Centrality of Work

Work comes to be the center around which the world turns. Human beings start to see themselves chiefly as workers, and the entirety of life becomes more and more work, or work like. To see this we can begin to examine a number of what I might call tightening conditions. So the first condition would be the centrality of work. We've come to think that work is actually the center and everything else begins to turn around it. That we are preparing for work. That we are preparing to leave work. And this is happening all the way around the world. Meanwhile we're adjusting our schedules, the rest of our lives so that they are turning about it. So that would be the first condition. The second condition is subordination. That everything else in life comes to seem as if it's subordinate to, and to be put in the service of, work. We can think of sleeping: the idea is that we wish to sleep well today in order to be focused and prepared for work. And that when we're at work we wish to be as productive as possible. So sleep becomes that which is an instrument in the service of productivity. And we can play that . The third condition is the resemblance claim. It seems as if everything else in life comes to resemble work, more and more. So you can think of, on a day off you are wanting to be as productive as possible, thinking about how much you got done. You can begin to think about all the ways in which you plan and schedule time with children. The terms that begin to mark out our lives even when we're not actually working sound more and more work like. And the last condition I think is the most intense and that's what I might call cultural forgetfulness. We've come to almost forget that there was a time in which work was not the center of the world, that there are other ways of life that proceed the modern world, in which work was a part of life but was not the focus of life. We forget that that's still true today with other cultures, some other cultures. And we forget that there could actually be a time when work would not be that around which the rest of the world turns.