{"id":64840,"date":"2023-01-24T08:13:03","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T13:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64840"},"modified":"2023-01-24T08:13:03","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T13:13:03","slug":"david-graeber-to-save-the-world-were-going-to-have-to-stop-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64840","title":{"rendered":"David Graeber: \u2018To save the world, we\u2019re going to have to stop working\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

David Graeber: \u2018To save the world, we\u2019re going to have to stop working\u2019<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

Writing as part of Jarvis Cocker\u2019s Big Issue takeover before his untimely death earlier this month, David Graeber explains his confusion about why we\u2019d destroy the planet if we don\u2019t have to.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\"David<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

Our society is addicted to work. If there\u2019s anything left and right both seem to agree on, it\u2019s that jobs are good.\u00a0Everyone should have a job<\/a>. Work is our badge of moral citizenship. We seem to have convinced ourselves as a society that anyone who isn\u2019t working harder than they would like to be working, at something they don\u2019t enjoy, is a bad, unworthy person. As a result, work comes to absorb ever greater proportions of our energy and time.<\/p>\n

Much of this work is entirely pointless. Whole industries (think telemarketers, corporate law, private equity) whole lines of work (middle management, brand strategists, high-level hospital or school administrators, editors of in-house corporate magazines) exist primarily to convince us there is some reason for their existence. Useless work crowds out useful (think of teachers and administrators overwhelmed with paperwork); it\u2019s also almost invariably better compensated. As we\u2019ve seen in lockdown, the more obviously your work benefits other people, the less they pay you.<\/p>\n

The system makes no sense. It\u2019s also\u00a0destroying the plane<\/a>t. If we don\u2019t break ourselves of this addiction quickly we will leave our children and grandchildren to face catastrophes on a scale which will make the current pandemic seem trivial.<\/p>\n

If this isn\u2019t obvious, the main reason is we\u2019re constantly encouraged to look at social problems as if they were questions of personal morality. All this work, all the carbon we\u2019re pouring into the atmosphere, must somehow be the result of our consumerism; therefore to stop eating meat or dream of flying off to beach vacations…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Graeber: \u2018To save the world, we\u2019re going to have to stop working\u2019 Writing as part of Jarvis Cocker\u2019s Big Issue takeover before his untimely death earlier this month, David Graeber explains his confusion about why we\u2019d destroy the planet if we don\u2019t have to. Our society is addicted to work. If there\u2019s anything left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[33631,4895,2785],"class_list":["post-64840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-big-issue","tag-david-graeber","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64841,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64840\/revisions\/64841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}