Employers seeking 'passion' show corporate delusion

Terry Sarten

I WAS in to get a new pair of spectacles the other day.

They were for long vision so I did ask whether it would enable me to see further into the future, but alas no.

As a visionary who views the world through optimisticals this was disappointing but optimism is also available in the small print, so I put on my reading glasses and perused some articles in the Guardian and Atlantic.

The first reported, as if it was a momentous discovery, on a study that showed optimism is good for relationships. Well, yahoo. Apparently forecasting satisfaction and predicting happiness with relationships into the future is a solid predictor that it is more likely to actually turn out like that.

Surprise, surprise - thinking about happy endings maintains commitment. I assume the professor who published this got a grant for this research. Looked at another way, it seems obvious that any relationship built on reciprocal doom is bound to be doomed - unless mutually assured, equal-opportunity doom provides some kind of buffer against romantic delusions.

Some would say a combination of optimism and passion is the key to good relationships but a piece in the Guardian has cast doubts on the ongoing value of passion as it has now become a requirement in job descriptions. Employers now want people to be passionate about work. Enthusiasm and a work ethic are no longer enough. Example, "A passion for thought leadership and executive profiling" appears in a job ad. What is this job and what does this mean? Even everyday job applicants are now expected to bring passion to work, no matter what the actual job may be.

This call for passion seems to be a poorly disguised bid for a level of personal commitment to work that equates to selling the soul in exchange for a wage.
Does working 60 hours a week for low pay and being completely exhausted equate to passion? Or is passion the willingness to do what the corporate world requires even if it is morally questionable?

How applicants are expected to show this "passion" in a job interview is not clear. Does this require leaping on the office couch, taking of a shoe, banging it on the table and hugging members of the interview panel?

Like the word love, passion is being diminished to being an essential job accessory, regarded as being of greater value than experience, skills, knowledge or qualifications. It is time to seize the passion back from the grasping, clasping bosom of corporate culture.
Another angle on this came from a book called Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics.
It suggests the world of finance is built on fictions and fantasy, with imagination and possibly a big dose of the passion the corporate world seems to feel is essential. Fake and fraud are deemed by the author to be the main elements of global capitalism.

The book makes a case for markets based on "generating imagined futures" described as castles in the air, a confidence trick linking delusional optimism with a passion for flaunting financial regulations.
Whenever a fall in business confidence is announced on the news (and it always seems to be falling) the other side of that particular coin is the way business talks up the market to inspire confidence in their products and share value.

Alongside this is a constant call to free up markets.
This is geared to fend off government regulation until things go belly up, then there is an expectation that government (ie, the taxpayer) should bail them out of the financial quagmire.

This operates alongside an ultimate version of optimism which defies gravity, believing profits and growth will always continue to rise.
I could get passionate about that.
¦Terry Sarten is a writer, musician and social worker. Feedback: tgs@inspire.net.nz