You’re not burnt out, you’re being burned out

First, to write this, I have to expel the burnout from my body. I have to transmute it onto the page. I have to tell you that at the end of many days I feel strung-out, deep-fried, plagued by a medium-grade buzzing I’m pretty sure is my circuitry on the fritz. I hope you don’t relate too much, but when I described this state of being to a friend the other night she immediately said she felt slightly less insane knowing someone else felt exactly the same way. 

I owe a lot of this unpleasant and persistent sensation to political media Twitter. Spending hours on there every day happens to be a job requirement for me. I know that isn’t everyone’s situation, thankfully, but for the purposes of this piece I’d like to think that taking an extra hyper-concentrated dose of the addictive, radioactive sludge most people consume in lesser amounts gives me some insight into the particular type of burnout so many of us feel these days. And I hope my hard-fought expertise can provide you with at least a little relief.

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

Burnout is obviously a phenomenon that goes far beyond social media, but this window is a natural place to start not only because it’s my job but because I think we’ll see a distillation of what ails us here that goes far beyond our screens.

The tech giants behind social media give us a perfect glimpse into how burnout is a manufactured phenomenon, not an inevitable feature of life on Earth. As Megan McCluskey wrote a few years ago, social media companies should be, “compared to Big Tobacco for the ways in which their products are addictive and profitable but ultimately unhealthy for users.” Specifically, the design that gives us near-constant notifications deliberately pings our dopamine receptors again and again and again. And that’s just one way these platforms are deliberately designed to get us hooked. The effectiveness of massive tech corporations can be measured in profits, like Meta netting $39 billion last year, nearly triple the profits of Ford and General Motors combined, or it could be measured by the emergence of Media Addicts Anonymous, a 12-step recovery group formed to help people who compulsively use social media. 

For those of us who are slightly more fortunate, in that our usage doesn’t quite qualify as addictive behavior, we’re often still deeply unhappy with our relationships with these platforms. I know that between work and my personal usage what was once an exciting or fun experience is now more often a dull ache, an effort to dig up dopamine from a well that’s run dry. And I’m grateful that the well is so thoroughly depleted, because it’s brought a hint of clarity. It’s helped me see how unappealing these platforms really are. It’s helped me see how I’ve chased the high far past what should have been the tipping point. It’s helped me see how some people grow more and more antagonistic and confrontational on these platforms, pursing a hit. This behavior drives more clicks, and while we sometimes benefit from those clicks, the real winner is the companies. They monetize our time and energy, they own what we produce, and we’re essentially unpaid workers on social media while the platforms are the house that always wins.

Social media using us as unpaid workers leads us to consider all the other unpaid, underpaid, and overworked workers out there. Those categories encapsulate a whole lot of us, and in fact we're almost all underpaid if you believe corporate profits should really be in the pocket of workers. And if there’s one thing that almost no one needs described to them, it’s the way work can burn you out. To the ruling class, we’re sponges to be squeezed dry for profit. Our burnout isn’t just a series of personal choices, it’s the result of our time and energy being squeezed by our employers and our economic circumstances, with few options available to stop the process. The cost of living squeezes from one direction, the need to work squeezes us from another. We're sponges being squeezed at both ends.

Of course, there are jobs out there that don’t function like this, but I find the need to give so much of my life to work itself to be spiritually exhausting, for lack of a better term. The knowledge of our unfreedom, the knowledge that to make the money needed to survive in this world we must give our time and labor to a boss is frustrating, a cage whose bars are immobile for the vast majority of us. And in those hours we have to give over to work so many people are abused, their bodies hurt and minds fried by the work we do. It doesn’t have to be this way, but at this moment in history and in the trajectory of capitalism, as corporations try to wring more and more out of us, we find ourselves being burned out from multiple directions.

This is not a passive process, it’s an active series of choices from the ruling class and their systems in pursuit of profit and power. And it’s brought us to the point of collective exhaustion. In that exhaustion we seek distraction and comfort, often in the form of TV and movies and social media ‘content’ to numb our minds, take us away from feelings of burnout, and unwind. But not only does little of this entertainment truly help us relax, it isolates us, cutting us off from that which could provide real, meaningful comfort when we’re worn thin. Namely, connection with others could help us be less burnt out by the systems and powers that be. Netflix on our couches does the exact opposite. 

Photo by Vasilis Caravitis on Unsplash

So our response to burnout must be collective. Individual choices to rest more (for those who can) or to change our schedules (if you can) or to vacation or meditate or eat better are all fine choices, if you can make them. But understanding how many people can’t make those choices, a number that soars into the billions when you understand the limited options available to the vast majority of the global working class, must guide us to think bigger.

And thinking bigger here doesn’t just look like dismantling these systems and building new ones. That can and should be our goal, but both to get there and to help one another out right now, we ought to shape our lives to mitigate burnout together. Even in this difficult moment, under a system that squeezes us for profit, we can find ways to collectively help one another, combating burnout while simultaneously moving us closer to a world where life does not burn us out. Unions both allow us to give and receive support at work and are vehicles for us to build power and wield it. Community and tenant organizing lets us rely on our neighbors more, teaches us that we are not alone, and ideally helps replace isolation with connection. As we use these tools we both fight burnout and fight the systems that burn us out. We move towards a horizon of care and plenty and away from the exploitation that wrings time and energy from us.

I recently wrote about how we are called to respond to the devastation of world events by asking “What can we do?” rather than “What can I do?” The same is true for our own experiences; so much of what feels to us like personal struggles are really struggles experienced by so many, because they stem from the systems we live under, not just personal choices. Our choices matter, but the best option available to us is often to come together with others, to find ways to address our struggles in collaboration with others rather than alone. These options might not occur to us, at first, but we need to build the muscle of turning to others, of turning to groups and organizations and methods of collective power instead of individual struggle.

One by one we must come to see how the problems in our lives are bigger than us, we must come to see how we are part of patterns much, much larger than ourselves. The ruling class and the capitalist system have shaped the values and the structure of our society such that we often fail to see our connection to our neighbors, and many of us even go so far as to feel more connected to a billionaire on a screen than we do with the people we share our lives with. We’re in an era of breaking through propaganda and internalizing that we have more in common with a migrant, a homeless person, or a struggling parent than we do with celebrities and the ultra-rich. Now we need to act on that knowledge, expand upon it, and see that the systems built to make you see yourself as an engine of profit, and wring that profit from you, can only be taken down when you reach out to that co-worker, that neighbor, that stranger who shares your problems and with whom you could share the solution. As Ben Franklin said, “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”