Rethink Work

Changing how we think about work

#How to be Human

There are currently 21 articles in this category    RSS

  • faviconYou aren’t lazy. You just need to slow down — The idea of laziness has been effectively and expertly wielded to make people feel unproductive and unworthy. It’s a lie, and a trap that makes us believe there’s always more we could be doing — at work, in our relationships, at home — and that worth is productivity [2021]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Productivity   
    Comments   
    Source: NPR    

  • faviconThe most valuable work we give a value of zero — Economists and other writers like Marilyn Waring have written about how care is the most valuable work in any economy but is given a value of zero. The work of basic income is care as well [2025]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: How to be Human, UBI   
    Comments   
    Source: Independent Blogs    

  • faviconThe benefits of doing nothing — An overactive ‘life drive’ endlessly seeks expansion, inevitably leads to burnout, and drains us of the energy needed to truly progress. Finding the time to do nothing is essential to reassessing who we are and who we want to be [2020]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Leisure   
    Comments   
    Source: iAi    

  • faviconThe Age of the Crisis of Work — No less than the state, work makes promises to its subjects. Our culture has scripts about what makes work worthwhile, not just necessary; not a burden to be endured but an important component of a flourishing life. And increasingly these scripts do not play out as written [2023]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human   
    Comments   
    Source: Harper's Magazine    

  • faviconWhy are we all working so hard? The intensification of work doesn’t seem to be making us richer, but it does appear to be making us sicker — In spite of — or perhaps because of — new technology, people now say they are working harder to tighter deadlines under greater levels of tension [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Workism   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: Financial Times    

  • faviconWhat if work is making us sick? — While employment has become less physically dangerous, it seems to have become more psychologically harmful, as high demands and low control at work — known in the academic literature as “job strain” — is bad for mental and physical health [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: Financial Times    

  • faviconHannah Arendt on the Human Condition: Productivity Will Replace Meaning — Arendt thinks we must somehow cease glorifying labor and return it to its true place at the bottom of the vita activa hierarchy. We must unblur the lines between labor and work, and between work and action [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Source: Philosophy Break    

  • faviconPaul Lafargue’s ‘Right to be Lazy’ — While he exclusively focused on laziness as a form of rebellion by workers against the social pressure to constantly work, his treatise echoes modern research on the positive health benefits of boredom and daydreaming [2023]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Leisure   
    Comments   

  • faviconBertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness — In his brilliant and timely 1935 essay, the philosopher suggests that “a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work…” [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Leisure   
    Comments   
    Source: Philosophy Break    

  • faviconThe humanizing power of worker-owned cooperatives — Applying principles from the Mondragon cooperative in Spain, Co-Op Cincy’s network reinforces that cooperatives are not just good for people and the planet, they are good for business [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: How to be Human, Worker Ownership   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconThe Invisible Work of America’s Domestic Workers — For decades, feminist activists have said that work in the home—often performed for no pay by wives, mothers, and daughters—has been misunderstood as separate from “real” labor. This feminized care has been relegated and detached from a labor movement focused on men [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: How to be Human, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Mother Jones    

  • faviconRevolt of the Robots — We should keep fighting for better jobs and better working conditions. But the battle against workplace technology is an unequal one. The real economic struggle now is for the redistribution of wealth generated by labour and machines, through universal basic income, the revival of the commons and other such policies [2018]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: How to be Human, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: Independent Blogs    

  • faviconWhy You Hate Your Job: it’s a bullshit job — The creation of UBI would liberate many from degrading working conditions and meaningless work, while allowing them to take on dignified work that truly serves the society. Whether this dignity is derived from external or internal sources, it is a prerequisite to our pursuit of the good life [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, UBI   
    Comments   
    Source: Current Affairs    

  • faviconHappiness Consultants Won’t Stop a Depression — Positive psychology, which claims to be able to engineer happiness, is a quack science; it condemns all social critics, iconoclasts, dissidents and individualists for failing to seek fulfillment in the collective chant of the corporate herd. In the land of happy thoughts, we are to blame if things go wrong [2009]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Mental Health   
    Comments   
    Source: Truthdig    

  • faviconThe 32-Hour Work Week is Not a Radical Idea – While CEOs are making nearly 350 times as much as their average employees, workers throughout the country are seeing their family life fall apart as they are forced to spend more and more time at work [2024]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: How to be Human, Technofeudalism   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: CounterPunch    

  • faviconWhat Will Leisure Mean to Us in the Future? It may require significantly transforming our deeply ingrained biases holding a life of work above all things else, and setting ourselves free to enjoy a more active, stimulating form of leisure, comprising the work we as individuals are driven to do [2023]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Leisure   
    Comments   
    Source: Farsight    

  • faviconOur Only Imperative is to Achieve – Philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues in ‘Burnout Society’ that a cult of individual achievement has led to mass burnout and depression across society. Resisting burnout is simple, but easier said than done: we must slow down, and rediscover how to think [2023]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Mental Health   
    Comments   
    Source: Philosophy Break    

  • faviconJapan asks young people why they are not marrying amid population crisis — many young Japanese are reluctant to marry or have families because of concerns about the high cost of living in big cities, a lack of good jobs, and a work culture that makes it difficult for both partners to have jobs, or for women to return to full-time employment after having children [2024]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: How to be Human, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Country: JP   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconThis world is built on the idea of work being an individual status point and symbol of success, which is meant to give unique meaning to our lives. Burnout is what happens when work no longer provides us with these things [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human   
    Comments   
    Source: Farsight    

  • faviconBeyond Bullshit Jobs — There’s plenty of meaningful work to be done in order to save humanity and the planet. […] Our aim, then, should be to replace oppressive and meaningless work with work that actually enhances peoples’ lives, other people as well as the people who are engaged in that work [2019]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: How to be Human, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Source: The Philosopher    

  • faviconAs America’s attitudes toward religion have continued to shift, it was perhaps inevitable that Americans would now worship at the altar of work instead. There’s a word for seeking such validation, identity and community in your career: workism [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Workism   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: The Week