Happy Sunday from Taipei! I've launched a Slack community focused on the unleashing the human side of work and making sense of how people can do work that matters in a time filled with busyness and anxiety. You can join the conversation here.
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#1 “Work is a bad thing”: John Danaher makes the philosophical case that “Work, suitably-defined, is a bad thing and we should try to create a society in which it is no longer necessary” and argues that everyone, even those in good jobs now, should care:
“Another way of putting it is that the badness of work is the result of a collective action problem, whereby the individually rational behaviour of workers and employers is resulting in a social arrangement that is bad for most workers, most of the time. This allows for the possibility that some workers have it good, but argues that they should nevertheless reject the current structure of work because either (a) they should be generally concerned for the welfare of others and (b) they could be the next victims of the structure of work.”
#2 Social Critique: Wesley Morris with a provocative essay on the tenuous culture right now. Our critiques about media are no longer critiques of art, they are a way to signal our morals: “This shift in priorities comes with moral side effects, and the side effects are scaring people — smart, opinionated people; not just white men — from saying the wrong the thing about “Atlanta” or “Crazy Rich Asians” or “Wonder Woman,”
#3 Lisa Brennan Jobs: An essay from Steve Jobs daughter Lisa on her bizarre relationship with her father and his inability to admit that he named one of Apple's first computers after her.
#4 On Idleness: I was re-reading Bertrand Russell's post "In Praise Of Idleness" which is a fascinating essay written between WWI and WWI. Here is a line that jumped out at me:
There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.
The essay is fascinated and perhaps one of the first calls for the four-hour workday. I am planing on writing a more in-depth post of the article.
#5 Rest: A quote from Maya Angelou
Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.
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