THE SPIRIT OF WORK

When arriving at London's Heathrow Airport, one thing always grabs my attention. The HSBC advertisements, which cover the jetway walls right after disembarking from flights, capture so effectively the role of work in the fabric of our daily life. The advertisements are simple, each touching on some facet of an individual's "personal economy." One advertisement reads, "We focus on the most important economy in the world. Yours." Another states, "It's not just leisure, it's part of your personal economy." These and other related HSBC advertisements are as frightening as they are ingenious. They show that this is an age in which work is central to how we define ourselves. We see ourselves as mini-economies, in which we must invest in order to maintain our skills, productivity and competitiveness. It is for this reason that the HSBC advertisements are so powerful.

In the modern world, what matters is that a person is working (this usually refers to gainful employment) and is busy in this work. It is better to have a job than to be without one, whatever this job might be. In other words, individuals must be occupied, taking action, for this signals value. Conversely, the idea of a person sitting alone, not doing anything, is interpreted as being unproductive — and in turn not good for the wider economy. Recent research suggests that millennials are firmly rooted in this work culture, this being a generation that forgoes leisure in favor of long hours. Harvard Business Review editor Sarah Green Carmichael notes that "according to a new survey by Project: Time Off and GfK, Millennials are actually more likely to see themselves — proudly — as 'work martyrs' than older workers, and less likely to use all their vacation time."

A risk in work martyrdom, of course, is burnout, and here the Financial Times management editor, Andrew Hill, provides astute observations on millennial work culture through reflection on his experiences beginning as a trainee journalist. Hill argues that millennials should approach their work with modest aspirations, for some recent research that he cites suggests that viewing work as an intense calling raises the likelihood of burning out. The most successful of employees, in Hill's experience, "did not put work at the centre of their identity, or treat their job as a world-changing mission. As a result, they kept their zest for the job alive long after others had had their spark snuffed out."

We can situate these two commentaries in a broader historical context, notably through the writing of the late German sociologist Max Weber in his classic book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber indicates that in the past, work was valued as a moral calling, one that ultimately served God. However, in recent centuries, as the role of religion in society has diminished — and as people have become increasingly dismissive of moral language — work has become an end in itself. For Weber, "It is true that the usefulness of a calling, and thus its favor in the sight of God, is measured primarily in moral terms, and thus in terms of the importance of the good produced in it for the community." However, he acknowledges that "material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in his history." As a result, "the idea of duty in one's calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs."

Weber laments the fact that work in his time had lost much of its moral underpinning. As the significance of religion declined in Europe, individuals continued to work diligently but without clear moral purpose in their efforts. Today work remains central to individuals' lives, but is really just a matter of employment. We see work through an economic rather than a moral lens: we need to create jobs to grow the economy rather than ensure these jobs provide individuals with dignity. Weber's analysis rightly suggests that work alone cannot illuminate the human soul. Work needs a larger narrative.

Martin Luther, the German theologian whose relentless efforts in the early sixteenth century gave rise to Protestantism, provides us with some valuable historical background. Born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, Germany, Luther received his doctor of theology degree in Wittenberg in 1512, and would over the course of his life produce books, treatises, pamphlets and translations in a way that resembles the kind of output that we in today's world see from a person like Elon Musk.

Of particular relevance for our discussion on work is Luther's thinking about vocation, which laid the groundwork for much of society's current thinking about work, 500 years later. Luther argued that all Christians have vocations. This served as a break from previous Christian thinking on vocation, in which only priestly callings were considered to be vocational activities. Luther's innovation had several effects. First, it leveled the playing field between contemplative and active lives. Prior to Luther's work, the contemplative or spiritual life had been seen as the higher form of living — spiritual activity was accorded special value. By saying that all Christians have a calling, Luther put the life of worldly activity on equal footing with the spiritual life. He argued that a person's worldly calling came through their various stations in life, say, as a husband or wife, as a son or daughter, as a butcher, as a maid, as a scientist or whatever other roles they assumed.

This meant that part of one's duty toward God consisted in fulfilling responsibilities within their various stations in life. With this, Luther provided his followers with a sense of vocation in the world, but these vocations also limited their ability to progress (in the sense of social mobility), for a vocation was really just a reflection of the roles given to individuals based on their birth. To do something other than what the stations into which a person was born asked for would have violated the worldly calling. However, the innovation remains, this very rough sketch outlining how Luther instilled significance in a person's nonspiritual work.

Puritans built on this understanding of worldly vocation with considerable intensity. As Weber notes, the restlessness with which Puritans carried out their work represented an ethos — it was their way of life. Moreover, as Puritans gathered wealth in their worldly activity, they saw it as their duty to continue to reinvest capital in order...