Why Production is More Meaningful Than Consumption
By: Diego Contreras
Tags: Fulfillment, Work, Meaning, Hard Work, Life Lessons

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I read Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse’s The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming of Age Crisis — and How to Build a Culture of Self Reliance recently. The book outlines how parents can raise children in the modern world, and how some of our technical achievements have taken people away from the roots that create flourishing, capable, and contributing adults in society.

Some of his lines on the matter are poignant. One says, “there is almost nothing more important we can do for our young than convince them that production is more satisfying than consumption.” And another, “Anyone who swims so completely in a sea of material surplus as to be unaware of the virtues of the simple life is flirting with great moral risk.”

It’s the opposite of the message the world usually tells us. Popular culture emphasizes that we consume and that we anticipate and plan the next thing that we can get. Marie Condo had her brief moment toward the trend of minimalism, but how permanent that will be is yet to be seen. It’s a reality of the capitalist system that we need people to consume, and there isn’t anything evil about working hard and wanting to provide for yourself and those around you. Even the people in popular culture who flaunt a consumerist lifestyle are often more on the end of production than consumption. I think of the hip hop world that flashes signals of the luxurious, with luxuries that wouldn’t be obtained without hard work. The rapper Big Sean himself says “I feel better at work” in his song “Blessings.”

Americans have an interesting relationship with work. Some around us glorify workaholism, while others say that companies take advantage of their workers and play on this ideal of glorifying work in order to get their people to be constantly working. The connected world of course doesn’t help us to stay away from our jobs, but some among us seem to do the best they can to actually get away from work, like it’s something dreadful worth escaping. Young adults and many in the college scene are especially likely to be guilty of this.

As with most things, there’s a truth somewhere in the middle of these two premises. Workaholism isn’t healthy, and businesses taking advantage of workers isn’t good. But the reality is, work does give us meaning. It gives us self-confidence. We build character. We learn more about who we are and who we are not. We also get paychecks, and even the anti-capitalist among us know that we all need those.

The middle ground to me is in Sasse’s observation that production is more meaningful than consumption. To produce isn’t simply to mean a 24/7 act of meeting your companies bottom line or to always be working. It can also be to produce in your hobbies and activities outside of work. I think it also includes reading, since reading is an activity that produces new ideas in whoever is engaged.

If we want to meet the crisis of meaning in the west, part of it has to happen with a better balancing of the relationship between consumption and production, including the realization that despite the difficulty involved in producing, we all feel better after we’ve done it.