The Trouble with Passion

The Trouble with Passion also raises more existential questions about the prioritization of passion among career decision-makers.

What does it mean to center paid employment in one's self-reflexive project?

How does it perpetuate a culture of overwork and close off other meaning-making opportunities? And in what ways might the popularity of the passi

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The potential for passion to be exploited—either the passion of workers who have it, or by expecting workers to perform it—was a deep-cutting finding that led to my own reckoning with my perspectives about work.

In The Trouble with Passion , Erin demonstrates how the commodification of passion in the contemporary workplace perpetuates class inequality in college and beyond. While passion may seem, on the surface, to be highly individualistic, she details the many ways that it is actually rooted in structural positions and identities.

The desire for fulfilling work — a job that provides a deep sense of purpose, and reflects our values, passions and personality — is a modern invention. … For centuries, most inhabitants of the Western world were too busy struggling to meet their subsistence needs to worry about whether they had an exciting career that used their talents and nurtur... See more

These passion job organizations are burnout factories. Every year, a new crop of eager recruits comes in, grateful to have landed a job doing work “they love” — and every year, a significant percentage of the existing workforce churns out. Some have been there that single year, others for five. They leave not because they’re not good “fits” for the... See more

Can there be passionate production within capitalist employment that isn’t exploitative? Exploitation doesn’t just exist at the individual level, where individual workers feel exploited in their own jobs. People who are passionate about their work may genuinely not feel exploited. Yet, exploitation in the broader sense is about the reward workers i... See more

I am aware that I shouldn’t judge how people try to escape the 9-to-5 grind. I am aware that a job’s purpose is money, not emotional enrichment. I know!

What I am instead arguing for is something more expansive. The thing you should work hard at is everything . Finding ways to imbue each moment with meaning and purpose and effort is the only path t... See more