Critical Ethics of Labor and the Restoration of Collective Consciousness: Reinterpreting the Four Brahmavihāras to Transcend Alienation in Contemporary Work
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Abstract
This academic article aims to: 1) analyze the state of labor alienation and spiritual crisis among personnel under the contemporary capitalist structure; and 2) reinterpret the Four Brahmavihāras as critical ethics to establish an ethical bridging structure for restoring collective consciousness and transcending contemporary labor alienation. Utilizing a qualitative research methodology based on systematic literature analysis, logical critique, and textual hermeneutics, the findings reveal that digital capitalism routinely distorts the concepts of volunteer spirit and organizational virtue, transforming them into ideological technologies to enforce compliance and endlessly exploit labor. This dynamic leads to identity fragmentation and the erosion of public consciousness. This paper argues that the authentic Four Brahmavihāras function not as ideological instruments of subjugation within exploitative systems, but as critical ethics aimed at reclaiming human dignity and rejecting labor alienation. Integrating metta, karuna, mudita, and upekkha as structural ethics and technologies of the self transforms the socialization processes within families, media, and educational institutions into spaces that foster genuine volunteer spirit rooted in autonomous moral judgment. These theoretical discoveries provide strategic policy recommendations for the Office of the Civil Service Commission to reform human resource training programs, thereby cultivating ethical citizens capable of transcending the contemporary crisis of spiritual capitalism.
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