When I taught theology, the doctrine my students found most offensive was neighbor love. The idea that you are obligated to love the person right next to you, regardless of anything they might have done to “deserve” your love, was patently absurd to them. Now I teach writing. You have to have something to write about, so my students write about…
Tag: post-work
Unambiguously Bad Idea: The Universal Basic Income and Racism
First in a series. A couple of speakers at the Faith at Work Summit presented the public policy idea of a Universal Basic Income as if it were unambiguously good and it had no downsides that needed to be mentioned, implying that all good people on both sides of the political aisle were, or should be, in favor of it.…
Book Review – The Job: Work and its Future in a Time of Radical Change
A consistent pattern in contemporary books about work is the emphasis on the expected acceleration of changes in the job market. They put forth a similar argument: advances in artificial intelligence and automation are sure to undermine existence as we know it, undermine the very fabric of our society, and spell the end of work as we know it. Usually,…
Which Wich Battles the Salad Robots
Last week I flew out of the airport in Buffalo, New York, and saw a new thing: Sally, a machine that makes salads. It was just opposite my gate and next to a Which Wich? outlet where humans make sandwiches with their own two hands. Sally is basically a vending machine, except it makes food to order. It also lays bare…
No, Really: We Don’t Have an Adequate Way to Talk About the Meaning of Work
I have an essay about work and meaning in the current issue of The Hedgehog Review. The essay has elicited some good responses from friend and stranger alike; I’m grateful for all. I always have mixed feelings when people write to say my essays about work resonate with their experience. On the one hand, my entire goal is to put words to the experience…
Book Review: No More Work: Why Full Employment is a Bad Idea (or, “Why Should I Love God Better Than This Day?”)
A while ago, I checked in with you with a dispatch from a growing genre of books: let’s call it the postwork genre. As I put it there in describing the genre, It’s the contention of many in the faith and work movement that the best way to fulfill God’s plan for the world is for everyone to work, or…
The Problem With Work (a book review and musings)
The Problem With Work (2011) by Kathi Weeks has been sitting on my desk now for some time in preparation for my reviewing it here. Recently, my 5-year-old walked by my desk. She is just learning to read, and she sounded out the title. “What is the problem with work?” she said. “Is it that not everyone has a job?” On the…
I Was Told There Would Be More: Book Review of The Vanishing American Adult
Why should we think adulthood is synonymous with independence? This article originally appeared on June 22, 2017, in Comment, a publication of Cardus. by B.D. McClay The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance St. Martin’s Press, 2017. 320 pp. For the other animals, adulthood is easy. One obtains sexual maturity and there you are.…
