; if a soldier on service in Helmand started to act like that – well, he’d probably get some kind of diagnosis, but I think most of us would see where he was coming from. I’m just rephrasing SW’s point at #4, I suppose.
“Two million workers die each year due to occupational injuries and illnesses, more than double the figure for deaths from warfare.”
Not in the Congo; not in Darfur. In Britain, yes, many more people die from work; but then, we are exposed to work much, much more often than to warfare
Also, avoiding bombs, decapitation, etc, is at all times rational because they have no upside: but work is how we get the means to live; it’s also, for many people, a social activity and a source of identity; the harm it does people is mostly quite subtle; and we all know at least some people who enjoy it. So being afraid of it – as opposed to disliking it – is not usually the result of a rational analysis of its costs and benefits.
Re: #5 Do we have any evidence that the word “ergophobic” is applied routinely to people who just don’t like working? If not, I don’t see that they’re being pathologised.
I can, however, see the point of trying to find a better word for disinclination to work. You wouldn’t find Robert Louis Stevenson, of “Apology for Idlers” fame, wanking around with a word like “ludic”: what’s wrong with “playful”?
I’m speaking here, by the way, as somebody who is at least borderline ergophobic: I enjoy my work – writing – a great deal when I can get on with it; but I spend a vast amount of my time flinching from it and constructing elaborate avoidance strategies such as commenting on blogs.
Well now, you have prompted me to look it up in the OED, and it’s an interesting story: ergophobia was coined (by W.D. Spanton in the British Medical Journal) as a joke term for labourers he believed to be shirking:
But then three months later, someone in the Daily Chronicle appears to take this as the report of an actual medical discovery:
And so it apparently stuck.
Spanton’s original talk can be read here; and there is a rather more humane letter in reply complaining about the term.
Steven @ 14 – absolutely fascinating. A medical journal piece from 1905 containing the same kinds of framing/metaphor as a 2009 Daily Mail editorial on the workshy, benefits cheats and the “culture of dependence”, etc. I particularly liked this line:
The real enemy (as any Calvinist knows): a pleasant existence.
The works of P.G. Wodehouse might be a good place to look. I looked in a thesaurus but the best it could offer was Thackeray’s “dignified otiosity”.
“And so it apparently stuck.”
But did it stick? The origin is, as Bruce says, fascinating; but I still don’t know that an actual diagnosis of ergophobia is at all common, or that it is used to pathologise (and I can see that it could be quite attractive to pathologise oneself: “God, no, I’m not lazy, I’m suffering from ergophobia” – cf. “sex addiction”, the pathologised version of “inability to keep it in one’s pants”).
Re: non-pejorative terms for disinclination to work: isn’t the difficulty that the imperative to work is so deeply embedded in our culture that any word referring to it becomes pejorative? “Workshy” in its construction strikes me as neutral – I don’t think it’s an insult to call somebody “camera-shy”, or indeed “shy”. Any word we come up with to designate aversion to work would, if widely adopted, swiftly become a term of abuse.
Flâneurism?