Hera me out, June is a queen – a month of sunshine, rose bushes and pearls. For now, I choose to ignore etymological evidence to the contrary, but you can explore its Indo-European roots here with Kevin Flude.
Given that so many websites still introduce Juno as ‘Jupiter’s wife’ as opposed to any of her other numerous epithets, do we mere mortals have any chance of true equality?
As result of awkward televised leaders’ debates and depressingly necessary campaigns by truth-tellers such as Led By Donkeys, even those inexperienced in discourse analysis are now somewhat adept at spotting rhetorical devices such as hyperbole, epistrophe and antithesis. Simply put, we can often tell when politicians exaggerate points (presumably to shock us), repeat words (as if we’re stupid), and use opposites for contrast (perhaps to ensure we remember their half-truths/brazen lies*) when they’re speaking publicly.
I wonder if we’re less adroit at detecting synecdoche. This ubiquitous rhetorical trope might be seemingly innocuous, but I’m almost sure that it’s closely linked to self-deprecation. In fact, it might just be one of the lesser-addressed manifestations of objectification – of others and the self. Synecdoche occurs when a word for a part of something is used to refer to the whole, such as ‘threads’ for ‘clothes’ or ‘boots on the ground’ for ‘soldiers’. It also works in reverse, when the word for a whole is used to refer to a part. If we say ‘England conceded because they failed to press,’ we use ‘England’ to mean ‘the English football team’. Let’s not even get into whether we still assume it’s the men’s team when gender is omitted. A rather sobering sobriquet I would endorse is ‘men’s Lionesses’; surely that would eradicate ambiguity and unconscious bias!
If we are reduced to a single job title, moniker or personality trait – and define ourselves by it – we are effectively dehumanised, at least in part. Being valued for our efficacy and output rather than for our intrinsic value makes us more likely to experience feelings of misery and unworthiness when failures occur. We can’t avoid failure, therefore we must avoid objectification. Although we can’t always stop others objectifying us, we can avoid self-objectification. We must know that we are still valuable when we refuse to be cogs. We are much more than our productivity levels and our degree of perceived usefulness. Believing otherwise can be dangerously reductive.
Synecdoche itself is reductive. In the way that ‘bums on seats’ might refer to ‘audience members’ (insinuating that theatre-goers are a bunch of ticket-buying backsides), referring to people as job titles reduces them to mere workers, and refutes their intrinsic value, their wholeness. During the working week, a ‘complaint handler’ is not seen as a complex and valuable person, but a human barrier between peeved customers and billion-dollar energy company middle managers. Incidentally, what is the collective noun for backsides?
In these capitalist times, where output is regarded as synonymous with worthiness, it is understandable that many of us are questioning the very nature of work. Over the last few years, workplace trends have taken an interesting turn, comprising ‘quiet quitting’, ‘acting your wage’, ‘bare minimum Mondays’ and ‘resenteeism’. I often envy people who can do things by halves; as a full-time employee, my bare minimum Mondays were strictly limited to bank holidays. Old English ‘mōna’ might mean ‘moon’ but I believe that it’s also an anagram of ‘moan’ for a reason.
Some employers have been ‘quiet firing’, a distasteful practice which can comprise the grinding down of employees to the point of burnout, and making their working life a misery until they quit, thus avoiding providing severance pay or attending unfair dismissal tribunals. Then there’s ‘quiet hiring’ which is effectively the promotion for which no one applied, all without the title, pay or benefits; this involves encouraging or coercing existing employees to take on more work for the same pay via reshuffles and strategising. That said, if you’re the kind of person who buzzes off disingenuous ‘Congrats on your new role!’ notifications on LinkedIn, this could be the route for you.
Whether you regard it as a means to an end or an end in itself, it is worth remembering that ‘work’ takes many forms. For some people, work is the desk job or the freelance gig that pays the bills. For others, it’s networking, social dinners and relentless self-promotion on social media. It’s unpaid domestic and care work which, parenthetically, takes 12.65% of women’s time compared with 6.97% of men’s.1 It is raising children, minding other people’s kids, volunteering at a charity, rescuing an animal, doing your neighbour’s shopping, teaching others, growing your own vegetables to rely less on fragile food systems, picking up litter in public spaces, getting a handle on your own mental or physical health, writing to your MP for the good of your community, canvassing, demonstrating and protesting injustices… [feel free to insert your own definition of ‘work’ here].
I often wonder whether hard work can ever be inherently virtuous. We might work hard for a particular cause, to feel a sense of accomplishment, or to help someone out. It might be for a sense of pride or purpose, to practise compassion and tolerance, or to distract ourselves from something else. Surely the virtue here derives from the outcome of the work as opposed to the act or process of working. The vast majority of people would agree that working hard to commit or support genocide is totally immoral. Qualities such as resilience, confidence, and self-reliance might all sound impressive, but they would promptly look sinister if used to commit atrocities.
A little work directed to a good end is better than a great deal of work directed to a bad end.
Bertrand Russell
Climbing a corporate ladder with an infinite number of rungs to fund a lifestyle based on insatiable materialism requires hard work. I would argue against this being commendable. Ironically, some of the people I know who work the hardest, are praised the least – and are often viewed as lazy or unwilling. I see some people in highly-regarded roles treading on those beneath them, all the while receiving praise in abundance. We seem to have this obscure view that manual labour is less valuable than a nondescript desk job. It appears that clicking a mouse a few thousand times a day doesn’t make things click after all. On this note, I invite you to watch Severance.
Essentially, we all sit somewhere on the spectrum between ‘barely existing’ and ‘thriving’. If we’re lucky, we might be somewhere near ‘live well’. June feels good because it offers hope: the promise of sunny days, long nights and a bit of a rest. We sometimes persist because we simply must, and we work to survive. However much we despise reality and dream of rejecting our unfair economic system devoid of opportunities for upward social mobility, it is almost inconceivable. If anyone manages to successfully reject the status quo, live off-grid in tribes and implement a freeconomy, let me know. Until then, let us work as smart as our situations allow and vote wisely.
*delete as appropriate
