Do what you love : and other lies about success and happiness

**The American claim that we should love and be passionate about our job may sound uplifting, or at least, harmless, but __Do What You Love__ exposes the tangible damages such rhetoric has leveled upon contemporary society.****__Do you love what you do?__** This mantra is so often repeated that it has become part of the American ethos. Find a career that you’re passionate about. Work hard and maintain a good attitude, be persistent, and all good things will come to you: wealth (or at least material comfort), job satisfaction, a sense of self-worth, and the happiness that comes from achieving success in a profession that you have chosen and find fulfilling. Except, as this penetrating, fact-filled book reveals, most of these ideas are lies, and have been co-opted by corporate interests as a way to pay their employees as little as possible, and to strip away the hard-won benefits and protections that wage earners used to enjoy. After all, if you truly love what you do, pedestrian concerns about salary, health care, and retirement savings can take a back seat. Passion and devotion are what matter. Therefore, unpaid internships abound (they’re __opportunities!__), full-time positions are being replaced by freelance and contract work (it’s __flexible!__), and the amount of debt that one has to incur even to get in the game can be crippling. Both a rallying cry for a disempowered workforce to reclaim its footing on the economic ladder, and an eye-opening exposé of the ways that “doing what you love” can actually make your goals less achievable, this compact, insightful, and brilliantly argued call-to-arms might just spark a much-needed workplace revolution. The American claim that we should love and be passionate about our job may sound uplifting, or at least, harmless, but Do What You Love exposes the tangible damages such rhetoric has leveled upon contemporary society. Virtue and capital have always been twins in the capitalist, industrialized West. Our ideas of what the "virtues" of pursuing success in capitalism have changed dramatically over time. In the past, we believed that work undertaken with an ethos of industriousness promised financial stability and basic comfort and security for our families. Now, our working life is conflated with the pursuit of pleasure. Fantastically successful—and popular—entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey command us. "You've got to love what you do," Jobs tells an audience of college grads about to enter the workforce, while Winfrey exhorts her audience to "live your best life." The promises made to today's workers seem so much larger and nobler than those of previous generations. Why settle for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage and a perfectly functional eight-year-old car when you can get rich becoming your "best" self and have a blast along the way? But workers today are doing more and more for less and less. This reality is frighteningly palpable in eroding paychecks and benefits, the rapid concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny few, and workers' loss of control over their labor conditions. But where is the protest and anger from workers against a system that tells them to love their work and asks them to do it for less? While winner-take-all capitalism grows ever more ruthless, the rhetoric of passion for labor proliferates. In Do What You Love , Tokumitsu articulates and examines the sacrifices people make for a chance at loveable, self-actualizing, and, of course, wealth-generating work and the conditions facilitated by this pursuit. This book continues the conversation sparked by the author's earlier Slate article and provides a devastating look at the state of modern America's labor and workforce. A sophisticated legal thriller that plunges readers into the debate within the US government surrounding the imprisonment of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II. When the news broke about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Caswell "Cash" Harrison was all set to drop out of law school and join the army... until he flunked the physical. Instead, he's given the opportunity to serve as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. He and another clerk stumble onto a potentially huge conspiracy aimed at guiding the court's interests, and the cases dealing with the constitutionality of the prison camps created to detain Japanese-Americans seem to play a key part. Then Cash's colleague dies under mysterious circumstances, and the young, idealistic lawyer is determined to get at the truth. His investigation will take him from the office of J. Edgar Hoover to an internment camp in California, where he directly confronts the consequences of America's wartime policies. Kermit Roosevelt combines the momentum of a top-notch legal thriller with a thoughtful examination of one of the worst civil rights violations in US history in this long-awaited follow-up to In the Shadow of the Law . The American claim that we should love and be passionate about our job may sound uplifting, or at least, harmless, but The Lie of Doing What You Love exposes the tangible damages such rhetoric has leveled upon contemporary society. Virtue and capital have always been twins in the capitalist, industrialized West. Our ideas of what the “virtues” of pursuing success in capitalism have changed dramatically over time. In the past, we believed that work undertaken with an ethos of industriousness promised financial stability and basic comfort and security for our families. Now, our working life is conflated with the pursuit of pleasure. Fantastically successful—and popular—entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey command us. “You’ve got to love what you do,” Jobs tells an audience of college grads about to enter the workforce, while Winfrey exhorts her audience to “live your best life.” The promises made to... "In "Do What You Love," Tokumitsu articulates and examines the sacrifices people make for a chance at loveable, self-actualizing, and, of course, wealth-generating work and the conditions facilitated by this pursuit. This book continues the conversation sparked by the author's earlier "Slate" article and provides a devastating look at the state of modern America's labor and workforce."--Provided by publisher.;Visible work and the public profile -- The mirage of autonomy -- Tiered work systems and the labor of hope -- No rest. "In "Do What You Love," Tokumitsu articulates and examines the sacrifices people make for a chance at loveable, self-actualizing, and, of course, wealth-generating work and the conditions facilitated by this pursuit. This book continues the conversation sparked by the author's earlier "Slate" article and provides a devastating look at the state of modern America's labor and workforce."-- Información del editor Serving as a Supreme Court law clerk during World War II, Caswell "Cash" Harrison investigates the suspicious death of a colleague that may be related to the debate within the U.S. government surrounding the imprisonment of thousands of Japanese Americans.