Looking for Meaning In All the Wrong Places - Industry Trend or Event - Column

Industry Standard, The, Nov 13, 2000 by Dinesh D'Souza

When the leaders of the new economy say they're not in it for the money, that's not just bad for business. It's bad for everyone.

Some of the pioneers of the new economy are saying very strange things. These moguls of modern-day capitalism solemnly deny that they are engaged in business for the purpose of making money. "I'm not about that," says Tim Koogle, CEO of Yahoo. "What interests me isn't making money per se," remarks the world's richest man, Bill Gates. "I'm not in it for the wealth," proclaims the man in the No. 2 slot, Larry Ellison. "I never really cared about the money." chimes in Steve Jobs of Apple. "It isn't about the money." swears Morgan Stanley investment guru Mary Meeker. Even Charles Schwab, whose company promises to make money for its clients, insists that for him, "it's not about making money."

What's going on here? Adam Smith, the founding father of capitalism, presumed that people engage in commercial activity for the purpose of economic gain. Have capitalism's most successful practitioners evolved beyond such base intentions? Are we to infer from these statements that the world's largest wealth-creation scheme is being driven largely by nonprofit motives?

Not really. New-economy tycoons still like to make money. They simply want to make clear that they are also driven by higher motives. Some are, in the famous words of Jobs, attempting to develop "insanely great products" that will "save the world." Others are more concerned with saving themselves. "My job is not about bringing home a paycheck," one CEO told me recently. "I want my work to give me something to live for."

And this trend in pursuit of higher things is spreading through the business world, encouraged by new books with titles like The Soul of Work and The Monk and the Riddle. Business conferences routinely import spiritual gurus like Deepak Chopra to tell executives how to harness the mystical powers of the cosmos in the workplace. New-economy magazines like Fast Company devote special issues to "the life that works." A recent editorial in the Red Herring posited business as an expression of the highest human capacities: "Money comes to those who do it for love."

Such talk has become so common that we have to remind ourselves that it is a fairly recent innovation. You probably don't have the time to review the immense sociological literature on the attitudes of workers in the early and middle part of the 20th century. A single book, Studs Terkel's Working, should be enough to make the point, or perhaps just a brief talk with some old guys about their work philosophy. You won't hear a lot of mush about saving the world or finding nirvana in the workplace. What you are likely to hear is, "Damn it, we worked our butts off to put food on the table. It was a job, it paid the bills, and that's all there is to it." To these people, today's rhetoric about meaning in the workplace must sound absurd.

So what's changed? Affluence, that's what. Throughout mankind's long and mostly wretched history, people have derived a powerful sense of meaning and fulfillment from simply prevailing in the day-to-day struggle against necessity. They worked hard to make sure their families were fed and had a roof over their heads. There was a monotony to this existence, but the battle for dignity and against deprivation also provided a seriousness to life, a sense of victory over the elements, an unquestionable moral depth.

For many of us today, the struggle for existence is effectively over. We have become members of the Overclass, the first mass affluent class in history. Long the preserve of a tiny elite, prosperity is now enjoyed by millions of Americans. And although poverty -- in the classic sense of near-starvation and grinding deprivation -- has not been entirely eradicated in the United States, it is now a rare and exotic phenomenon. A generation after John Kenneth Galbraith wrote The Affluent Society, America truly has become one.

Such prosperity is wonderful in the sense that we don't have to worry about having enough to eat, and if our children need braces many of us can just write a check. Few would choose to give up that security and go back to the way previous generations lived.

And yet, something is missing. Many of the most successful among us feel they are suffering from a loss of purpose. Meanwhile, business has become our central concern, and in the past two decades the reins of leadership have passed from the intellectual and the bureaucrat to the entrepreneur and the business executive. Questions of education, social policy, ethics and even morality are couched in the language of business. It is not unreasonable, then, to look to our work for the meaning of life.

After all, our careers occupy most of our waking hours. For many of us, work is an ongoing source of productivity and inspiration. Even mundane jobs like keeping accounts or filing papers can be a source of satisfaction; they offer pride in tasks well done. And it is surely significant that tech tycoons continue to work so hard when they already have more money than they could possibly spend. Their efforts prove that they are in search of psychological rewards that go beyond money.