Everyone with an internet connection, it seems, is rising and grinding. And somewhere in between the rising and the grinding, these risers and grinders find time to tell the world that they are, in fact, rising and grinding. They use the hashtag #RiseAndGrind as a clarion call not just to those fellow risers and grinders grinding away out there in the world, but to those who are not rising and/or grinding.

For one to rise and shine seems quaint in this Age of Rising and Grinding on various social media outlets brimming with the rising and grinding hoards attached at the eyeballs to their Twitter and Facebook and Instagram accounts. We must grind, then publicize the grind. I've tweeted for a couple years about this pervasive rising and grinding, having a little fun along the way at the expense of the droves of devoted risers and grinders. This book is filled with many of the satirical missives that, hopefully, make a point about the culture of rising and grinding while bringing a smile to the faces of those who might roll their eyes at always-earnest rise-and-grind tweets.

The rising part of the two-step process has remained the same, for one must rise before one does anything. It's noteworthy – disconcerting, I'd argue – that the latter step has changed, morphing into something implying drudgery, some sort of undesirable, irrepressible, desperate effort. No longer do we shine when we awake – arms stretched overhead, brains slowly coming into focus for a new day. Now we grind. We work, we sweat, we strive, we move, we push, we do, we will ourselves: we grind.

Drudgery has become sport in this grind-centric culture – a badge of honor we wear with puffed chests. We brag about working long, exhausting hours. We take pride in our lack of sleep, our refusal to listen to our bodies and rest. We don't dare imply that we have time to relax, to do nothing, to offset the effects of the grind. We must, at all costs, convince people that we grind and grind and grind because there's dignity in grinding.

What were we created to do if not grind? God made grinders, and they were good.

The wholesale replacement of shining with grinding is equal parts telling, inevitable, and, in my considered estimation, worrisome. Rise and shine surely means different things to different people, but to me the phrase implies something overtly and unashamedly positive, something cheery and uplifting. My mom, when she woke me up for school from my dead adolescent sleep, would declare that it was time to rise and shine. She would rub my back with the sort of tenderness that can't be mimicked. I still – as a 30-something married father of two – miss that wonderful awakening. I guess I always will.

There's a carefree element to rising and shining. To rise and shine is to simply be – not to force anything, not to make anything happen. Rise and be yourself. Rise and do what needs to be done, but also do what you would like to do. If you're alive in a developed, post-industrial society, you likely have to do some amount of grinding to maintain a roof over your head and food in your belly. Grinding undoubtedly has its place: to ensure your survival. But it's only one of those two – shining, not grinding – that brings to mind my son's Sesame Street books, full of idyllic scenes in which people (and furry monsters) work, but also do what they want to do, what conjures joy. They paint and sing, they play games and dance, they laugh and talk about nothing of import. In short, they shine.

Shining – to give forth or glow with light – has a communal element. You're not shining just for you, but for those around you – family, friends, and strangers alike. Something that shines is radiant and bright. It reaches out beyond itself.

To shine is to obliterate darkness. I'm a cynical person, so I have no illusions that darkness can be repelled forever. It can't. Whether you think darkness is the end of your existence or simply a transition to some other level of existence is up to you. Shining, it seems, is the way to hold back that darkness, if just for a bit. Life is a short, warm moment, as Pink Floyd said. Shining makes it so.

Rising and shining has an undeniably utopian element, whereas rising and grinding – its grittier, stone-faced, fun-shunning cousin – has a most definite post-apocalyptic feel. You know who rises and grinds? Characters in the Mad Max movies. They grind in abject misery, in a world of libertarian fantasies, where civil society has been summarily replaced by a brutal hellscape in which everyone fends of themselves and no one else.

That, in summary, is grinding.

I don't think it's a coincidence that that phrase – that dictate – has come to prominence in the age of crushing economic austerity, roiling, hopelessly corrupt international markets racked by bowel-shaking greed and fear, and an entire generation of political leaders that has never once questioned the underpinnings of unfettered self interest. What's good for you is good for you. Get yours. Do you. If your neighbor didn't get hers, she didn't deserve it. Plain and simple.

Grind on and be free: the phrase almost oozes from the American ethos. If everyone were a dedicated riser and grinder, we hear, everything would be okay.

There's an innate selfishness in rising and grinding. There's an implication that you are all that matters, that there is no vast universe, but only your needs and desires. Grind to eat, grind to purchase, grind to upgrade, grind to get more and more and more, grind because someone somewhere is grinding harder than you. Grind because you're afraid. Look over your shoulder and grind. Fear and grind. Feel pangs of terror in your heart and grind.

No one ever shined their way to the top, we're told. They grind to the top, like a possessed upside down drill spinning recklessly through the floors of a skyscraper, destroying everyone and everything in its path without a modicum of remorse because there are no victims in the World of Grinding. There are only volunteers.

Humankind competes today for diminishing resources. That goes for everyday working people more than any other group. Wages have stagnated and oceans of money sit above our heads, out of reach, protected by elites and safe from taxation. We've been left to fight in the Thunderdome for the scraps – the crumbs – falling from the tables of our moneyed masters. So we grind. We grind over and through each other. We grind in offices, hoping and praying that our grinding will one day – someday – pay off. We are pitted against each other in a daily grinding match. There's no time to even question why we're grinding, or who benefits when we grind against fellow workers. We become machines programmed to do one thing: grind.

Who benefits from your endless grinding? Who cares? Just grind. And when you're done grinding, grind some more.

The deafening drumbeat of the daily grind has only recently taken on the form of tweets, but the message that drives our collective grind has been with us for a long while. And it's worked for those at the top of the grinding food chain. A steady rise in worker productivity was met with an almost identical increase in worker wages from 1948-1973, but a 73.4 percent spike in American workers' net productivity from 1973-2015 coincided with near-total wage stagnation, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). This means, in short, that...