Juan Evaristo Valls: "Work does not ennoble"

Not missing a dinner. Filling holidays with things. Fighting to get tickets to all concerts. It's been a while since this accumulation of experiences was named FOMO, fear of missing out, according to the English acronym. A way of living that has also found a reaction in those who now defend the need to do fewer things and make room for rest. They've changed the f for the j: JOMO (joy of missing out), that is, the enjoyment of missing out on something. Juan Evaristo Valls, professor of cultural philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid, analyzes it in the book JOMO. El gusto de perder (Quaderns Anagrama). 

Where does FOMO come from?

— FOMO points out very well how contemporary capitalism works by governing our desire. The way we participate in society is not so much from discipline or repression as in other times, but precisely by exciting desire. Both at work and in consumption, the obligation is to take advantage of what we do. And FOMO always reintroduces us to the market and prevents us from stopping. How does it do that? Through fear: of losing, of missing an opportunity, of surpassing oneself… 

What are hedonistic zombies?

— Those unable to do anything else but consume pleasure. The image of the depressed hedonist is someone in bed, watching Netflix, making matches and who has ordered a Glovo. This generates a loss of critical awareness, it generates the inability to stop and think of alternatives.

Are they a bargain for the system?

— Understood like that, yes. There is a certain lucidity in depression, because it points out to us that all capitalist pleasures are traps. But the system's rhetoric to make depression bearable is being hooked on receiving stimuli, and this generates a perfect connivance with the system. Because what makes us sick is what simultaneously proposes a supposed cure. And this is where addiction and dependency arrive.

Why do all stimuli and plans for happiness not make us happy?

— The problem is when it becomes an obligation, and it has to do with the value we recognize in ourselves. That is, all these pleasures are opportunities to grow, to overcome ourselves, to give our best version, and this has to do with an excited desire. What happens? That it is exhausting. There are no alternatives to the continuous race and the body has limits. It needs to stop and rest. 

How do we move from FOMO to JOMO?

— The book does not offer wonderful keys to abandon anxiety. It is the appreciation of a social change that is particularly seen after the pandemic with generation Z, who are entering the labor market. Levels of depression, burnout, and disaffection with work are rising with phenomena like the Great Resignation. The imaginary of the 2000s, which was linked to being flexible, working whatever we want, traveling, and accumulating experiences, is changing to another. And this change in sensitivity can be thought of as the shift from FOMO to JOMO. And it interests me because the true social change will come not when we are satisfied with our desires, but when we change our way of desiring, when we understand that our lives do not align with capital. Therefore, this shift from FOMO – being one's own boss, success, and narcissism – towards JOMO – having spaces of tranquility, being able to rest, inhabiting the city – seems to me a very good opportunity to rearticulate the political link and develop a program for a good life that is inclusive for everyone.

Are we in the era of anti-ambition?

— I want to think so. There is a disidentification of our identity through work. We no longer think that work is a means to have a happy life, because we also see that we cannot afford the rent. 

But isn't the problem housing? Would the meaning of our work have changed if we now found ourselves unable to afford decent housing with our salaries?

— This issue is key. Spain articulated as a slogan of progress the transition from a society of proletarians to a society of owners. And thus, progressively, the demand for social rights has decreased. But without this scenario of housing, work itself, as a space for exploring desire, as a space for personal fulfillment and freedom, is very harmful. Because we work for the company as if we were working for ourselves: there are no limits, criticism, or protest. This conception of work where we not only work with our brains and bodies but also with our hearts and are obliged to show enthusiasm is also very pernicious and in itself requires questioning. To remember that work does not dignify, work is always above all a form of governance. 

There must be a connection between what you say and young people going out less and drinking less alcohol.

— The pleasure of renunciation is expressed in many attitudes, and it is also seen in the affective space, which has become a space of sexual capital. Of course, if you have the obligation to give everything to the party, perhaps you prefer to stay home. Happiness does not come from a performance. 

Why is it important to know how to lose?

— The first is to be able to lose. And for this, a political program is needed to vindicate these material conditions of dignified life and rest. Because someone can say: I would love to lose, but if I don't do this job, perhaps they won't call me again.

But for those who can, why is it important?

— Because knowing how to lose is always the opportunity for an alternative. And it is also the most excellent way to give, wholeheartedly and unconditionally. It is only by renouncing ourselves, by forgetting ourselves for a moment, when we can truly open a space for experience and listening for something to happen. Then, knowing how to lose is essential for knowing how to live and for knowing how to love.

But what does it mean to stop doing? We can stop being available, stop scrolling, stop going to all the parties. But then what do we do, stay at home and stare at the wall?

— No. It means organizing ourselves, inventing another way of living with time to rest. The neoliberal way of life had promised us that if we worked hard we could have two houses, the car, the dog... That work would be the space where we could develop ourselves and be ourselves and travel the world cheaply. We have lost all these promises. But the most important thing is that we don't want them. We don't want to be happy traveling everywhere and gentrifying cities and destroying the environment. Or having large residences while others have no homes. We want to lose them because we know that beneath this enthusiastic image of an ultra-fulfilled life there is misery, exclusion, inequality, poverty, insomnia, stress, and homeless people. What is left? The possibility of thinking in another way. And a new way that vindicates rest as a form of social justice.

What is the relationship between loss and melancholy?

— Mark Fisher spoke about it. Melancholy has classically been one of the great resistance effects of the left. It is defined as the loss of an object we do not know. We have lost something, but we don't know what it is. When this is politicized, why do we have melancholy? Because of the promises of pluralism and democratization that have not been fulfilled. Then, the melancholic is the one who does not want to lose. They want to keep the past open as an archive of possibilities to explore. But Fisher's position is marked by his experience from the late 60s, when he was born, until the 2000s. I think those of us who grew up with Bisbal and Backstreet Boys see the radical cut of capitalism as it digitizes. And the impression that there is no turning back. 

Is this desire to disconnect a millennial and Z thing, or do all generations have it?

— Some studies, few of them, say that it is an effect that particularly feeds young people, who are the ones who have more pressure to participate, exploit youth, have sex, and experiment with drugs. Work FOMO is an issue that affects us all.

Comradeship must start in bed. What does this mean?

— Normally the bed is a space of intimate experience. But comrades were the soldiers who slept in the same room. And later, the workers who slept in the same room. That is, those who have the same fatigue, or who politically and collectively organize their rest. And this is an experience that has nothing to do with private space, but is collective, and breaks this bourgeois distinction between public space, private space, the home and the street. Once work enters our lives, the only possible answer is to take the bed to the street. That is, to understand that the truth of habit, of our capacity and possibility to inhabit cities, is always revealed in rest. And if we cannot sleep in a city, it is because we cannot live in it. Politicizing the bed is recognizing that we have something in common: we all get tired.

Are you tired too?

— I always think that philosophy does not speak from authority to give advice, that's what self-help does. I speak from the condition of the sick person, but one who recognizes that this stress, although singular, has something transversal about it, and begins to listen to it.