IF WORK DOMINATED YOUR EVERY MOMENT, WOULD LIFE BE WORTH LIVING?

By: Andrew Taggart

Published: Aeon, https://aeon.co/ideas/if-work-dominated-your-every-moment-would-life-be-worth-living

Level of Difficulty: ***

BEFORE YOU READ

·         How working too much can actually kill you http://time.com/4972787/death-overwork-japan-heart-stress/  

·         Working long hours could be bad for your heart https://www.cbsnews.com/news/working-long-hours-higher-risk-of-stroke-heart-disease/

LISTEN FIRST

Access the text online. You will see the icon which will enable you to listen to the text on the left of your screen. Listen and read along underlining topic sentences, concluding statements and the like.

QUESTIONS

1.       Why would the many worlds disappear completely from the cultural record?

2.       The phrase “this census” refers to something which is partly implied and partly stated. State clearly what the phrase refers to?

3.       Which of the following statements could be placed at the end of the second paragraph to form the concluding statement?

·         Everybody would love work above all else

·         Everybody would see work as the end all and be all of life

·         Everybody would think, sound and act as if they loved work

·         Everybody would derive great happiness from working 24/7

4.       We understand from the third paragraph that every human activity, whatever its nature, would

·         Lead to total work

·         Be regarded as total work

·         Be conducive to total work

·         Serve total work

·         Result in total work

5.       Look back at the three paragraphs you have read. Where would you place the following statement: Our modern world has become one where the ethos of hard work is deemed the only way to achieve success? Would you need to make any adjustments?

6.       How do we know that the nightmarish scenario described in “Leisure: the basis of culture” has come true?

7.       Read the paragraph beginning “For unlike…” The victim of the ethos of total work could best be likened to an idiot / a madman / a robot / an agent / a machine / a worker. Mark as many as fit.

8.       We understand from the text that people caught up in the ethos of total work probably constantly feel trapped/ guilty / angry / thoughtful / powerless / stressed. Mark as many as appropriate.

9.       What is the worst effect on people of a world where total work dominates people’s lives?

10.   What feature of life dominated by total work makes it impossible to experience meaning?

WRITING TASK

The text criticizes what the world is becoming underscores what it is doing to us. Write an essay in which you discuss the effects of total work. Remember to provide examples from modern life.

IF WORK DOMINATED YOUR EVERY MOMENT, WOULD LIFE BE WORTH LIVING? KEY AND TEACHERS’ NOTES

This brilliant text describes the dystopia we are in the process of creating for ourselves and pictures the nightmarish world we may end up living in. Paralels could be drawn to Brave New World if the students have read the book. It is a relatively short text but quite sophisticated and packed with ideas.

1.       Because work would be the center around which the rest of life turned

2.       The census to determine who is pre-employed, employed, post employed, underemployed or unemployed

3.       The second

4.       The fourth

5.       At the beginning of the first paragraph. You would need to delete the word “Imagine” and change the hypotheticals.

6.       Work has come to control people’s lives making their world into a task, their thoughts an unspoken burden

7.       Robot, machine

8.       Guilty, stressed

9.       It is empirically impossible from within this mode of being to experience things completely.

10.   There is no silence, stillness, a wholehearted willingness to simply apprehend