“Work/Life Balance”
There is a lot of talk about “work/life balance” these days. While I appreciate the idea that human beings should spend a significant part of their lives doing something other than making other people rich, I can’t help thinking that it misses an important point: if work and life are opposites, there is something wrong with your work, namely, that you are dead when you are doing it. If you only feel you come alive when you leave the office or factory, you don’t need work/life balance, you need better work. OK, any work can turn into drudgery if you do it too much: doctors, musicians, dancers and other people who love their work can get burned out, but what they need isn’t work/life balance, it’s work/rest balance.
“Self-Taught”
The term “self-taught” only becomes annoying when used in an exaggerated way; I don’t think anyone would object to a phrase like “I taught myself to play the penny whistle” even if it’s not 100% true. But when “self-taught” is used like “self-made” (another misnomer, which others have commented on) it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how learning works. When you describe yourself as self-taught, did you do it without reading any books? Didn’t you watch at least a couple of videos on YouTube? Did you not have a single conversation on the subject? Those people that you read or watched or talked to taught you.
I’m not splitting hairs here. Just as “self-made” ignores the fact that wealth creation is a co-operative endeavour, “self-taught” ignores the fact that learning is collaborative. And most of the time, even when think we are studying on our own, we are indebted to others.
“Age-Appropriate”
I love Queer Eye. I preferred the first incarnation, which was funnier, bitchier and less politically correct, but the new, earnest version is still pretty good. Nevertheless, I want to slap Tan France every time he says “age-appropriate”, which usually happens when he’s talking to some middle-aged guy who still likes to wear ripped jeans. Come on, Tan, how would you like it if I were to tell you to wear something more gender-appropriate or race-appropriate?
“Spiritual But Not Religious”
I just read a YouTuber describe Omar Khayyam as “a sensitive, sensible, spiritual (but not religious) and quietly bold soul.” Now I love Khayyam too, but why would we say he was not religious? Let’s assume that the wine in his poetry is not a mere metaphor and he really did drink a lot (which as far as I can tell is a fairly safe assumption). Now most branches of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) prohibit the consumption of alcohol, and I don’t know even one that allows wine (early Hanafi jurists allowed the consumption of alcoholic beverages other than wine in an attempt to square the hadiths prohibiting wine with the slightly more relaxed view of alcohol expressed in the Qur’an). But does the fact that Khayyam took a rather free-wheeling approach to Islamic law mean that he wasn’t a Muslim, or that he wasn’t at all religious? Hardly.
So can you be spiritual but not religious, or religious but not spiritual? Only if you regard religion as consisting purely of rules, rituals and other paraphernalia. In that case, it is certainly possible to be religious without being spiritual, something I discuss in “The Religious Personality Matrix”, but this is really an insult to religion. Those who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious are ceding ground to these people.
What I suspect they mean, when they're not just spiritual hedonists, is that they are on some spiritual journey but are not exclusively aligned with any particular religion. But there is a difference between “religious” in the sense of “believing in the dogmas and strictly following the rules of a particular religion” and “religious” in the sense of “having a religious sensibility”. Ibn Arabi said “The wise are not bound by religion,” but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t religious — his long love poem “The Translator of Desires” was about his pilgrimage to Mecca. So I guess we need a new word for people like this. “Spiritually non-aligned” perhaps?
As a socialistic autodidactic bookworm and a practising mystical atheist, I found your article to be an insightful assault on some particularly insidious clichés.