As time marches on, the expectation is out there that our output needs to increase. We're expected to do more in our jobs for one thing, and often with fewer resources. Departments across the university here are expected to increase programs, offer new and inventive courses, expand offerings - even when funding has been cut and keeps getting cut year after year. It's not too bad for me specifically, because I have such a large student case load (1,000 English advisees) no one expects me to do much beyond advising.
I understand wanting to keep discovery alive, and especially at a Research One university that is important. But does new necessarily also mean more?
In the media we're assaulted by images pulling us to buy bigger, better and more (or smaller, better and more nowadays, if you're talking about vehicles). Obviously it's their job to convince us to buy something new, so that makes sense in a nonsensical way.
Don't get me wrong, I want things to change - get greener, more peaceful, more equitable. But the idea of evolution seems to get conflated with productivity and accomplishments. Evolving is good, I like it, I need to evolve. Well, I'm evolving whether I like it or not. But the pressure to become a better person according to someone else's standard, or to learn a new skill, to read 10 more books, or get better at photography, or get a poem published . . . I feel a constant push, from somewhere, where is that Somewhere? Is this a Western phenom? If so, no doubt it is wedging itself into the rest of the Westernizing world.
Every job I've ever applied for, I hear the resume gurus in my head chanting "List accomplishments, show how you increased productivity, how you improved your workplace, etc."
Is this just a natural outcome of survival of the fittest? Are we compelled to 'survive' - meaning not just eating, drinking, sleeping, and not getting hit by a bus, but getting better so we beat someone else out of the survival game? I mean, does my survival necessitate someone else's demise?
Does workplace fervor carry over into our everyday mentality? I remember reading recently that Thoreau spent half his days at Walden sitting in a chair in the doorway looking outside across his little porch. Do you, like me, see that from two sets of eyes? First eyes: it would be heaven! Second eyes: but I couldn't do that because I wouldn't be DOing anything!
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