The cultural ideal of a postmodern economic society is the wanderer.
Richard Sennett captures this figure perfectly: adaptive, always oriented toward the short term, migrating from job to job, more focused on new potentials than hard-earned craftsmanship; regretting nothing, endlessly willing to change and leave behind past experience.
The cultural ideal of the wanderer harks back to the Romantic tradition—from Wordsworth’s solitary walkers to Baudelaire’s flâneur. Yet while the Romantics saw wandering as liberation and transcendence, today’s postmodern wanderer embodies what Lasch termed the “minimal self”: alienated, perpetually displaced, never truly dwelling. The freedom once found in solitary walking has become the existential homelessness of the gig worker.
Such wandering, the avatars of new capitalism loudly proclaim, will ultimately deliver more authenticity—an efficient, nomadic self, navigating what Bauman called “liquid modernity”: a world where institutions, identities, and relationships dissolve into fluid market exchanges, all governed by the tyranny of now. Supposedly, this postmodern dromology—the relentless acceleration of life—heralds boundless prosperity and exponential technological opportunities that benefit everyone.
But is it true? Is the constant demand for change and adaptability really the best path to inclusive development? Historically, (Northern) European societies have achieved a better balance of relative stability and shared prosperity than their Atlantic counterparts. Social capitalism—the art of taming the market rather than surrendering to it—provided not only commercial stability, but also the preconditions for meaningful life planning and identity.
More importantly: are our modern workers truly willing to continually shape and reshape themselves, endlessly adapting to the “creative destruction” so fervently celebrated by the disciples of unfettered markets? Do they relish the splendid isolation of our post-industrial global villages, where real relationships are replaced by anonymous transactions, and deep roots give way to endless drift?
Sennett is skeptical. He contends that most people need a sustainable life narrative. They take pride in mastery of particular skills and value the profound experiences that mould their lives. They rely on those “beneficial constraints”—institutions and boundaries that buffer them from the storms of existential precarity, and resist “the colonization of the lifeworld” by market forces.
Perhaps, then, our real question is: which future of work is best for those ordinary people doing the work, rather than for those reaping ever greater profits?
Lately, I hear many grand pronouncements about what our working life ought to become. Yet very few of those lofty visions seem to reflect the actual voices or realities of the countless “small women and men” whose everyday efforts and sacrifices keep our organizations running—and who may not be so eager to wander into an ultra-capitalistic future just yet.
#technology #work #development #futureofwork #leadership
Published: 01.07.2023