Performing chores thought up by somebody else." McClean caught Fowler's eye. And live like human beings." "Rat race," Fowler murmured. "Maybe," McLean said softly, "you and I can then get off this rat race. Dick used the term in The Last of the Masters published in 1954:
In protesting against the speedup, Goudsmit can speak with authority, for in the course of only a few years, he, like many other contemporary physicists, has seen his way of life change from a tranquil one of contemplation to a rat race. "They are accelerating us too," he says, in a voice that still betrays a trace of the accent of his native Holland. Sometimes when his sardonic mood is on him, he wonders whether the synchrotrons, the betatrons, the cosmotrons, and all the other contrivances physicists have lately rigged up to create energy by accelerating particles of matter aren't playing a wry joke on their inventors. The term "rat race" was used in an article about Samuel Goudsmit published in 1953 entitled: A Farewell to String and Sealing Wax~I in which Daniel Lang wrote,.
It is dedicated To those few rats in Washington who do not carry brief-cases. The Rat Race was used as a title for a novel written by Jay Franklin in 1947 for Colliers Magazine and first published in book form in 1950.In fact, some IT companies in China have pushed the rat race to the climax by adopting the 996 working hour system which stems from its requirement that employees work from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm., 6 days per week ie 72 hours per week makes many workers feel fatigued. This terminology contains implications that many people see work as a seemingly endless pursuit with little reward or purpose (cyclical commute between home and work, akin to a rat running in circles or in a hamster wheel). A key aspect of the rat race is being inflicted on the individual by uncontrollable outside forces such as researchers in the case of literal rats in a laboratory maze, or the inherent logic, pressures and incentives of contemporary businesses and society (e.g. This is often used in reference to work, particularly excessive or competitive work in general terms, if one works too much, one is "in the rat race". In an analogy to the modern city, many may see citizens, as rats in a single maze, expend a lot of effort running around, ultimately achieving nothing meaningful either collectively or individually. In reference to aviation training a rat race was originally a "follow-the-leader" game in which a trainee fighter pilot had to copy all the actions (loops, rolls, spins, Immelmann turns etc.) performed by an experienced pilot.įrom 1945 the phrase took on the meaning of "competitive struggle.