Lean in. That’s what Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, sees as the key to success. Women, she argues in a book of that title, too often lean away without realising it, because half their minds are preoccupied with thoughts of the best way to raise a family. They “unconsciously sabotage their careers”, she says, when they could, like men, be ruthlessly focused on forging ahead. Fine, if that’s the choice rich women in corporate life want to make, says Andrew Sullivan. But for most mothers “leaning in” isn’t a choice but a necessity: they work all hours just to meet junior’s tuition fees. Quite apart from its class bias, however, I dispute the central premise of Sandberg’s “pep talk”: that “life’s greatest rewards are money, career success and power, and that the way to get those goodies is to devote yourself to ever more work”. Wrong. Look at the “grey sagging faces” of all the over-worked, over-stressed professionals, chained day and night to the office by WiFi devices. The “deadliness of doing” is how the philosopher Michael Oakeshott described their lot. Lean in? Sure, but also take time out to “lean back. And breathe. And live.” (Andrew Sullivan,
The Sunday Times).

I never knew that Andrew Sullivan had Epicurean leanings.

Even if you had the time and energy to do what Sandberg suggests, why on earth would you want to undergo the stress, worry and sleepnessness? Do you want to end up with children who have had no attention, love or discipline and who hold it against you for the rest of your life? Epicurians do things in a measured way. They may not be the richest people in the world, but they give themselves time for leisure, for thinking, for friendship and for quality time with their children. Sandberg is just another corporatist seeking to enslave the population so that they don’t notice they are getting poorer and have less power.