However, a liberal parent, telling his child, “You know how much your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless, you should visit her only if you really want to,” is a worse scenario, according to Slavoj Zizek, as now the pressure worsens, “not only should you visit your grandmother, but you have to like it!”

This story illustrates how what seems like free choice and the ability to do what one wills, conceals within itself a stronger injunction to act a certain way. This injunction might explain the trend why, in more liberal and educated cities, the rates of depression are usually higher.

Slavoj Zizek uses this analogy to contrast the Oedipal and Primal super-egos’ workings within one’s psyche; with the Oedipal, Father behaving as the tiger parent, and the Primal Father behaving as the permissive parent.

To answer the question of, ‘Why am I doing this?’ It is imperative to understand the roles of psychological oppression in convincing us what or not to do using Lacanian and Freudian insight.

Zizek refers to the “super-ego” in Freudian terms, or “big Other” in Lacanian terms, as an internalized figure of authority — working at the realm of the psyche — that represses individuals and society as a whole.

It is imperative to note that we will focus not on the super-ego as the medium in which the symbolic order dictates language, but the super-ego that carries out laws, regulations, and moral codes of proper behavior in society. Sigmund Freud believed that the super-ego is an internalization of societal expectations that control our belief system of what is right or wrong.

However, this figure of strict parental authority embodied in the super-ego morphs into a different figure in a late capitalistic society. No longer are we confined by medieval laws, but we are ‘liberated’ individuals.

With this knowledge in mind, the appearance of individual ‘liberation’ should be suspect to historical analysis.

To grossly oversimplify, a general trend can be examined that in the beginning, during primitive societies, tribes are generally egalitarian with few societal restrictions involved — as there is no society, to begin with.

As civilizations developed, so too did develop heavily restrictive laws and regulations that form the primary tools of the ruling class to govern.

One of the earliest written legal codes, the Code of Hammurabi, proclaimed by the Babylonian king Hammurabi (1792 to 1750 B.C.) contained laws such as removing one’s tongue, breasts, eyes, and other body parts if found guilty.

This general trend of restrictive societies continued until the Enlightenment, where values such as individual liberty get promoted.

Both Freud and Zizek illustrate these shifts of individual and societal restrictions by the Primal Father’s death (overtly controlling father figure) to bring about the Oedipal Father’s existence.

In Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics (1913) the allegory goes that a tribe unit, referred to by Freud as the “primal horde”, is led by an authoritarian and pleasure-seeking father who keeps all the women to himself and threatens to kill his sons if they dare defy his authority.

As a result, his sons decide to kill him, but left without a father — and therefore no social order — they decide to give rise to the Oedipal Father. The Oedipal Father enforces virtues that deny pleasure and practice asceticism.

Over time, the Oedipal Father weakened, and the Primal Father has arisen once more, this time, encouraging his sons to adopt a lifestyle, that is, to seek pleasure!

Paradoxically, it can be concluded that following our desires, pleasures, and individual responsibility becomes, according to Zizek, “in its innermost status something imposed — ordered.”

Modern-day injunctions — or pressure to do a certain thing — has their downfalls. Our ability to chase personal beauty results in the pressure to diet, wear makeup, and so on.

The imperative that we should maximize our abilities results in the perpetual “hedonic treadmill” that indoctrinates us with the notion that we will never be enough no matter what we do.

Zizek calls this form of personal enjoyment an “obscene” enjoyment, because “it is not enjoyment at all that this super-ego decrees, but an imaginary, simulated idea of enjoyment.”

The pressure to “make something” of your life can be analyzed in the “imaginary” and “symbolic” dimensions. Lacanian philosophy states that the imaginary dimension refers to an object’s real qualities or perceivable practical implications.

In contrast, the symbolic dimension is concerned with social status and how one positions themselves in society. Like how advertising trends reflect social phenomenon — old advertising concerns itself with the physical qualities of the products, while new advertising promotes a particular lifestyle more than the product itself — this writer challenges the reader to self-introspect:

Why am I doing the productive things I am doing? Do I genuinely enjoy what I do in itself, or am I chasing the aesthetic of productivity?

Individual as an enterprise

The presentation of productivity can manifest itself in a paradoxical manner.

The individual undertakes actions and behaviors deemed productive, not that it aligns with the individual’s values, but rather for the sheer reason that it produces output for output’s sake.

In the chase to become the most productive individual, the individual thus internalizes the changes that society imposes on what actions are deemed ‘valuable’.

The individual defines his self-worth by quantity instead of quality — by ‘quantity’, we refer to the amount of output being produced, not in the strict numerical sense, but rather how accomplished the individual feels with his performance, regardless of whether or not its qualities are aligned with the individual’s well-being and core values.

In this way, the notion of productivity is no longer relegated to the realm of the business enterprise, but the individual has now become a mini-enterprise, and such are the effects of the fetishisation of the productive individual.

Imitating an automated, continually functioning enterprise, a compulsion to maximize output even during leisure time emerges and becomes normalized in individuals.

We have become a species that compulsively checks emails during supposed times of relaxation, prioritizes taking photographs of places to appeal to followers instead of enjoying the moment, and reads dozens of self-help books instead of beautifully written pieces of creative writing.

Foucault writes,

“Where there is power, there is resistance.”

A new counter-culture of planning leisure time constructively appears to juxtapose the obsession with having set work schedules packed with as many productive activities as possible — a testament to how people even forget to take breaks without being forced.

It is often overshadowed that some of our best insights in life come during periods of inactivity. We have far exhausted our analytical and methodical left brain too often in our day-to-day productive activities.

Nevertheless, we forget that it is the right brain that provides us with inspiration and creativity — the left brain executor cannot execute without the right brain catalyst.

While it is the left brain responsible for ensuring your essay is ordered and academically written, it is the right brain that is the source of diffused ideas that constitute the core of your writing.

Leisure time serves to give your logical brain a break and nourish the creative side, ironically causing you to become much more productive in the long run — not to say that it should be the main reason to take breaks.

The question to ask is not, “How can I be more productive?” But instead, “Why do I care so much about being productive?”

Foucault believes that human behavior does not stem from innate tendencies, but rather social and historical influences. Concerning the obsession with productivity, he infers that neoliberalism is the cause of the infiltration of market competitiveness into everyday life.

For context, the way power works as outlined in Foucault’s The History of Sexuality is that everyday discourses are “produced by a whole series of mechanisms operating in different institutions” — in other words, beliefs such as the importance of productivity prevail not from centralized power, but from capillaries in numerous parts of society.

While a centralized power — which Foucault writes as a government, though it could also refer to corporate elitism — benefit from this productivity tendency, this belief is enforced through many mediums. Most of them are unaware of the negative or unconscious implications, as the normalization of such behaviors goes unquestioned.

Foucault defines power as negative power, which works to prevent or repress behaviors, and as productive power, which incentivizes individuals to behave a certain way, producing us as subjects. The subjects produced in neoliberal society are not merely assets that produce more for a business, but subjects that accept the status quo of having to live this way.

The individual is rewarded for viewing themselves as a commodity, and the question of the humanity of such a society is overlooked. We are taught in this society to treat collective problems as individual ones — homeless people should get a job! Despite there being more empty homes than homeless people in America.

We are raised in a society that advantages us for treating others as a means to an ends.

In the words of Walter Kerr,

“[We are] compelled to read for profit, party for contracts, lunch for contacts”.

It is such when one finds it beneficial to take the absurdist route — the nihilistic route is unhelpfully hopeless, and the existentialist route is difficult to apply when you struggle to make a living unable to afford fancies of self-actualization.

The absurdist philosopher Albert Camus notes that we try to “make a mark” in the world as an attempt to cheat death. This way, when our physical body stops functioning, our immaterial soul lives on by word of mouth — referred to as the ‘death anxiety’.

Camus asserts that it is absurd to live life deluding ourselves that there is no meaning whatsoever. Every effort to make a mark would only result in us perpetually living for tomorrow, forgetting to take a breather and enjoy the moment as we have it now.

One must reconcile that there is no meaning in the universe, with the innate drive of humans to seek meaning in any way possible, and such reconciliation by nature is absurd in its paradox.

The good way to live life is to indulge in your passions, not in the purely hedonistic sense, but simply to do fulfilling things that give you meaning in your life now without any thought of an afterlife.

Camus contrasts an actor to a writer — the actor produces art that he knows will die in his lifetime, but the writer wishes his work to transcend his death.

While there is nothing particularly wrong with writing for pleasure, there is something inevitably troubling about the fixation of transcending death; never owning the will to face mortality — this way of living births a creature that forgets that life is short and is to be enjoyed.

Camus urges an approach to life that is not filled with self-defeating pleasure, such as addiction to drugs, or overindulgence in something that inevitably causes regret and demise, but also not a life that emphasizes output and production.

Immerse in what makes you happy without regret — hobbies, spending time with loved ones, and contemplation to appreciate the little things that make life beautiful.

The key is not to finish the entire jar of cookie in one go and loathe yourself after, but in each bite of the cookie, immerse in it and truly enjoy what life has to offer.

The Ancient Greeks believed that self-improvement, contrary to being about individual productivity, is collective and related to the social world. Self-improvement is all about refining ethics and how to better relationships with others.

The ability to become conscientious, forgiving, and genuine far transcends the ability to organize your life, become the best employee, and work as many hours in the day as possible. Nobody reads a Ph.D. student’s thesis at the end of the day, but everybody will remember kindness.

Conclusion

This essay covers why modern productivity culture is nothing more than a tool of neoliberalism and hopes that by now has convinced you to stop being obsessive about being a productive individual.

Instead, this essay advises you to direct your energy into being more conscientious of the beauty found in life and the people around you.

We know that philosophers from different periods of history and fields of study conclude similarly, albeit using different methods of interpretation.

Freud

Discovers that society’s obsession with seeking personal pleasure and development is rid of any fundamental values of virtues — and is simply a by-product of historical phenomenon.

One should not read too much meaning into it, and acknowledge that our fundamental ‘beliefs’ are never really authentically ours but influenced by factors outside of our consideration.

Zizek

Urges readers to ask — concerning any activity — but especially productive ones that we devote meaning into, Why am I doing this?

Most of the time, we find that the activities we do are merely done to chase a fictitious satisfaction in knowing we are part of the productive crowd in society.

It is nothing more than for aesthetics and an unconscious injunction for ‘obscene enjoyment’ — not enjoying it because you do, but because you have to.

Foucault

Believes that due to our neoliberal society, individuals become mini-enterprises.

The power to impose this in a profound psychological manner is inconspicuous because power does not work in a binary manner, with the clear oppressed and oppressor.

However, ideas permeate through different capillaries in society by people who are unknowingly propagating a harmful ideology. We do not even realize we are manipulated into becoming obsessively productive.

Camus

States that the Absurd man is someone who acknowledges — and does not fight but rather accepts — the paradox that life is fundamentally meaningless, yet humans evolved to have the drive to seek meaning when there is none.

The solution is not to delude yourself into a false meaning but accept and do what you will in life without a further expectation that it will transcend you beyond your personal pleasure. Do what makes you happy!