Cynicism

 In the sociological quest to understand why so many people are leaving their jobs this year—a phenomenon that has been dubbed "the Great Resignation"—it's easy enough to understand how pandemic-era burnout would be a factor. Harder though, is knowing at what stage one has the right to lay claim to experiencing it oneself. One can well imagine how health care workers, food service workers, warehouse and package delivery workers—and everyone else on the front lines of the crisis—would feel burned out (and then some). But what about those of us who work in relatively cushy office jobs? 

In many of the more tangible ways, after all,—especially if we don't have young children—our lives became easier after COVID hit. We work from home. We roll out of bed and are prepared for the day in the amount of time it takes to load Microsoft Teams and pour ourselves a cup of coffee. What possible claim could we have to feeling burned out? 

Yet, when the New York Times published an article describing the tell-tale physical and mental symptoms of the burnout phenomenon, I did recognize much of what I had experienced off-and-on for the past six months at least. The insomnia at night. The dread of opening the first email in the morning. Most of all, a more nebulous and existential unease that a friend described to me as a loss of faith, a loss of sense of purpose. 

Intriguingly, the article cites "cynicism" as among the emotional symptoms of the burnout phenomenon; and in a related article, the Times notes that "burnout rates tend to be higher in people who view their work as a calling, and 'not just a paycheck.'" They cite educators as one example of the kinds of helping professions that can be prey to this form of burnout and its attendant "cynicism"—which we could perhaps define as a mechanism of ego-defense for people who are confronting a loss of meaning, faith, or sense of purpose—but I flatter myself that people in any sort of non-profit job might be vulnerable to the same thing. 

Why should people in "callings" have more to fear from cynicism than other people? Part of it, surely, is that these jobs nearly always involve accepting some sort of penalty in exchange for doing their work—lower pay, more stressful work, loss of prestige and social power, or at the very least being seen as eccentric and having "something to explain" about one's choice of career. What motivates people to cough up this cosmic fee is that they feel it is worth it in order to serve some "higher cause"—one that is nearly always an abstraction—God, humanity, social justice, advancing knowledge in society, etc. 

This means that, for people working "not just for the paycheck," an awful lot is riding on maintaining belief in the abstraction in question. Because a loss of faith in the abstraction would mean that they are worse off than where they started. They took the penalty voluntarily and it was all for nothing—a puff of smoke, something insubstantial and unreal. (Whereas the highly-paid, by contrast, at least have the consolation of the paycheck, whatever the status of their private faith.)

One may counter that many people in helping professions don't work for an abstraction—they work on behalf of specific people. But even the most temperamentally-well-suited teacher, social worker, or public defender must have days when they are exhausted by a particular student or client; presumably what keeps them going in those moments—if they do keep going—is belief in an ideal. People deserve a good legal defense, they tell themselves, no matter what they have done or how difficult they may be to work with; people deserve a fair shot at our society's opportunities, regardless of who they are; and so on. 

In my own field of policy advocacy, people may be working with greater or lesser degrees of abstractness; but I submit they are all dealing with abstractions nonetheless, by virtue of the work's nature. Someone may, to be sure, advance a cause not only because they believe it is just, but because they or their family stand to gain from it directly. Indeed, the most effective advocates generally are people with skin in the game, the "Davids," who keep fighting at the most difficult moments because they have no choice not to.  But even for people in this position, the choice to advocate for a policy change, rather than a personal exemption from the rules, has already required an act of abstraction—they have seen their personal  experience as an instance of a larger pattern, and their own fate as bundled up with that of millions. 

But suppose one loses faith in the millions, or in the idea that one's own wellbeing is implicated in theirs? As a character ponders in Henry Adams's satiric novel, Democracy, in describing how she came to lose faith in the cause of social betterment—"What gave peculiar sanctity to numbers? Why were a million people [...] in any way more interesting than one person?" Or suppose one gives up on any of the other abstractions. Suppose one loses one's faith in God, church, knowledge, humanity, the masses, the party, building socialism, or any of the other causes for which people give things up or choose off-beat and less financially-remunerative careers? 

What makes this loss of faith so perilous for people who pursue "callings" is not only that—as we have seen—so much depends for them on maintaining belief in the abstraction for which they sacrifice; it is also that the rest of society counts on them to be the last bastion of the faith. A doubting member of the congregation draws comfort from the thought that the minister or the rabbi at least still keeps faith with the old gods. A well-heeled member of profane society feels more at ease with their own moral compromises knowing that others are out there serving the common good; they may even take comfort from the thought that they can pay it forward by cheering the do-gooders on. 

This is why people in helping professions who experience burnout and cynicism not only have to reckon with the feelings themselves, but also the sense of taboo about ever expressing them. They cannot admit to losing their faith, because they are society's only hope that belief in the abstractions will continue. If the teachers do not believe that education is valuable or that knowledge can be advanced, who will? If the policy advocates do not believe that social change is possible through governmental institutions or that changing policies in a particular way would do any good, who can be trusted to maintain that belief? 

I am reminded of the opening sections of Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, which include one of the best depictions of "burnout" among the helping professions ever penned. Duddy's teacher, the honest Mr. MacPherson, is driven to drink by the young Kravitz's relentlessly disruptive behavior, culminating at last in a nervous breakdown. While just on the brink of his personal catastrophe, he finds himself at a party in one scene with some old school chums from his graduating class at McGill. 

One of these friends, now a successful corporate type, touts MacPherson as "the most brilliant student of our class at McGill." 

"He could have been a success at anything he wanted," he continues, "Instead, he's devoted his life to teaching." 

The friend's backhanded compliment reveals him for a believer in the myth of the renunciate. He, as one of the profane, likes to imagine that someone at least is out there maintaining the old rites and keeping the sacred flame burning, through an act of deliberate self-sacrifice. MacPherson does not have the heart to disabuse him aloud, but he thinks inwardly: "It was clear that they still took him for the freshly-scrubbed idealist who had left McGill twenty years ago. They had no idea that he was exhausted, bitter, and drained, and that given the chance to choose again he would never become a teacher." 

Exhausted, bitter, drained... almost precisely the symptoms that the New York Times pieces identify as most characteristic of "burnout." The terms they use for it are "exhaustion, cynicism and inefficacy," but that amounts to much the same thing, and the example they cite is the experience of a teacher much like Mr. MacPherson. Every other helping profession could no doubt provide similar examples. The Times' own reporting in 2010 detailed the phenomenon of burnout among the clergy, and that was long before COVID-19 was so much as a twinkle in a bat coronavirus' eye. 

What is to be done about this form of "calling profession" burnout? For one thing, people in the "callings" should lift the taboo on expressing their feelings of lost faith, at least among each other. Cynicism can never be overcome if it can't even be acknowledged in the first place. 

But the bigger issue is with the contradictions inherent in the "renunciate myth" itself. 

To renounce something truly, after all, means to withdraw any claim to it. It means actually giving something up, whether it be power, prestige, etc. Most people, however, even in the helping professions, do not really want to part with any of those things. If they sacrifice, they want their sacrifice to be known and celebrated for being voluntary. They want, to borrow a line from the poet Anne Sexton, "to wear their martyrdom like a string of pearls." 

They may even intend it for a final convolution and garnishing in the quest for prestige itself. "Look at me," they say, "I am so assured in my social position that I can appear to forfeit it, at least in its most visible form of a hefty paycheck." A kind of vocational version of Nancy Mitford's counter-intuitive "U" English.

People who enter the helping professions with this narrative in mind will quickly find that society does not value their sacrifice as highly as they do. People whose own efforts are directed toward money and power will, at best, see their choice as perverse; at worst, they will interpret it as no choice at all, and assume it was made simply out of weakness or a failure to hack it in the more highly-paid professions. The belief that one will receive plaudits from such people, at least in sufficient quantities to console one for the privations of one's chosen destiny, is bound to be disappointed. 

As Orwell once wrote along similar lines of Shakespeare's King Lear: "[He] renounces his throne but expects everyone to continue treating him as a king. He does not see that if he surrenders power, other people will take advantage of his weakness[.]" Orwell's point, which he then extends to Tolstoy—who famously hated the play—is that if one really wishes to renounce power, one must not expect that one will become more powerful as a result of it. The sacrifice must be made in full knowledge that one is actually giving something up. 

All of which is perhaps too much to ask of ordinary mortals like you and me; and yet, there is enough demand for teachers, ministers, policy advocates and public defenders in this world that the professions cannot wholly forswear the talents of ordinary mortals. There are not enough saints or fully-enlightened beings on this earth to fill the ranks of every profession that purports to be a "calling." But what other option is there, apart from the grand renunciation, made with eyes wide open and in full knowledge of the suffering and the loss of prestige that will result? 

Perhaps one can take the job, but spurn the underlying myth of renunciation. Perhaps one can question whether a sacrifice was really made at all; or—if the job feels like a sacrifice, perhaps that is a sign that one selected the wrong one, or that one has been doing it for too long, or in the wrong way. This may be a concession to human selfishness; but, if you prefer, it can also be seen as a recognition that the most effective human efforts in the advancement of any cause are not those made by the grudging and unwilling, but by those who "come alive"—Howard Thurman's phrase—when they are doing it. 

Perhaps, then, we can learn to recognize as true of ourselves what Philip Larkin once wrote of a character in one of his poems: "He was out for his own ends/Not just pleasing his friends/And if it was such a mistake/He still did it for his own sake." There was no great renunciation, therefore; there was no sacrifice. Due to whatever facts or forces, whether of personality or circumstance, we chose as we did because we wanted to. We wanted this job, and we chose to take it.

And if we choose to continue from this point, it should only be because we still want it. The abstraction on its own will never be enough to sustain us. All the inspiring words and admonitions to keep the faith alive will not be enough if we are not ourselves alive. In the end, one has to value one's work because it does something to keep one's own spirit living, the abstraction be damned. If we do continue, therefore, we should do so because it feeds us, rather than because it feeds the millions. Not because the millions do not hunger or need feeding. Rather because we can do little to feed others when we are starving ourselves.