Technology

I got about 3/4 through before I decided "TL;DR". He weaves a well integrated story and many aspects ring true-ish. However, I disagree with the foundational concept - "Workism" - which renders the well woven narrative less "true".

Let's face it, while people generally would love to have a "vocation" in which they have positive impact on the world, they don't need to make a religion out of "bullshit jobs". We are motivated by survival. In our societies, we need money to acquire shelter, food, transportation, spouses (if you're male), children, and the ability to have time for leisure. We choose our careers based on the signs of the times, a creative mental projection of possible futures, and what we enjoy doing.

If we're lucky, we get to build a career on what we enjoy doing, even if it is abstract and has no direct, visible positive impact on society as a whole.

When one has one's ability to survive ripped from them mid or late career (how come nobody talks about the ageism that throws so many people out of work?), it causes one to assess their situation and life. It is literally an existential catastrophe, never mind "threat".

I was a teen during the bloodbath that was the manufacturing outsourcing. Millions of jobs - people - destroyed when the steel, mining, textile, furniture, and manufacturing industries were unceremoniously obliterated in the name of profit. Whole regions went through the equivalent of a depression for years during the decade of "greed is good". I saw the fiasco of "job retraining" and the humiliation of workers 40 to 60 years old who couldn't go back to college and train for a professional job, and those who did and still couldn't get a job.

It was hell. I was in Pennsylvania. I know. We're going through that right now. I'm going through that right now. I know what comes next and what my chances are. Thank goodness for me that I knew something like this would eventually happen and saved as much as I could for my whole career. I have just enough saved that I can scrape by - IF the stock/bond market doesn't crash soon (and it will). I knew I would see Social Security collapse (and It is scheduled to do that two years before my "scheduled" retirement). Sure, it will limp along, paying 70% of what was promised - for a while.

The issue here is not "bullshit jobs finally being exposed as bullshit". It's much worse than that. I leave it to you all to ponder what that is.