It may be that the world around us is transforming into a vast puzzle, even a Mystery Play. This situation also extends to our professional environment, prompting organizational sociologists to observe a particularly unsettling phenomenon: the silent exodus of the workforce, characterized by a state of inner resignation where employees merely do the minimum while their minds have long since disengaged from producing quality work. Now, Generation Z, a cohort that can no longer imagine a World without the Internet, has surprised organizational sociologists with a behavior that exhibits highly performative traits and has spawned influencers such as the Anti Work Girlboss and a reigning TikTok hype. What is it all about? The underlying question is relatively straightforward. It asks how one can perform a kind of productivity theater for one's employer or coworkers, in which everyone pretends to engage in highly difficult and complicated tasks. The answer is simple: you stare intently at the screen, make audible grunting noises, wander through the company corridors with your laptop open, or engage in loud conversations at the water cooler or coffee machine. In reality, however, it's all about masking your own inactivity – and using quick shortcuts to hide the fact that you're using your working hours to update your dating profile or live feed.

Cam Caldwell, with whom we discussed all these questions, has spent his entire professional career exploring the issue of effective leadership after honing his management skills in a managerial role. In this context, he has also examined the phenomenon of quiet quitting and its various manifestations.

Cam Caldwell earned his PhD in Human Resources and Organizational Behavior from Washington State University, where he was a Thomas S. Foley Graduate Fellow. Prior to earning his PhD, he accumulated over twenty years of experience as a Human Resource Director, City Manager, and Management Consultant. He has authored more than 20 books on management topics.

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If identities in the Digital Utopia can be defined with the click of a mouse, it isn’t surprising when people want to make their lives as colorful as possible. After all: Who wants to be »a boring Normie?« as Eliza Mondegreen puts it in the simplest possible terms; consequently, those who wish to overcome their deep sense of emptiness proceed like computer gamers eager to endow their Avatars with superpowers. With this in mind, it’s easy to understand how the Trans debate (a marginal phenomenon only two decades ago) has seductively seized the public’s consciousness and taken on such political explosiveness. However, this raises the question of if the need for transcendence and the dissolution of selfhood boundaries can be met by administering hormone blockers to pubescent adolescents and promising them that a physical gender swap – or more precisely, a surgical modification of the body – can make all their problems disappear into thin air.

And, as someone intensively involved with gender issues for several years, this is precisely where the question Eliza Mondegreen poses begins. While initially studying the fundamental reality of Gender and Identity Dysphoria, she suspected there was a question of psychical countra-banding here that was strikingly similar to that found in cult-like phenomena. Just like the cultist, who feels newly reborn after a divine encounter, so do those adolescents embarking on a gender-changing journey. They adopt a new name, become active in their new fellowship of believers, oppose apostates while proselytizing, and proudly do everything they can to distinguish themselves from the rest of an unbelieving world.

Eliza Mondegreen is a researcher and freelance writer (for Unherd, Freethinker, among others) and photographer. She runs the widely read substack blog gender:hacked. She is currently working on a book about gender medicine, which will be published by Polity.

Link to gender:hacked

Eliza Mondegreen’s articles in Unherd

Freethinker

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It's common knowledge that capitalism has been in a deep crisis of values since the financial crisis of 2007/2008, while the question of where it comes from and how it affects our existing institutions is much more complicated. Talking to Philip Pilkington about this is worthwhile if only because it combines the perspective of a sober observer looking back on a career in investment banking with the acumen of a macroeconomist who can counter his profession's intellectual aberrations based on Philosophy. And because he's also familiar with contemporary thinkers, our conversation dealing with questions of energy, the political class's level of education, and the looming deindustrialization wander easily through entirely different areas. And while you are considering economic »bads,« it may happen that Jacques Lacan pops up, as does Kant’s definition of marriage (›...as a juridical consequence of the obligation that is formed by two persons entering into a sexual union solely on the basis of a reciprocal possession of each other’s private parts‹) and his tacit affinity to the Marquis de Sade. And so, despite the subject's darkness, the conversation is one of great hilarity—and the question can be resolved why the consultation with an OnlyFans model contributes to the GDP growth while, at the same time, conjugal coitus remains a quantité negligeable.

Philip Pilkington is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs where he focuses on macroeconomic and geoeconomic issues. Before joining the institute Philip worked in investment management as a macroeconomic strategist. Philip is the founder of the Multipolarity podcast. He regularly writes for the New York Post as well as other outlets, like The Telegraph, The Spectator, UnHerd, American Affairs, and First Things. He can be found on his Substack Philip Pilkington.

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