Mona

“In a sense, those critics who claim we are not working a fifteen-hour week because we have chosen consumerism over leisure are not entirely off the mark. They just got the mechanics wrong. We're not working harder because we're spending all our time manufacturing PlayStations and serving each other sushi. Industry is being increasingly robotized, and the real service sector remains flat at roughly 20 percent of overall employment. Instead, it is because we have invented a bizarre sadomasochistic dialectic whereby we feel that pain in the workplace is the only possible justification for our furtive consumer pleasures, and, at the same time, the fact that our jobs thus come to eat up more and more of our waking existence means that we do not have the luxury of--as Kathi Weeks has so concisely put it--"a life," and that, in turns means that furtive consumer pleasures are the only ones we have time to afford.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“Consider it this way: We are the descendants of frightened people. Early humans whose amygdala reacted to potential dangers and produced a strong fear response were most likely to behave in cautious ways and be protective of their children, which meant they were more likely to survive and pass their genes (and frightened amygdala) on to future generations.”
― Catherine M. Pittman, Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry

“What looks still to our crude eyes is a wild and dynamic dance.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory