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The intensification of work and the death of imagination

I’m enjoying The Refusal of Work by David Frayne at the moment. He asks some fundamental questions about the meaning of work in contemporary society. From pg 12:

What is so great about work that sees society constantly trying to create more of it? Why, at the pinnacle of society’s productive development, is there still thought to be a need for everybody to work for most of the time? What is work for, and what else could we be doing in the future, were we no longer cornered into spending most of our time working?

I’m interested in the role that this intensification of work plays in circumscribing the lived experience of future possibilities. When people are triaging, they suffer from a death of the imagination: it becomes much more difficult to address Frayne’s question: “what else could we be doing in the future, were we no longer cornered into spending most of our time working?”