An Introduction to Mimetic Theory. A Dissection of the Illusory Productivity and the Hollow Ritual of Email Correspondence... A 'busyness' crutch ... Fake work and Rene Girard.
Email as the symptom of a wider plague of corporate hamster wheeling
“It is not difference that dominates the world, but the obliteration of difference by mimetic reciprocity, which itself, being truly universal, shows the relativism of perpetual difference to be an illusion”
Rene Girard
In the vast expanse of our modern labor landscape, where the altar of efficiency stands tall and the hymns of communication echo, there exists a specter. A tool that has insidiously become both our anchor and our albatross, a ritual that devours hours and often regurgitates mere vacuity. I refer, of course, to the omnipresent, the relentless, the seemingly irreplaceable: email.
Sisyphus’ greatest burden
Now let me be clear: I loathe email.
There’s really nothing more to this blog than just railing against a task I despise.
But I have a theory that by observing email as a microcosm, we can expose a much more sinister trend in our economies and the human behaviour that drives them. I posit that by scrutinising email, we can unveil a far more malignant trend in our economies and the human tendencies that fuel them.
Clearly email is not to blame for British economic decline, though, if the slope is slippery enough, I’ll be able to find a link…
But first - The Illusion of Connection
In its inception, email was a marvel. It promised instant connection, a bridge across continents and a conduit for ideas. The world was instantaneously smaller. In-trays moved from the world of atoms to bits. Communication became asynchronous.
But as the years rolled on, this marvel morphed into a monstrosity and the inbox into a battleground. A place of endless skirmishes with spam, sales, events, social updates, promotions, newsletters, triviality, and threads that spiral into oblivion.
Where once email symbolised connection, it now represents disconnection. It's a barrier that separates us from genuine interaction, a facade that masks the human behind the screen. It's a game of words, often devoid of tone, context, and empathy. Where miscommunication and misunderstanding pervade.
The Mirage of Productivity
In the corporate cathedral, email is a sacrament. It's a daily ritual, a measure of importance and a badge of busyness. But how often does this busyness translate into real work? How often does the flurry of emails lead to tangible progress, to innovation, to a job well done?
The answer, I fear, is seldom. Email has become fake work. It's a dance of appearance and a chase for acknowledgment in a loop of endless reaction. It's a task that feels productive but often leads nowhere. In the early days of the Covid Pandemic I was receiving around 1000 emails per day. This was clearly an incredibly inefficient use of anyones time. A full working day would have passed by just replying to the inbound communications. But then, what was there to do anyway?
Mimesis in the labour market and workplace
We find ourselves paradoxically trapped in a cycle of unproductive tasks. Email is but a mere representation of a wider trend. The modern workplace is riddled with tasks that give the illusion of productivity but are, in essence, empty rituals.
Mimetic desire is a powerful force. We crave the labels and approval of others. Consider the endless meetings, the reports that no one reads, the vanity metrics that don't truly measure success, and the presentations crafted more for show than substance. These tasks, much like the incessant email threads, consume vast amounts of time and energy but contribute little to the actual goals of an organisation. We want our diaries to be as full of meetings as our boss’. Busyness is a badge of honour.
The most boring conversation in the world is the small talk about how busy someone is. Yet I probably have this conversation several times a day.
Deep down I think most people in corporate roles know that their working week could probably be condensed into a single day (or, in reality, less). The cloak of busyness is as much a self-deception as it is a defensive show of value to HR to stave off redundancy.
The very existence of the roles themselves are laden with social capital and memetic posturing (something I wrote about earlier with my piece on Hiring Policy below).
The Disconnect from Purpose and The Rise of Fake Work
At the heart of these unproductive tasks lies a deeper issue: a disconnect from purpose. When employees don't see the value or purpose in what they're doing, they resort to tasks that feel productive, even if they aren't. This results in a workforce that is active, but not necessarily aligned to anything.
The phenomenon of 'fake work' isn't a unique insight and I won’t waste my time writing about it. The endless “day in a life” TikTok videos have been ridiculed enough. Just do a google search for the term and read a few articles if you’re interested.
But I worry about the much larger effect on our Economies. I’ll write more deeply about Girard and the effect of mimesis/imitation on our allocation of time, effort and capital in the coming weeks. Starting with the biggest con of all, Higher Education…