The System, its institutions, and its jobs

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/02/job-time-workplace-apple-tv-adam-scott

It used to be that there were over-arching states and empires “out there” that occasionally impinged upon one’s personal life in the forms of taxation and conscription. Otherwise most of life was oriented to the local family, household, clan, village, manor, etc.

With industrialism comes The System and its jobs. A new paradigm of work-life is to leave the household and community and go off to a place which is the locus of production. Not just businesses, but institutions of many kinds — government entities, educational institutions, hospitals, nonprofit agencies, etc. They are large, efficient, powerful. The work is often cog-like and not very satisfying.

A strand of hope lies with the Great Resignation.

It should become a resignation from The System as a whole.