109: Dennis Nørmark | Are We Really Free? Pseudo-Work & Unfreedom: How Work & Society Keep Us Trapped - Self Directed

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jesper Conrad (00:00):
So today we are together with a fellow Dane,
Dennis Nermark.
First of all, Dennis, it's goodto see you and welcome.
Thank you so much.
Yes, so I almost don't knowwhere to start because there's
so many questions I want to askyou.
You have written two of myfavorite books, one of them with

(00:22):
a co-author called SodaWork,and the new one here you've
written by yourself.
And you have written otherbooks also which I have yet to
read and look forward to.
This one I would love to gointo depth with today is called
in Danish Ufrihedens Pris, andit would be translated to the
price of unfreedom, and that's afunny word freedom.

(00:44):
So can we start there?
Talk about what do you mean byunfreedom and that's a funny
word freedom.
So can we start there?
Talk about what do you mean byunfreedom?

Dennis Nørmark (00:50):
well, unfreedom means to be prohibited into,
into doing what you would liketo do.
It means that you somehow, butthat you are what you would call
it when it's not possible foryou to do or think or be the
person you'd like to be.
It means that you are, you haveaspirations to do something

(01:12):
else, or the will to dosomething else, but sometimes
the structures and the peoplearound you make it impossible
for you to do that.
I think that for me, you know,freedom is about self being
self-propelled by being able todo like you aspire to do, uh and
yeah.

(01:32):
So unfreedom would be the thenegative of that yeah, and as I
read, um soda work first.

maybe we briefly should touch on that before I go
into further questions.
What is SodaWork?

Then we have the two framings for our talk
SodaWork- was a concept Ideveloped with Anders Fogh
Jensen, a philosopher, thatcovered the types of work that
we sometimes do that really doesnot serve any real purpose,
when there is no realvalue-added work, that could be

(02:11):
easily ignored without havingany sort of consequences in the
real world.
So it would be the type of, youcould say, work as a sort of
theater right, where you dostuff that is unnecessary but
you've somehow been told by yoursurroundings that it's very
important that you do it or thatit has some sort of purpose,

(02:34):
which is just very difficult toreally detect and find.
So you could say it's a kind ofyes, as I said, a theater of of
types of job that that has noreal effect, but but, but you
can get a lot of prestige fromand and and that you can.
You can have a very fancy titleand sometimes it sounds very
important, although it isn't.

Cecilie Conrad (02:57):
Would you like to give an example, just for
those who can't imagine, yeah,by that.

It's always easier to use one of the
examples in the book because we,of course, we interviewed a lot
of a year on writing andputting pages together, forming

(03:29):
a 70, 80 pages product that shefinds out nobody really reads in
the organization, Nobody reallycares.
And she actually startsinterrupting a lot of other
people in their work so they canmake some contribution to this
annual report and take picturesand give some quotes, et cetera.
But she finds out that even theboard of directors only get a

(03:50):
15-pages executive summary of it.
So all in all, it's basically awaste of her time and everybody
else's time.
But when she confronts her bosswith this fact, he just says
well, everybody makes an annualreport, Everybody knows nobody
reads them, but allorganizations do this, so we do
the same right?
So you basically copy it andwhat I realized, what we

(04:13):
realized, is that a lot ofpseudo work is stuff you do
because all the organizations dothem as well.
They make strategies, they makereports, they have workshops or
you know they have a lot ofstuff that they feel is
important and they would feelthey were not a real company if
they didn't do it.

(04:34):
But all in all, a lot of itisn't used by anybody or
basically, you know, kills theirway because it has no real
impact.
It's just a waste of time.

But then that is where my life story got
difficult.
Our story briefly told westarted to homeschool our kids.
My wife was at home with thekids, I went to work and some
things happen when you choose tonot school.
If you look at it, then you canask yourself what is that?

(05:11):
That actually happens when youchoose a school.
I made the calculations becausewe have a grown up daughter who
is now 25, and our next one is19, etc.
Down to one who is 13.
And we had chosen a schoolbecause we really like their
learning style based onCelestine Frenet, and it was
really interesting to look athow long time would we be

(05:33):
connected to that school withthe age gap we had between our
kids, and it ended up close to20.
That meant then that I wouldchoose a house that was in
biking distance of the school tomake our kids life easier.
I would prefer to bike to work,so I would also find a work in
that distance, and we wanted ahouse and a place and a 30-year

(05:55):
mortgage and it was just likeyou can see how life is panned
on a school and because we havefour kids, it's just like panned
out.
This is the direction.
This is where it goes.
And then one what happened wasmy my wife is luckily still here
, but she got cancer andsurvived, and we needed to

(06:16):
revalue, relate everything andwe ended up with choosing
homeschooling later onunschooling of different reasons
and what happened was I stillwent to work, we still had the
house, the same place, and ouroldest was still in the school.
She wanted that.
But at some point I was justlooking out of the window, the

(06:38):
sun was shining, I knew my wifeand kids were having fun and I
just felt trapped.
We didn't have to stay in oneplace because our kids were
homeschooled and the only thingthat kept us in that one place
was that I went to work everyday.
So we went on, changed myincome over to being online, a
digital nomad, and then the lastseven years we have been

(07:01):
traveling.
It's a wonderful thing to havecreated, but it was very clear
when I read your book, I wasjust looking back at all those
hours and hours and hours in anoffice where you are spending
the time.
So the whole thing aboutfreedom I find very interesting,
as we are still hunting freedom, almost hungrily, want to have

(07:25):
the most out of life because ofthis life-changing experience.

It's so funny how this you know, quest for
work has become so absorbing foreverybody, right?
You know, in the book we alsolook at, you know I'm an
anthropologist and when you lookat hunter-gatherer societies or
tribal societies, work doesn'treally fill that much of a place
in their lives.
You know, most people do otherstuff they play, they tell

(07:51):
stories, they sometimes justhunt for fun, all right.
So, you know, originally humanbeings with it and spent more
and more time on work until weactually, you know, probably
reached the sort of the pinnacleof work in the 1800s and then

(08:16):
it slowly started to be reduced.
But we found it so fascinatingthat about 100 years ago
everybody thought we would beworking 15 hours a week, that
about 100 years ago everybodythought we would be working 15
hours a week, that you know,leading economists and
politicians and unions,everybody thought that work
hours in 2020 or 2030 would bearound 15, 20 hours.

(08:37):
But that doesn't seem to havehappened.
We still work a lot.
So we're just fascinated by thefact.
Maybe the work in itself hasbecome a type of religion, you
know where, maybe you know doingwork, and even though we've had
a lot of machinery, a lot ofcomputers, a lot of things that
should actually make it possiblefor us to do less work.
We don't know what to do withour lives, so our point is that

(09:00):
we start to invent work instead.
So our point is that we startto invent work instead.
We just pile more work and thenwe think it's very, very
important to do another strategyseminar, or make sure that our

(09:21):
logo is transformed and changedevery fifth year, or something
like that, even though that'snot really necessary.
So we end up inventing tasksfor ourselves, because human
beings have developed theincapacity to actually live
without the work.
And you know, that's somethingthat originally inspired us for
writing the book is whathappened to the dream of leisure
, what happened to the dream ofactually avoiding work?
And it somehow stopped, like 30years ago, because we haven't

(09:45):
really seen a reduction in workhours per week for the last 30
years.
And it's not like workautomatically takes 37 hours of
your life every week.
That's an insane idea.
So for some reason, we justended up with this concept of
work taking so and so much time,and our point in the book is
that work seems to expand withthe hours available for its

(10:08):
completion.
So if you decide that you have37 hours each week you spend on
work, you will find a way tomake the work you have fill 37
hours and that's sort of thestrategy of modern work life.

Do you think it has to do with the concept of
work itself?

Yeah, you could say well, every people on the
planet work in some way.
That means they producesomething, they create something
, they do something withsomething so that it adds some
sort of value, and every humanbeing is sent to do this.
But we used to do this type ofwork because we felt it was

(10:52):
necessary.
And sometimes we also do play,or we invent or we do something
else.
What's interesting about work isthat human beings, at least the
Western human being, does notreally play anymore.
You know, just go 100 yearsback and a lot of people spent a
lot of time playing whengrownups were together.

(11:15):
They played, they did a lot ofother stuff also, you know, in
the Western world, but somehowall things that has to do with
play and fun just went out thewindow.
And then work suddenly became aplace where we should find our
identity.
If you look back 200 years ago,nobody really found much

(11:35):
identity in their work.
If you go to a hunter-gatherersociety in the Kalahari Desert
of Africa, nobody would claimthat their work is their
identity.
So this sort of came later.
So work became a predominantway of looking at yourself and
who you are, which, of course,is also necessary for it to
consume so much of your time.

I was just thinking, the distinction
between working and not working.
Yeah, Of course there is, asyou say, Living.

you could say yeah.

The necessity of things and there is a gray zone
between what's urgently clearlynecessary and what's peaceful,
calm, hanging out, playing, andall the in-betweens.
And I say that as a homemaker.

(12:32):
We've had a lot ofconversations about me drinking
coffee, but I'm the mother in anunschooling family.
It's my responsibility to sharethe responsibility of the
education of the children withthe children themselves, but I'm

(12:53):
not unparenting them.
I'm not not there giving them,allowing them their freedom,
that I believe they have theright that they own their time.
They have the right that theyown their time, but there's a
lot of drinking coffee in thatequation.
There's a lot of.
This morning I had a one hourconversation with our 19 year
old son on literature andpsychology, and it was, you know
, we were both wearing ourworkout clothes, we were on our

(13:16):
way out to go for a run and thisobviously meant that my work
day, where I could sit with mycomputer and look smart, was
pushed an hour.

Yeah.

But the question is, when did I add more value?
When I had that conversationwith our son about literature
and psychology?
Or when I wrote that blog postthat I wrote a bit later for
maybe no one, maybe a lot ofpeople to read, I don't know?
I know that in the context ofof this young man who has never

(13:47):
been to school in his life, it'sa very important institution.
You might say that he can havea conversation with someone in
his proximity, someone he trusts, someone he's he knows about
the things he's passionate about.
So what is that?
Does that work?
When we have the negativeversion of the conversation,
it's not work it's me being lazyin the sofa.

Yes, and when we're I think it is.

It is work, you know life.

What some of the things that we try to argue for
in the book is that we havelimited our idea of work to to
work with an economic payment,with some sort of economic
reward.
But that's never been what workis.
It's been what work is for alimited amount of time in
history.
But historically, all thethings you're mentioning there

(14:36):
are work.
You know, spending time withyour kids is work.
Feeding your kid is work.
Talking with your kid aboutsomething that's important to
that person is work, because itcreates some sort of value.
That's why you know women for along, long period.
You know, for hundreds of yearstheir type of work was never
recognized because it was donein the home Cleaning, washing

(14:58):
the sheets, doing all of thatstuff.
That wasn't that was that washome, it was chores.
You know, that's stuff you doin your home.
But in reality it was work andbecause women were not paid for
it, it wasn't considered work.
There's been this very narrowidea that work is only something

(15:18):
where you get some sort ofeconomic compensation for, and
our book is trying to.
We were trying to say there's alot of work that you get
economically compensated forthat really isn't work, because
it doesn't do anything.
On the other hand, there's aton of stuff that you do.

(15:44):
All that adds some sort ofvalue to something that wouldn't
have been added automatically.
Right, you do something, yourefine something.
When you talk to your kid, youengage with that person, you
give that person new insights,you promote something, you
create some sort of value to.
When you're sitting down havinga a cup of coffee, coffee,

(16:05):
thinking sitting.
You know I'm a writer.
Most of my time is looking outthe window with a cup of coffee.
You know that's what I do.
You know, in a work in anoffice environment that wouldn't
look like work, somebody wouldcome up to you and say to me so,
dennis, what are you doing?
I'm working, it doesn't looklike it.
No, dennis, what are you doing?
I'm working?
It doesn't look like it.

(16:25):
No, but if I've been runningaround to meetings, sitting and
hammering my fingers down in akeyboard or talking about
strategies, it would qualify aswork in the setting of work that
we've created.
But it just isn't.

So do we have also some sort of moral thing
going on where we're trying toprove to our surroundings that
we are good people because wework hard?

yeah, it's, there's absolutely a moral
obligation in it and a sort ofmoral value we take from work.
It also that's probably alsodue to our protestant ethic, you
know it's, it's probably more.
You'll find more of that inchristian societies with a heavy
protestant ethic and in othersocieties, and you know, the
clear proof of that is that youcan go to some countries, you

(17:14):
know.
You can go to places like in,you know, in Africa or somewhere
else, where people deliberately, very openly, do nothing and
I'm not ashamed of it because itdoesn't fill them with any type
of shame, because that's justhow it is.
You work when there's somethingto do, otherwise you don't do
anything.
But we come from a culture whereespecially me and you too, I

(17:37):
guess where being busy is abadge of honor.
Being able to show that you'reconstantly engaged in something
that means that you don't havetime to do, play and life is a
rewarding exercise.
And people will reward you forthat because it will be seen as
a way of having self-control ora way of avoiding your own

(18:06):
pleasures.
And again, you could sell thatas a commodity and in this way
it easily becomes something thatsociety wants you to exhibit.
So busyness becomes yeah, as Isaid, a badge of honor.

Yeah, and what I personally find difficult is,
for example, with our children,whom we give enormous freedom.
Example with our children, whomwe give enormous freedom.
I can look at them and be likethere's still this in the back
of my mind sometimes oh, willthey ever get a career?
And then it is arguing with theother side that is saying

(18:44):
imagine they were just happypeople, that they were satisfied
and in balance with themselves,that they, as we say, worked
when they needed food and money.
They could do live whereverthey wanted, but not having this
constant something in the backof the mind just telling you to
keep on.
And on the other side I will goback to myself again.

(19:08):
I have always had a drive toproduce something.
When I was younger it wasmovies.
I've written children'sliterature.
Now we're doing a podcast and Iwork and part of me loves to
create.
There's something in the art ofcreation I really like, but at
the other hand, I do not likecreating without getting

(19:30):
economic compensation for itsomehow, because then I don't
give it the same value.
And then I can argue withmyself that money is just a
language we have created to talkabout value, because people
don't come if they listen to thepodcast and enjoy that time
I've spent making that theydon't go home to us and do the
dishes as an exchange.

(19:51):
So money is an exchange forvalue in some sort, and I have
all these internal dialogues.
But at the same time I'm likecan I figure out, just to relax,
when does it come from thispush?
Is it the Protestant Christianbackground and the whole culture
in Denmark?
And then I'm just going like,ah, now I will just.

(20:13):
And now when I relax, now Iwhittle spoons, which is still a
production of something.
But on one hand, humans like toproduce, and that is also my
problem.

Humans are creative.
You can't find a place in theworld where people don't just
look at the sky the whole dayand watching this day and
watching the clouds float by,Everybody's doing something.
You can always go to anywherein the world and people are busy
making a flute out of somebranch or creativity is just
part of human life, and we tryto improve.

(20:47):
We like to improve.
We are intelligent beings who'dlike to challenge ourselves.
Why do we do crossword puzzles?
Crossword puzzles are idiotic.
Nobody's paying you for that.
You're doing it because you wantto somehow challenge yourself,
and human beings have the driveto create, to want to create, to
do something.
But at the end of the day, youalso have to survive, right?

(21:09):
So if too much of your time isspent on something that will not
give you any benefits at all,then most people start to think
maybe I can make some money outof this podcast, or maybe I
could make some money out ofbending spoons and become a
magician or whatever, right?
So we end up, because we havethese needs to to somehow
convert what we like to do intosome sort of a job, and I think

(21:33):
that's what most people havedone in the world so far, the
strategy of modern life is thatwe are now converting.
We're now being told to do alot of things that we don't
really enjoy doing but that wethink we have to, even though it
makes no sense for us, becausewe're caught up with these.
You know, strange ideas of whatwork should be and, in some
corporations, the strange ideasof what is necessary and

(21:55):
efficient, etc.
Etc.
So I think we are all creative.
Everybody will be that at somepoint and want to do it, and
some of us are lucky to convertthat into something that can
actually benefit us economicallyas well lucky to convert that
into something that can actuallybenefit us economically as well
.

When I talk with a lot of unschooling,
homeschooling parents on thestart of their road down their
journey, then I actuallyrecommend your books because I'm
like this is what someone hasfigured out about work and work
ethics and etc.
But why aren't we looking atthe schools at the same way?
Because there's a lot of sortof work going on in school.

(22:40):
There's a lot of unfreedom, sohave you in your work, looked at
some of this?

yeah, basically a lot of the schools too.
You know, uh, you know becauseyou know what.
What made me make a transitionfrom pseudo work to the to to
the price of unfreedom, wasexactly the my interest in how
much of work out there.
That is pseudo work has to dowith the fact that we don't.

(23:10):
That is pseudo work has to dowith the fact that we don't
trust that people will actuallydo their work.
We think it's so tiresome andterrible for them to do their
work that we have to controlthem, that we have to make sure
that they do their work, becausewe end up with a crazy idea
that human beings are basicallylazy and they are disengaged and

(23:31):
not interested, that originally, human beings would try to
avoid any type of creativity andwork, etc.
Etc.
And this is, as I said before,simply not true.
But because this myth of humanbeings have been so prevalent,
we have started to make so manycontrol systems and so many
rules and basically tighteningthe strings every time human

(23:54):
beings are out there working to,you know, control what they do
or frame it in such a way thatwe have some sort of control
over it.
So for me, that was, you know,a transition from pseudo work to
the price of unfreedom, which Isaw in a lot of organizations,
especially the schools you knowin.
In the schools in the 1917s and80s, school teachers had a

(24:18):
tremendous amount of freedom todo almost entirely what they
wanted.
Um, and that happened for avery long time until we started
to really again narrow it, itdown, making it harder and
harder to just be guided by yourpersonal calling as a teacher
and more and more framed bystrict strategies and plans and

(24:42):
goals and, you know, aperformance indicator type of
work.
And that has again basicallytaken out a lot of the joy in
work as well, because one thingthat can certainly take the joy
out of work is loss of meaning,loss of control and,
interestingly enough, also whenwe pay them.

(25:02):
So if you do pay work you don'tget paid for, you usually enjoy
more than the work you do getpaid for.
So all of these things added upto making especially teaching,
especially in schoolwork, a jobthat more and more people found
unfulfilling to do.

But if we flip it in those schools where the
teachers now are sufferingbasically in Denmark it's called
fiddles model the shared goalwhich is a set of rules of how
school should be done in thepublic school, which is.
I read it.
Obviously, as I'm homeeducating, I needed to see what
am I up against here.

(25:44):
So the says that I have to dosomething on the same level as
that.
So I had to know what it wasand I think it was very, very
specific.
Yeah, Borderlining OCD.
You have to learn about this inthat month of that year in this
way and make sure they knowexactly A through Z.

(26:06):
It was pretty, yeah.
Anyways, the teachers aresuffering because they have no
freedom.
They are little robots or theyare not, of course, but they
kind of have to act like alittle robot.
But what about all the kids?
They're at the receiving end ofthis.
They are trapped here, and theyare one of the most impactful

(26:30):
books we've read.
We actually only had to readthe title.
It was called Children the lastslaves.
Yeah because, when you thinkabout it, how much freedom does
a child have?

Not a lot.

It's trapped there in school and they have to
do what the parents are told.
They will not be fed if theydon't behave.
They can't.
If I have a job and I hate it Imight feel trapped by the
economics of giving up having ajob, but in a way I'm an adult.
I can quit my job, find anotherjob.

(27:03):
I can leave A child can't leavethe school.
They are told wrongly inDenmark that they have to be
there.
Actually they don't by law, buteverybody tells them they have
to be there.
Actually they don't by law, butthey everybody tells them they
have to be there.
And they have to be in thissystem where they are doing
things that make no sense, thatare not interesting, and even
the the, the deliverer of it,the teacher, doesn't find it

(27:27):
meaningful.
When we were in school at leastthe teachers were free and
inspired yeah, and inspired, butnow they are doing this
mechanic work yeah, and whatdrops off?

of course it drops off at the kids.
I'm sure it does um and it andit creates a very narrow
learning environment.
You know, the more, the moreyou are supposed to.
I think it it's about 5,000different learning goals that we
have in the Danish publicschools.
They're trying to get rid ofthem now, thankfully, but that
has been the regime in thepublic schools of Denmark and

(28:02):
that means there is, as you said, there is a very in the price
of unfreedom.
I call it managerialism.
You know the idea that you cansort of manage everything, that
you could square things in andtell people exactly what to do.
It's the old Frederick WinslowTayloran idea of the conveyor
belt.
You know, instruct people inhow to do their work and let

(28:23):
them do it and check if they'vedone it.
And this type of managerialistidea has been running
organizations public sector,private sector for many, many,
many years, have been runningorganizations public sector,
private sector for many, many,many years.
And when that tailor and idea ofmanagerialism meets the public
school, it means a very narrowidea of how to teach kids, and

(28:43):
the kids also learn over timethat their response is very
narrow too, that they can'treally do anything crazy or wild
.
Even our grading system inDenmark has become this way that
basically what you're lookingfor, if you want to get a top
grade in a field, you have tomake no mistakes.
That's what we do today.
When I was a kid, you could geta 13, which was top grade for

(29:06):
an extraordinary achievementthat was doing something other
than expected.
But children today learn not todo anything than what is is
expected from them.
So if you make no mistakes,it's fine.
So you create the whole ideathat it's about.
It's about, um, finding errors.
It's about making sure that youhave you have checked all the

(29:28):
your boxes.
It becomes a very narrow ideaof teaching and expanding
people's knowledge, and I think,especially if you are kids who
are maybe a little bit weird orspecial or have some sort of
diagnosis or whatever, and thenthe more restricted stuff gets,

(29:50):
the less room there is for youto really perform in.
So I think it has somedevastating effects on
innovation, how kids learn, howmuch they enjoy learning.
It also has an effect on howmuch difference can we actually
allow for in the classroom.
So I think this has a lot ofother effects than, just as you

(30:13):
mentioned, the teachers andtheir teachers' well-being.
Of course it rubs off on thekids.

Then is what is the price of unfreedom?

Because it's a whole book it's very good to

(30:46):
narrow things in and havecontrols and have management and
have unfreedom, becauseotherwise things will get too
unhinged, it will go out ofcontrol, it'll be dangerous,
it'll be costly, it'll beinefficient, et cetera, et
cetera.
What I try to show with thebook is that it's actually the
reverse phenomenon.
That freedom actually is aquite smart way of solving
problems.
Giving people freedom and theability to self-organize is much

(31:10):
more cheap than having a ton ofmanagers checking and
instructing and writing verycomplex manuals about what to do
and how to do it.
That we have somehow managed toconvince ourselves that freedom
is not the clever way ofsolving things, that more
management, more control, moreleadership, more rules, more

(31:33):
organization, more framework isefficient and clever and safe.
But I try to show in my bookthat it really isn't.
It is a misunderstanding.
There is a lot to be gainedfrom freedom, much more than we
think.

But, dennis, sometimes when I've recommended
both your books of these twowe're talking today, I've said
to people try not to cry whenyou read it, because when you
see it, for some people it wouldbe like removing the blinds,
like, oh fuck the things I'vewhen I go to work I can be

(32:14):
annoyed with stuff.
And now this guy is even sayingI'm not wrong, I'm right, it's
stupid.
And again, with the, the priceof unfreedom, you can be like,
oh, that is why I hate all theserules.
But when I say to try not tocry is, have you created a life
where you're stuck in this?
Then you will be like, oh no,what to do now?

(32:36):
So what do you suggest peopledo after they have read your
books?

Well, that they take matters into their own hand
.
You know I, you know I, I, oneof I, I.
One of the things I really tryto combat in the Price of
Unfreedom is what I callself-inflicted helplessness.
You know that we end upbelieving that we can do nothing
.
We, we sort of we sort ofmirror this image of ourselves
that has been created over over,over time and and it becomes
who we are and we start tobelieving in it.

(33:03):
You know, sudowork has soldmore than 100,000 copies around
the world and it's as far awayas South Korea and it's just
been translated into Japanese.
This is because this rings abell with a lot of people's
lives.
They realize that.
As you said, jesper, you knowthe little feeling you have

(33:24):
inside that maybe it's not mewho's wrong here, maybe it's
something else that's wrong.
That really did strike a chordwith a lot of people.
So people are.
I've got so many mails frompeople who quit their job
because of my books and I thinkthat is a good thing.
It's not entirely the solepurpose of the book to make

(33:46):
people quit their jobs, but ifthey feel that I showed them and
me and Anders Fogh Jensenshowed them that their life is
miserable with this type of work, then it's fantastic to lose
the grip and just say well, nowI'm in the driver's seat, now I
take the decision, now I'mleaving, and I think a lot of us

(34:11):
.
The problem of modern Westernpersons is they're looking for a
lot of other people to helpthem when actually they should
be helping themselves.
They're thinking why should thestate should help me with this,
or society should help me withthis, or society should help me
with this, or my boss shouldhelp with this, or consultant or
psychologist?
But in reality you should helpyourself with this.
You should start doingsomething else.

(34:33):
You should quit your job, right.
You should realize that there'smuch more to gain from freedom.
You should sort of just get theshackles off, and most people
can actually do this.
But for a very long time we havebeen told that we really can't,
that we need managers, we needpeople to guide us in every

(34:54):
aspect of our life.
Then we become self-inflictedlyhelpless and so and when I say
this, a lot of people still lookat me with a desperate gaze,
thinking I still don'tunderstand it.
And it's hard sometimes I'vemet some of the most depressing
people sometimes when I go outand talk about this and they

(35:16):
just sit there and think, oh,it's great to be more
self-organized and innerdirected, et cetera, et cetera.
But I can't.
I live in, I work in anorganization where it's
impossible or that would be verydifficult.
I might lose my job, you know.
So people are sadly to say notnecessarily, they don't.

(35:38):
A lot of people don't have thatdrive anymore and I wish they
did.
And that's the only thing I cansay I really wish they did.

I think some of it actually stems from that
school system.
Yeah, that we are taught fromvery early on that that we are
not allowed our own freedomshould be an inborn right to
decide what to do with your ownhours on this planet, in this
life, and and young children aretaught what you want to do is

(36:09):
irrelevant and a waste of time.
What you are interested in isnot what you're supposed to be
interested in.
Here we are the adults in insome way here.
Here it is the state tellingyou what to learn, how to learn
it, when to learn it, how tobehave, and the things you want
to do you can do in theallocated free time that we give

(36:34):
you, that you can have if youget good grades in school, if
you do your chores, if you're anice older brother, whatever.
So we teach children early onthat if they don't comply to the
school system and learn thethings in the right way and now
they changed you know thegrading system, as you said to

(36:55):
the good student is the one whodoesn't make mistakes, which
means you don't take any chances, you don't risk anything, you
don't go wild in your brain andcompare two incomparable things
a tree to a I don't know a playby shakespeare and you go down
that rabbit hole and it didn'twork.
But you tried and and maybe getthat 13 for that, just for the

(37:16):
creative idea.
Um, that doesn't happen anylonger.
And you're taught all the timethat you have to go through with
this.
And in the country you and Icome from you go through it for
about 20, 25 years until youhave your university degree
because otherwise you won't geta good job and then you won't

(37:36):
get a good life.
And I met a lot of childrenolder children, I kind of see
when they're younger how thelight turns off in their eyes
after a few years of schooling,this enthusiasm, joy, wonder.
And when they become youngteenagers they believe that
narrative, it's internalized.

(37:58):
And now you're telling me aboutthe workforce, how you know
they kind of see your pointbecause they're smart enough to
understand it, but they don't.
They've given up in a way.

you know they're in the trap and that's because
a lot of the teachers orconsultants and managers and
politicians, et cetera, hasframed the taking away of
freedom as a type of care.
You know they have.
They presented this as a way oftaking care of you, a way of
organizing your life for you,because otherwise life would be

(38:31):
hard and dangerous, et cetera,et cetera.
So, and it's very, verydifficult to rebel against
somebody who says they love you,you know, and framing it like
like some sort of care.
And that's why, you know, in mybook I framed it, I call it the
administrative upper class,which means that if people are
not willing to take control overtheir own lives, somebody is

(38:56):
willing, homeless a very longtime, so say I don't want power.
Somebody else will say, well,I'll grab it for you then and
I'll decide what you do and I'llmake a whole career out of
telling you what to do, becausethen the productivity I convey
in this world is telling youwhat to do and instructing you

(39:19):
in your life and making rulesfor you life and making rules
for you.
And again, so that's why, youknow, we get more teachers and
consultants and HR departmentsand managers, etc.
With a larger and largermanagerial class of people whose
basic jobs it is to tell youwhat to do, and that's their
contribution to the world.
And again, if they frame thiswith if we weren't here,

(39:41):
everything would go wrong, thenwe're a bit scared and then we
say, well, okay, then you betterbe here.
It might be I'm probably notfit to take up, you know,
decisions on my own.
It would probably be dangerousfor me if I did this, you know,
just because I think that wouldbe the right thing to do, if I
let my sort of inner drivesguide me, if I let my sort of
inner drives guide me.

(40:02):
So I think that's the reasonwhy this has happened is that
that it has been sort of the,the freedom has been taken away
from us with a, with a lot oflove in a way, or what I would
say is looking like love, butreally isn't it basically

(40:23):
control.

So, knowing these things, thinking about
them and dissecting the system,understanding what's up and down
, what is care and what isfreedom, we might have to keep
living in the same sort ofsociety for a while.
I'm not going to personallystart a revolution not not an

(40:51):
armed one, um but knowing it atleast can set us free
emotionally and, it's like, withour thoughts yeah, yeah,
exactly yeah so we understandyou're taking away my freedom
now, yeah, because you're sayingthat and you're trying to
manipulate you.
You repeating the narrative ofcare, I don't, I don't buy that.

(41:14):
I'll do what you tell me to dobecause I have to, otherwise
you're not paying me.
I remember my mom.

She was a high school.
Sorry, my mom was a high schoolteacher.

It's not just pay, it's also punishment, right
?
Yes, it's carrots and sticks.
Yeah.

Yeah, my mom was a high school teacher and she
got pretty disillusionized overher years of teaching in high
school in Denmark and in the endshe said I don't care, they can
give me a broom and I'll broomthe floor instead of teaching
French literature.
I don't care any longer.
They pay me and I do what theytell me to do, and that's not

(41:54):
the kind of life you want.
That's not the kind of workeryou want either.
No, no dissolution At least shekept her free thinking, she
didn't obey to the idea that shehad to do the things because
they were necessary, because shefound them increasingly BS over
the years of working.
And I think, of course, it'snot good to have a job and a

(42:17):
life, an everyday life, whereyou think what most of you, most
of what you do, is bullshit,but at least you can call it
yeah, and then you don't have tolive with that fear, because
fear is the ruler of this right.
If they tell you it's necessary, otherwise it's dangerous, well
then you're ruled by fear, fearof something that isn't doesn't
exist and that's the first step.

it's calling bullshit, uh or or didn't, or
just refusing to do some of thestuff.
That's the first step and Ithink, again, more of us could
be doing that.
The last phrase in the pseudowork is you have more space than
you think, because we aretrying to tell people that you
probably have more wiggle roomor whatever you want to call it.

(43:00):
As we call it in Danish, youare able to maybe move yourself
around more than you think youare.
Just try it out, see whathappens.
And again, this means that yousomehow have to defy some of
these authorities or maybe findthe best, better authorities.
You know I'm not againstauthority, as I write in my book

(43:22):
.
You know natural authoritiesare a great thing.
I'm guessing you're naturalauthorities for your kids.
I mean, you're somebody theylook up to, hopefully, and you
think that you can inspire them,etc.
From people to get, you know,good ideas.
To be inspired by people isfantastic.
What is wrong and what tends tobe problematic are hierarchies.
You know where people are.
You know entitled to tell youwhat to do and can force you or

(43:55):
punish you if you don't do asthey tell you to.
And again, my problem is justthat increasingly, our work life
and public life, et cetera, hasbeen full of authorities that
can push you around, that canactually punish you, that don't
inspire you anymore, that youdon't want to follow just
because you think they'reamazing or interesting.
But you follow them becauseotherwise you'll be fined or

(44:19):
punished or put to jail orpeople will take away your money
on something like that, andthat's what I find problematic
yeah, and even these peopleusually, I think have this
installed in their deeppsychology, internalized the
idea of control as as the goodpath.

So they think they're doing a good job, a
necessary job.
It's not malice necessarilyhappening from the side of your
boss and you don't have to rebelagainst the school teacher.
It's questioning the underlyingstructure of that system.
That becomes interesting.
You know, why are we?
Why are we doing this?

exactly, and that's why I spent just so much
of the president.
Freedom is about.
How did we end up with a imageof human beings as so helpless,
you know?
How did we end up with an imageof human beings as so helpless,
you know?
How did we end up with an ideathat human beings couldn't do
this?
You know.
So for me it's about there's no, of course, all the people in
the administrative upper classare not doing this, because

(45:18):
they've started to adapt theidea that human beings are so
helpless that they're inherentlyevil, that they are misguided
morally if there's not asuperior figure that can tell
them what to do, and thatthey're lazy at their work, that
there are all these types ofthings.
And for me, it's about the imageof human beings.

(45:41):
If that has been created andbeen reproduced by a class of
powerful managers and people whohave an interest in this image
of human beings as helpless,then that becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
That becomes how it is.
That becomes how we view eachother.

(46:02):
How it is that becomes how weview each other.
So that's why a lot of thePrize for Unfreedom is about
backtracking on that image ofhuman beings and actually
constitute an image of humanbeings as much more inner
directed, as much more ethicaland moral creatures, as much
more responsible, self-organized, social responsible individuals
, which most of us actually are,social responsible individuals,

(46:27):
which we, most of us, actuallyare.

But we've just been told, we've been told by,
by the people who hold powerover us that you're not yeah, is
it even the case that in thebrief moments, or maybe
sometimes longer phases of ourlives where we are a little
helpless, where we we losecontrol or we're trapped or
we're I had cancer once Icouldn't do much other than take

(46:51):
chemotherapy and try?
to survive and and that waspretty helpless situation but I
mean, I grew a lot from that.
I learned a lot from that andbeing helpless for a while.
I remember my grandmother.
She fell once and she couldn'tget up.
She was maybe 72 and shecouldn't get up and she had to
wait until someone showed up inher house because she couldn't

(47:12):
reach her phone.
It was pretty devastatingbecause she felt like awkwardly
it wasn't that she was that weak, but that put so, realizing she
was helpless, made her work outa lot the following years.
She bought little things.
She was an elderly woman.
She wasn't like a fitness queenor anything, but that
experience of helplessness andhow that was not a good feeling

(47:38):
made her realize I better dosomething about this.
So if we really are helpless,if we are not governed by anyone
there's no instruction book, noone's coming to save you.
There's no.
You know you are actually.
Can I say the f word?
You are actually a littlefucked you know, that might

(48:02):
spark some power.
It's not.
It's not the end of the worldto be a little bit helpless for
a while in your life no, but howwill you get stronger if
everyone all the time is liftingthe stuff for you?

yeah, that's it.
You.
You have to.
You have to recognize thatsometimes we do need help,
because this again, as I said,sometimes we do need somebody
who are cleverer than us.
Sometimes we do need helpBecause this again, as I said,
sometimes we do need somebodywho are cleverer than us.
Sometimes we do need that.
We are in situations where wedo this.
We just shouldn't be too clingyafterwards right, we shouldn't.
This shouldn't be how we see orstart to see ourselves.

(48:38):
The human beings are in greatneed of other people's social
support all the time.
We are extremely social beings.
We die when we're alone.
The most terrible thing you cando to another person is put
that person in isolation.
Why do people do that all overthe world?
Because we know it's the mosthorrible situation to be in.
So human beings want to be withother people and we want to

(49:03):
know that the help is out thereif we need it.
And in the most direcircumstances in our life,
people will be there for us.
We have just somehow come tolearn that these circumstances
are almost constant.
That help follows you even whenyou don't need it, because
people have interests in helpingyou, sometimes even when

(49:27):
actually distancing you fromthat help, or even just
basically avoiding it wouldactually be better for you.

I think it's about reclaiming the
responsibility for our own lives, and that can be difficult when
we hand over the power tosomeone else.
I wanted to end on a positivenote.

I think this is pretty epic.

It is super epic and positive.
No, but what I what I wanted tosay was that maybe it is the
bubbles we move in, that I thinkthere is something growing.
I think there's a slow movementgoing on your books, the
interest for the books you havewritten, even though that I mean

(50:19):
you are out there being aconsultant for companies,
because there's an interest inlistening to what you have to
say.
Yeah, it is growing, and Ibelieve that this period of time
where we went down the let'sover control everything, we can
now see the results, which is itdoesn't work.
So is it just my bubbles or doyou think there is something?

It is there.
And one of the things is, eventhough we live in a very
polarizing world, what a goodthing is that we?
I think we're starting todepoliticize freedom, because
for many years it has been sortof the right-wing agenda to talk
about freedom and the left winghas sort of forgotten to talk
about freedom.
And the left wing has sort offorgotten to talk about freedom.
A lot of other things becamemuch more relevant security,

(51:05):
equality, et cetera, et cetera.
So the left wing sort of hadforgotten freedom.
Go back to the hippies in the60s and 70s.
They loved freedom, they talkedabout it all the time, but then
a lot of other things becameimportant to them and then the
right wing sort of took amonopoly on freedom.
And I think we're back totrying to get rid of the

(51:26):
political element in freedom andsay everybody wants it, it's a
good thing, and no politicalwing should have any sort of
monopoly on it.
Everybody are interested.
In Denmark we talk a lot aboutsetting people free of the
workplace.
That has become a new paradigm,especially in the public sector
, and it is everywhere.
We're talking about debossingorganizations, getting rid of

(51:49):
managers and maybe giving morepeople the freedom to take
control of themselves, pushingdown the pyramids, making them
flatter and flatter and givingmore people empowerment in their
work.
And we talk about deregulatingsociety.
We talk about that in Denmark,in the US, in England,
everywhere.
So I think we are actually at aturning point where freedom has

(52:12):
become, has had.
You know that there's a hopethere in freedom and there's a
limit to.
We've understood there's alimit to how much managerialist
and regulatory ideas canactually bring you.
We talked about how the wholeEuropean Union, how we in Europe
, are losing competitive edgebecause we have created so much

(52:36):
bureaucracy, so many rules thatwe are taking away initiative
from everybody, right?
So I think we are realizingthat we have put too much power
in some institutions and somepeople and that it would be
better to give it back to thepeople who probably knows better
, which are everybody.

(52:56):
So I see that happening rightnow in Denmark and, you know,
again with the popularity ofwhat I've been writing.
And also, you know people areinterested in having me come out
to organizations and talk aboutthis because they can see that
this can actually help them.
So, yeah, maybe it's just mewho want to see what's positive.
You know we all have that bias,but I do think that there is a,

(53:22):
there is a change happeningperfect, dennis.

If people want to read more of your work and find
you, can you, for the peoplejust listening, share the name
of your website and how they canget hold of your books and
stuff?

sure you know they can always find me on
LinkedIn.
They could also go todenisnormarkcom, which is my
name, with an O instead of an Ö,which it is in Danish, com, and
there you can read more aboutme, and I usually, you know,
write there.
If there's anything newhappening, especially for
English viewers or people whoare not fluent in Danish, that

(53:58):
would be the place to look.
But LinkedIn is always a goodplace to find me, perfect.

All right.

It was wonderful this has been a very
interesting conversation, thankyou.

Thank you so much .

All Episodes

109: Dennis Nørmark | Are We Really Free? Pseudo-Work & Unfreedom: How Work & Society Keep Us Trapped

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

Therapy Gecko

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}109: Dennis Nørmark | Are We Really Free? Pseudo-Work & Unfreedom: How Work & Society Keep Us Trapped