1843 is a magazine (offshoot of The Economist). Formerly, this was known as Intelligent Life.
1843 is a bi-monthly magazine and
first one got published this April 2016-May 2016. Like intelligent life it encompasses articles touching Society, Art, Drama and other aspects surrounding life.
In its first edition I read (in their website) the article why do we work so hard? By Ryan Avent.
The author has made a strong
statement i.e. our jobs have become prisons from which we don’t want to escape.
Fact which we accept but make no attempts to come out of it.
Other interesting aspects which were drawn out in this article is shared herein:
Keynes, in his essay on the
future, reckoned that when the end of work arrived:
“For
the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his
permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic
cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have
won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”
“One possibility is that we
have all got stuck on a treadmill. Technology and globalisation mean that an
increasing number of good jobs are winner-take-most competitions. Banks and law
firms amass extraordinary financial returns, directors and partners within
those firms make colossal salaries, and the route to those coveted positions
lies through years of round-the-clock work. The number of firms with global
reach, and of tech start-ups that dominate a market niche, is limited. Securing
a place near the top of the income spectrum in such a firm, and remaining in
it, is a matter of constant struggle and competition. Meanwhile the
technological forces that enable a few elite firms to become dominant also
allow work, in the form of those constantly pinging emails, to follow us
everywhere.”
“Life within this professional
community has its impositions. It makes failure or error a more difficult,
humiliating experience.”
“As I explain this, a
circularity threatens to overtake my point: to build my career is to make
myself indispensable, demonstrating indispensability means burying myself in
the work, and the upshot of successfully demonstrating my indispensability is
the need to continue working tirelessly. “
The article draws a fact which we
are aware about but is ignored since we are trapped in the circularity, as author
said. Even if we want we can’t come out of it. The courage to step out of
treadmill and still enjoy the living is difficult for us to digest.
May be we are ending as Pavlov’s
Dogs.
The link to the article is given
below:
