In an era of constant disruption and even collapse, are there any ways back to feeling at peace, or even happy, about one’s current employment? Many people I meet express unease, because their job feels like a distraction from an environment and society that is beginning to break around us. For some, their employer is even making matters worse. Although it is painful to pay attention to a world in crisis and collapse, the pain is clearly made worse by living out-of-step with that awareness. For many people, conforming to the preoccupations and performances of their profession now means living a lie. But feeling out of integrity with who we are and what we know to be unfolding would not be our fault – it’s the result of being trapped in a system and culture that is dying. Stuck in such a way, people are losing crucial time to discover how they might live in greater integrity with their values in this new era. Meanwhile, others are quitting their old work to ‘go wild’ with entirely new ways of using their time on this glorious Earth (as I’ve described before). But many people, perhaps like you, will have responsibilities they want to maintain, at least for now, which requires keeping their current income.
Do you think it reasonable to find a way of earning a living without lying to yourself and others? I do. Because it should not be too much to ask that we can meet each other with greater honesty in our professional lives. In this essay I want to tell you about the variety of ways I have learned that people are integrating their collapse-awareness into their lives while continuing with their existing employment. I hope it might help you to make, or affirm, your own decisions.
I’ve met enough people discussing ‘deep adaptation’ over the last five years to know that the truth can set us free from the pain of pretending. There are options if we need to keep working in the same job or sector for now. In a previous post, I described the new openness in some organisations to begin discussing how to better prepare staff, stakeholders, and the organisation for a new era of polycrisis due to a process of collapse. To support such discussions, I offered an eight-step approach to deep adaptation in organisations. But most people don’t have roles in organisational development, and won’t be working in an organisation that has an enlightened leadership or possibilities for significant change. With that in mind, I reflected on the other ways I know collapse-aware people have been responding when not quitting their job or career altogether. What follows is a summary of what I’ve learned.
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Keep serving (reveal and recommit in post)
Some jobs are vocational and feel meaningful. People don’t go into the fire service, nursing, social work, or teaching, for the money. Many of my friends are musicians, and their belief in the joy and power of music motivates them despite an erratic income. There is value in all of them continuing to do what they do. As they become aware that their life might be shorter and situations more difficult than they had imagined, it can require courage to keep going. For instance, one man will keep teaching his philosophy classes in San Francisco, despite being convinced it will be a tough place to live as societal disruptions unfold. He told me he wants to be there to help with the emotional aspects of the disruptions. One woman I know came to the realisation of our predicament while studying to be a nurse. She decided to complete her studies and practice, while telling people that she felt her training would be important as society becomes more unsettled. Allowing oneself to experience the harrowing feelings about how societal disruption and collapse will manifest over time is important to establish the depth of one’s recommitment and therefore, one’s sense of integrity for remaining in one’s job or vocation. Deciding to reveal one’s perspective to colleagues, and how that outlook on the future is part of one’s motivation, is a courageous and helpful act. It helps to normalise discussion of the situation. Revealing and recommitting in post in this way is possible if you believe in the usefulness of your work – but if you don’t, then here are a couple of other approaches I’ve learned about.
Quit quietly (retire in post)
‘Quiet quitting’ is the term being used to refer to people who are doing the minimum requirements of their job and putting in no more time, effort, or enthusiasm than necessary. Taking it easy that way can mean you save energy for more important things and perhaps even engage with them during work hours. The polling company Gallup found that about 50% of the current workforce in the USA now claims to have quit or retired in post in this way. In my own experience, I know many people who convey this attitude to their work. For instance, I know someone at the United Nations who was passionate about his work on corporate sustainability but is now focusing more on his home life and a future farm. Some of the ‘quiet quitting’ might be indicative of a widening loss of commitment to society due an apparent ending of the social contract that promised a reasonable standard of living from being employed. That is an aspect of the ‘uncementing’ I describe in detail in Chapter 7 of Breaking Together.
Quiet quitting can be an unfulfilling experience, where apathy and meaninglessness pervades the hours that one is meant to be working. Rather than existing in that kind of limbo, you could make such quiet quitting a deliberate act to enable yourself to better prepare for difficult times ahead. Being clear about your decision, you can then explore how to deploy the time and energy you are saving. For instance, I know people who are using their working hours to retrain in useful ways, or to trade crypto. I know others who make sure they don’t stress or exhaust themselves and leave for home ‘bang on’ time to participate in climate activism.
As someone who, for decades, advocated corporate leadership on social and environmental issues with the ‘win-win’ business benefit that it encouraged more motivation and creativity from employees, it is quite strange to find myself now recommending people intentionally ‘retire’ in post. I remarked on this personal reversal during my first public lecture since retiring from my full professorship last year. Perhaps I felt freer of the expectation and limitations of that role. My lecture was in a Business School, a form of education that has grown around the world over recent decades is an indicator of how higher education has become ever more tied to serving capital. But what I said next during that lecture went far further in breaking with that ideology.
Sabotage non-violently (rebel in post)
Some jobs are in companies that particularly damage the environment or society. The most obvious ones are some fossil fuel companies and financial institutions. If you are collapse-aware and work in such sectors, is working less hard good enough? Probably not. Instead, you could consider rebelling in post, through non-violent sabotage.
Sabotage is being discussed more openly in the last couple of years, since Swedish lecturer Andreas Malm wrote a book titled “How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire.” He argued industrial sabotage is a valid tactic for climate activism. The desperation some activists are feeling might lead them in that direction. However, far from being more radical or effective, violence from environmentalists would invite further governmental and police crackdowns on peaceful protest and radical commentary.
What some glorifiers of violent protest ignore is the history of commercial or industrial sabotage. The practice is defined by management theorists as any “deliberate action or inaction that is intended to damage, destroy, or disrupt some aspect of the workplace environment, including the property, product, processes, or reputation of the organisation.” They explain that “In contrast to the image of the ‘mad saboteur’, careful review of existing research leads to the conclusion that most acts of sabotage are highly symbolic, are restrained and selective, are the product of collective or even conspiratorial efforts, and are performed with technical sophistication. They tend to be deliberate and calculated rather than impulsive and careless.” Talking with boomers who had experience of industrial disputes, I have heard of several cases where such sabotage by employee was suspected by management, and it increased the internal pressure to resolve disputes.
One of the most famous examples of the internal sabotage of operations was featured in the award-winning film Schindler’s List. It featured the story of Oscar Schindler, who used his armament factory in Nazi Germany to save Jewish people from concentration camps. The Brünnlitz factory produced no usable armaments of its own, a strategy aimed at hastening the war’s end. I had this in mind when I gave a speech for Extinction Rebellion in 2019, outside the gate of the fracking company Cuadrilla in the UK. There I met activist grandmas, who kept vigil outside those gates and called on staff to abandon their work, somewhat like a picket line. In my talk I acknowledged that some staff can’t quit, as they have bills to pay and few other job opportunities. Therefore, I called on the crowd to consider suggesting to anyone they know working in the company to commit subtle acts of sabotage. Employees might delete a database or enter the wrong data. Perhaps they might ‘accidentally’ pay far too much to a supplier. After all, if people ‘on the inside’ are aligned with a cause, there is no need to blow up a pipeline, as you can just order the wrong one. With awareness of the causes of societal disruption and collapse spreading, radical criticism of some companies will soon be everywhere, and the possibilities for commercial sabotage may increase.
The law on commercial sabotage differs amongst countries, with recent legislative moves in UK and elsewhere to criminalise it more clearly, within the framework of national security. Therefore, anyone considering such an approach for restoring their personal integrity would need to accept the risks they might expose themselves to. Likewise, any activist organisation interested in this approach might prefer bringing attention to it as having a place in the history of social struggles, rather than calling for sabotage explicitly.
A recognition of the validity of commercial sabotage was not something I had imagined would feature in one of my lectures at a Business School. Fortunately, I had something more ‘business-like’ to offer as my final option for people to return to integrity while keeping their job – a refocusing in post on the need and opportunity for deep adaptation, as I will mention briefly before closing.
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Repurpose your job (refocus in post)
Perhaps it’s because of the crazy ocean temperatures and weather extremes. Or the crises that keep piling up on each other. Whatever the reason, more experts and consultants in the fields of corporate sustainability and organisational development are speaking publicly about the likelihood of societal collapse. This opens the possibility to work on the deep adaptation agenda within organisations. As our employers are such major coordinators of resources and people, if they could play a role in reducing harm from future societal disruptions and collapse, then that is important to explore. That is why I developed a set of suggestions for how to address deep adaptation in organisations and summarised it in a previous essay. To refocus in post involves a deep shift in how one imagines and communicates the relationship between an individual and an organisation. The wellbeing of employees, our families, and communities needs to become the primary concern as we explore how to adapt organisational activities in an unsettled future. I will be discussing the eight steps for deep adaptation in organisations at events that bring together corporate executives (with R3.0) and investment professionals (The Shift).
I think it remains unlikely that many organisations, especially in the private sector, will help their staff prepare practically and psychological for massive disruption to their lives, but it is nevertheless worth trying. That’s why I always welcome executives on the ‘Leading Through Collapse’ course I teach a few times a year (online and in-person). With every cohort, I learn more about how different sectors can play a useful role in building collapse readiness. For instance, past participants have written books on the role of museums and the role of teachers in deep adaptation.
Don’t delay
If you aren’t convinced that modern societies are unravelling in ways that cannot be stopped, then you are not likely to recommit, retire, rebel, or refocus, in your current post. It is even less likely that you would quit altogether and start something new. Therefore, the most important step is to make time to explore this topic and become confident in your understanding of the situation. To help with that was my motivation for writing the first half of Breaking Together. For years I had not made the time to explore the situation and allow the reality to affect me deeply. So, for years I lived in limbo. One of the things that holds the professional class back from making radical decisions is the assumption that most of us are, already, well informed. Instead, research has found that what’s more important is how ‘domesticated’ we are through our levels of education. That is because we have worked hard to succeed within the current system and have a subtle yet deep allegiance to the status quo. That makes us more resistant to recognising the end of that status quo – and therefore the end of our previous comforts, privilege, and status.
Although I have presented a few options for what can be done while keeping one’s salary, for now, I continue to believe that entering an era of collapse makes bold decisions the least risky. In Chapter 12 of my book, I mention many people who ditched their past work and reinvented themselves due to their collapse awareness. In a recent essay I described this ‘going wild’ as the process of becoming someone who has integrated their sense of doom into living kindly, wisely, and creatively – a ‘doomster’ way of life. In my case, I walked away from academia, to set up an organic farm school (please support!) and to begin writing and releasing songs. My recent experience means that when I meet people in their 20s, I can’t encourage a typical career path, and instead recommend finding ways to escape the normal expectations and restrictions.
Although it is not going to stop being painful to pay attention to a world in crisis and collapse, we don’t need to add to that pain by living a lie. It’s still in our power to know that we didn’t bullshit ourselves and each other as we faced the final curtain. How final, we will never know. So, let’s give each other permission to live in truth in our working lives as well as our personal ones. Then see what happens.
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I would be delighted if you repost this essay to any website you choose. If possible, please maintain the hyperlinks. The image is of me, Jem, at Griffith Business School in March 2024.
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Prof Jem Bendell 