Dispensability Quotes

“Here it comes, then: what we’re doing doesn’t really matter. You know how they always told us we’re indispensable? Not true. We’re dispensable. Highly dispensable. But since we’re here anyway, let’s make something of it. Let’s not get too caught up in identities and job titles. They’re usually only there to put some order in our day. Like summer camp, but with salaries instead of juice boxes. You’ll have to look elsewhere for the really essential stuff.”
― Etgar Keret

“When we pay professionals to grow our food, prepare our food, create our entertainment, make our clothes, build our houses, clean our houses, treat our illnesses, and educate our children, what's left? What's left on which to base community? Real communities are interdependent...It is strangers whom we pay to perform [these] functions. It doesn't really matter who grows your food - if they have a problem, you can always pay someone else to do it. This phrase encapsulates much about our modern society...we can always pay someone else to do it. As an individual, it is hard not to feel dispensable, a cog in the machine. We feel dispensable because, in terms of survival, in terms of all the economic functions of life, we are dispensable.”
― Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self by Eisenstein, Charles