Whether it’s my co-workers, acquaintances I’ve met in class, or even my very best friends, everyone I know in my age group has some type of chronic anxiety or panic disorder.
And if anxiety isn’t their issue, they complain about being depressed, and some are even on meditation for their mental instability.
They have a word in Japan that translates to, “death from overwork.” The word is “kar?shi,” and it became necessary in the ‘80s when Japan’s high-level CEOs and executives started dying before they reached middle age.
None of them had any known previous illness. In 2009, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that Japan had the second-highest number on record for suicide attempts that year, and even worse, “the deaths of 158 workers were attributed to kar?shi … a rise of 16 from a year earlier.”
These incidents relate directly to the Japanese culture’s voracious work ethic. Since World War II especially, the country’s citizens feel the pressure to work tirelessly for their nation — advancement and achievement aren’t merely goals, but mandatory. These attitudes were cemented in the Japanese mindset during the country's recession in the '90s.
Businessweek went on to note “analysts say young people facing an uncertain economic future feel compelled to work longer and longer hours, even if it puts their health at risk.”
Sound familiar?
In America, we’ve developed strikingly similar dispositions toward work ethic. The American dream haunts us in our sleep. We sense the invisible obligation to work harder and to live better than our parents did, to get that white picket fence and six figures a year.
The people of Western Europe have a different approach. In countries such as France and Germany, workers are granted six-week paid vacations and they shut down businesses during public holidays.
Europeans are much more likely than their American counterparts to take their spouses to the theater on a Wednesday evening, and even more likely to end their work week at lunchtime on a Friday afternoon.
On the other hand, Americans still go to work on Labor Day, and even work off the clock for no pay, hoping to mitigate their flood of work from bleeding into the weekend.
Where does it get us?
European workers are consistently reported as having a higher rate of production per hour than American workers. “The average American works 25 hours a week; the average Frenchman 18; the average Italian a bit more than 16 and a half,” Forbes reported.
“While American unions have spent the past few decades fighting for higher wages, European unions have fought for shorter hours.”
The more fatigued we become, the less we produce, regardless of the hours we put into our work. In the end, who’s truly enjoying a better quality of life, the sprightly Europeans or the pecunious Americans?
The mental illness in young people can’t be casually attributed to us being part of some new, strange generation. We might have been born into an America that overestimates the virtues of production and undermines the virtues of life.
Reach the columnist at jwadler@asu.edu or follow him at @MrJakeWAdler.
