We’re living in a remarkably complex society, and that sometimes makes it extremely difficult to tell the difference between selfishness and selflessness. Gone are the days when people could follow straightforward, predictable paths in their professional or personal lives. Social structures such as places of work are becoming less stable, year after year, as Silicon Valley’s tactic of gaining power by “moving fast and breaking things” continues to smash the pillars of trust in social organizations. Essence Pierce has been dealing with the consequences of the spreading chaos in the working world, although she has solid education and experience. Essence Pierce: My name is Essence Pierce. I am a mother of a brilliant seven year-old. I am a strategic insights leader and I had someone on LinkedIn ask me what that means before. So, what it means is whether you are looking for messaging strategy, for a marketing campaign, sales enablement strategy, or road map planning, this is something that I've worked on in my career for over a decade, as well as, yeah, I love marketing. I have a master's in integrated marketing, and so I've learned before that I'm more than just insights. I've also done tactical things. I've always felt like I was one of the rare people who, once I figured out what I wanted to do, that genuinely loved it. The part about the insights that I love is being able to put, I'm very analytical, so I like solving problems. Collecting a bunch of data from different sources, whether it's competitive intelligence, market intelligence, performance metrics, putting all of, getting things from these disparate places, and putting it together to build a narrative and a strategic direction to me is very powerful. Jonathan Cook: Essence is skilled at using data to help businesses to find the strategic direction to build successful marketing programs. Over the last couple of years, however, employment for insights professionals in business has been devastated by the introduction of generative AI tools that provide quick and inexpensive imitations of insights work that are attractive to executives eager to cut costs. As a result, Essence is now having to use her problem solving abilities to find a new home for her family. Essence is moving with her daughter away from their home in Florida in order to find work in Chicago. Essence knows that making this change is in the interest of her daughter in the long term. Nonetheless, Essence feels guilty about taking her daughter away from the community she knows and loves. Essence Pierce: I don't like change. I say it all the time. People are like, that's crazy because you, you handle it well, but no. Inside, I'm always freaking out about change. I love our house, you know, I was very proud to become a homeowner when I bought my home, particularly doing it as a single mother. But also, my daughter is going to be sad and she's going to miss her friends, and her school actually had their award ceremony, and I got emotional last night because I was like, oh my gosh, she goes to a very small school. That's one thing, and I'm going to have to put her in public school because I just really don't feel like paying private school up there, at least I want to see what the public school looks like where we're going. I'm stripping her away from everything that she knows, and so, there's guilt, a lot of guilt with that one. With that one, that's where the guilt comes in as opposed to the shame because it's like, am I being selfish? I know I'm not. I also know that the job market is better out there. I'll have more support. You know, I can travel for work, when I move there. But, there's still a lot of guilt where it's like, I'm stripping her away from everything that she knows. She's had the same three girls in her class for the last three years since kindergarten. She's been at that school since preschool as well. So, it's just really, it's the mom guilt. That's really the biggest negative feeling in the change, and the change is scary. Jonathan Cook: Essence is taking care of her daughter by moving up to Chicago, where she has extended family connections. In the short term, however, the decision to move is causing pain for her daughter. So, Essence is feeling guilty about making the move. On top of the guilt, Essence feels shame for relying on family to help her navigate the disruption of professional networks caused by the unregulated, unrestrained deployment of generative AI. Essence feels shame for accepting help from family at the very same time she feels guilty for not being able to help her own daughter more. Essence Pierce: I think from the broader society, the shame message is really just that you're an adult. Your friends are not your therapist, right? Your family, they're not your therapist. So, you need to figure it out on your own. That’s kind of what I feel that's that society has or the other concept of we all have problems. You know what I mean? You're, why come to me with it? I think that's where a lot of that shame comes from because everybody has this mentality of: “So? Everybody's going through stuff. You're no different. You, you know, you're no special. So, why do I need to put out my energy to help you?” Some of us are able to learn from it and try to change that narrative, and some of us aren't. I think that outwardly, I don't believe anyone should feel shame for needing help. I think at some point in your life, everyone's going to need it. It's that inward piece that I struggle with, where it's like, you're not, like, I want to, sometimes I have to tell myself, you're no exception, okay? If it's okay for everybody else, it should be okay for you. To me, shame is more like embarrassment because I shouldn't be feeling this way or embarrassment because I shouldn't be in this situation. To me, guilt is different because it's like, I feel bad for something that I did. Like even when I got laid off, there was a lot of shame attached to that, and it makes no sense. Like, what did I do? I know I was a top performer. I got excellent reviews, and this is the story with a lot of us. I know a lot of people feel that same shame and it doesn't make sense, but it's shame because it's embarrassment that you have. It's almost like you lost status, if that makes sense. So, I think from the emotional piece, it's like, oh, well, these people know that I'm really breaking down, then I'm not going to be, I've lost my status as the strong person. That's not true. Actually, I think people that are attached to their emotions are very strong people. Jonathan Cook: Essence explains the difference between shame and guilt, saying that guilt is how it feels to have donesomething wrong, while shame is the feeling of beingnot good enough. This is like the sense of inadequacy that Nathalie Martinek described in a toxic workplace, only now, the shame has spread beyond just one workplace, beyond just one industry, to infect an entire professional marketplace. It's fascinating to me that the emotional response that Essence has to this society-wide economic crisis is to feel shame. The problem of the unregulated expansion of generative AI transcends individual behavior, but Essence feels responsible for it anyway. Essence was good at her work, and she’s looking for new professional opportunities every day. She’s applying to jobs. She’s networking. She’s doing everything she can, but there just aren’t many positions available. It’s not her fault, but there’s part of Essence that can’t help feeling that somehow, there’s something wrong with her. I’ve been talking with a lot of people like Essence, recently. These are well-educated, skilled, experienced people who have been thrown out of work for what their former employers euphemistically call “structural reasons”. These so-called structural reasons are plain: Large numbers of businesses are experimenting with new ways to make money for their investors while employing fewer people. In the short-term, this tactic looks good. With labor costs dramatically reduced, profits go up, and executives receive ample economic rewards. Business moves on, coasting on the residual value of the hard work contributed by people who have now been left to fend for themselves, competing for a smaller number of jobs. No one can predict the long-term impact of this strategic shift to AI-first business, because there is no adequate precedent to compare it to. What’s happening right now, however, is that a lot of people are out of work, and tragically, they are blaming themselves as individuals for this macroeconomic trend that they did not cause. They feel shame for being out of work, even though it’s not their fault. It's not fair, but this is how emotion works. In a world of immense, impersonal forces, it’s easier for people to endure the feelings of guilt and shame than it is to feel out of control. Shame and guilt are no fun, but at least they allow us to hold on to the idea that we have power to determine the destiny of our own lives. If we believe that we have done something wrong, or that we have been not been worthwhile as individuals, we can also believe that a solution is available to us, something that we can do in private, without allowing other people to see our shame and guilt. We can improve ourselves, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, show some grit, and regain a life of dignity just by trying harder. If people accept that their jobs were eliminated because of massive changes in society, it can seem as if there is no solution possible. Once again, though, we need to remember that no emotional perception provides a complete and accurate representation of reality. That’s what makes it helpful to cultivate a higher resolution of emotional granularity. The more emotions we recognize within ourselves, the more cognitive tools of response we have to deal with external circumstances. A high level of emoti
