Total Work

[RoadRomeo]

 

• “‘Total work’ is the process by which human beings are transformed into workers and nothing else. By this means, work will ultimately become total, I argue, when it is the centre around which all of human life turns; when everything else is put in its service; when leisure, festivity and play come to resemble and then become work; when there remains no further dimension to life beyond work; when humans fully believe that we were born only to work; and when other ways of life, existing before total work won out, disappear completely from cultural memory.”¹

[RoadRomeo]

https://www.sloww.co/total-work/

[RoadRomeo]

Challenging the concept of work isn’t new. Bertrand Russell, author of the essay In Praise of Idleness (1932), challenged the value and virtuousness of work during his day:

• “First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.”