The Faustian Work Ethic
a guest post by Dr. Monzo
You may remember
from our podcast episode together several months back.I am elated to announce that in the intervening months the good doctor has become one of the most productive members of The Tortuga Society. He’s participated heavily in our prospective civil rights efforts, helped and I theorycraft several high-level strategic initiatives, and has personally shepherded multiple new Tortugans into our ranks.
Given his increasingly pivotal role in our organization, I wanted to give Monzo the chance to do what he does best by having him formally codify the Tortuga Society’s perspective on something of tremendous importance in American culture: the value of work ethic.
Once upon a time, great men were able to explore and conquer. Today men sit in a cubicle or home office, filling out spreadsheets and sending emails for corporations that incessantly tweet about their most recent LGBT and DEI initiatives.
Maybe it’s not so bad for you. Maybe your job is kind of cool, and you sort of like it. Maybe—if you’re lucky—your job is even something you believe in.
For most this is not the case; nearly all men of the day work forty hours a week, and then go home, have a drink, watch Netflix, sleep, and start again the next day.
This is the culture of the Protestant Work Ethic, described by Max Weber as a Calvinist mindset that emphasizes the inherent virtue of working hard, long hours.
This culture has a new rival: the Hindu Work Ethic.
The Hindu Work Ethic has little to do with Hinduism proper; rather, it is the attitude of many South Asian immigrants coming into the United States, which includes a willingness to work harder than us for substantially less pay.
The conflict between these mindsets spawned the great H1-B debate of Christmas 2024. Americans of the educated and professional classes are being asked to choose: will we compete with immigrants by taking less pay and longer hours, or will we follow our blue collar forebears into that great abyss of nihilism and opioid abuse?
What if I told you there was a third option?
Western Man used to explore and conquer.
Why did he do this? It’s because he was driven by the Faustian Spirit.
The Faustian Spirit, as described by Spengler, is the lust for victory above all else and at any cost. It’s a uniquely European cultural attitude stemming from the intersection of relentless ambition, unusual risk appetite, and a boundless appreciation for novelty.
This is the attitude that pushed Western Man to conquer the Americas and dominate the globe. It’s the attitude that drove inventors, philosophers, and scientists to wrench secrets of the world from Mother Nature. It’s what put our flag on the moon.
Most of those doors seem closed now. Maybe you’re reading this on a SpaceX Mars mission, but that’s unlikely. If you want to be a philosopher or scientist, the socially approved path is through our sclerotic university system, where 90% of your efforts go to bureaucratic status-jockeying, with another 9% reserved for semi-interesting tasks, and only that last 1% consisting of things you dreamed of doing when you set out on this path. Perhaps you can still be an inventor if you have suitable talents.
For most of us, though, we must grapple with the 40-hour workweek and uncaring corporate overlords. But there is also opportunity here.
I propose a new work ethic that can rekindle the predator spirit that motivated the great men of Western history: The Faustian Work Ethic.
The Faustian Work Ethic is different from the Protestant version because it does not focus on the work itself. While the Protestant Work Ethic sees hard work as its own desirable end, the Faustian sees it as a means. The real end is victory and conquest.
What does conquest look like today? You could become an actual pirate, but this requires traveling to the third world and leaving behind modern luxury. And at that point, you are just participating in African warlord infighting. Europe’s great invasions and conquests are over. If you try to take lands through conquest, the international order will punish you. You cannot be an actual pirate anymore.
So instead be an economic pirate. Deploy asymmetric strategies to fill your war chest with plunder and grow your personal empire.
For many Zoomers and Millennials, this empire will look like an average Boomer livelihood, but in a period of late capitalist decline, the goalposts have moved. These days the Faustian Work Ethic is the only option left for the youth to earn a dignified middle-class standard of living. Conquer enough, and your empire may even provide wealth and ease for your progeny after your passing.
The goal is not to put in as many hours as possible—instead put in as few as possible.
The elegance of this worldview consists in the simple idea that inefficient systems laden with perverse incentives ought to be arbitraged out of existence. For instance, the very existence of the 40-hour workweek is antithetical to the Faustian outlook, but the inefficiency of this structure and its byproducts create ample opportunities for exploitation and asymmetric strategizing.
Obviously relying on asymmetric strategies requires an above average risk appetite and not everyone has that Faustian drive in them. That is neither good nor bad; not everyone has to or should do this. Some people are happy with a certain station in life, and good for them. The Faustian Work Ethic is for those who are perpetually dissatisfied. These types sink their teeth into work for its own sake. If this is you, set your sights higher—work for its own sake might be a distraction your real ambitions.
One of the masters of this new form of piracy is Walt himself, who graciously hosts this essay. These asymmetric strategies do exist, and they are helping young Faustian men build their mini-empires. Job stacking is one such tactic, but the craftiness of Walt and others like him in our ranks knows no bounds.
In conclusion, if you are unsatisfied and wish you were doing more, here is a neat fact: you can just do stuff. You do not have to wait around for things to happen to you. Almost everything can be learned for free, and some time for reflection along with some strategizing can profit you a lot in both the short and long run.
So if you have that Faustian ambition, don’t ever let yourself become a side character in your own story. Grow some fangs and become an economic predator.
Love seeing a fellow from the Hypergulag posting here.
> For most of us, though, we must grapple with the 40-hour workweek and uncaring corporate overlords.
This was as true in centuries past. You think everyone was an adventurous explorer and conqueror? Just as today, few men exemplified the Faustian spirit, the majority were unremarkable common laborers.