“Uno ako sa major! Deserve ko siguro nito. (I got an uno in a major subject! I think I deserve this!)” The statement provides a similar cause and effect in different reward systems we have experienced throughout our lives.

When we performed well in nursery school, our wrists were inked with a purple smiling star, which served as the perfect energizer to go back home and show the stamp to our parents. When we excelled in answering a recitation question, we accumulated points recorded on an ⅛ index card. As we grow older, the system no longer has to stress requisites for certain rewards and objectives continually; we enforce them ourselves.

As I devoured my ice cream sundae in a store, I swallowed the impending pain of dejection and disappointment after I flunked a major performance–an exaggerated expression of simply not performing as well as I believed I would. I cannot recount how many times I have heard the statement “Sa susunod na lang. Hindi ko pa deserve (Maybe next time. I still do not deserve it)”. I thought to myself, why do people reserve their cravings at times of producing excellent outputs instead of accompanying themselves with a dessert during a gloomy day?

This is not to promote consumerism and irresponsible spending, nor to refute the fact that privilege comes into play in terms of affordability and saving habits. Rather, it is to target a productivity culture that weighs someone’s value in the quality of work. You feel much like a fulfilled person when you exert much of yourself to create a certain output. I would not wash my hands of the same tendency. It would be four a.m., already welcomed by roosters’ crows, and I would sleep with the satisfaction of completing my deadlines with barely an eye open.

Fatigue and labor become a dictator of excellence, a currency in exchange for a five-second rebound rate of perceived competency–as if you are only a valued person when you perform or are of use.

I hold this genuine belief that we, as individuals and a collective, are meant to create, produce, inspire, and express—with outputs not limited in tangibility or officiation. However, what if the output takes precedence over individuality and recognition? An even better question: what if those products are merely expected out of an individual like a machine to spew its manufactured bulk?

This is how capitalism inserts itself into the collective psyche. A conditional self-worth provides the perfect ingredient in an exploitative system that utilizes human labor to produce economic profit or surplus value. According to Thrya Abdulraheem Motea Al-aqab of the Department of Communications of Universitas Islam Indonesia, work exploitation involves a pertinent hustle culture that glorifies and regards overexhaustion as an indicator of personal success.

People unconsciously tie their worth to output productivity and strenuous work because it is a vital resource in a capitalist society to continue its pursuit of multipliable and extractable gains–it is labor that makes an individual systemically useful. Without the work, you are nothing.

Self-sacrifice is the inevitable outcome of a system that prioritizes profit over people. It is the reason why a white-collar worker goes to the office with a stamped cooling patch on their forehead during a fever instead of resting. It is the reason why a college student gets rushed into the emergency room because of health issues resulting from sleepless nights or a traumatized nervous system built from enormous self-pressure.

Realistically, this culture is not breakable by a simple explanation nor a lifestyle column article criticizing it–it is a system that the majority does not have the privilege of opting out of. A minimum wage worker would be starving if they did not produce profitable work, nor is their exhaustion enough to fund their meals and necessities, so they take double jobs. Correlatively, when work aids daily living, it is easy to associate no work with no life.

However, when you solely attach your value to the external things you do and produce, you risk losing the intrinsic value of being human for simply existing, evolving, and living. Yes, you contribute to society and possibly build your identity through your works, but are you not more valuable than an automated factory for mass production?

As I had said, privilege can never be subtracted from the equation. A realization of intrinsic value will not exempt an individual from being seen as a mere component of social and economic machinery. Most would have to independently earn a spoonful of ice cream sundae, a reason why people cannot simply detangle their wants from perceived worthiness to have them.

But I hope, as you remove your office clothes or uniforms after a busy day, extracting the evidence of your external efforts and accomplishments, you do not feel like an empty canvas. When health is on the line, you prioritize yourself over personal expectations because how are you going to be useful in a capitalist society if you are six feet under?

The Frontman