Work

the problem is that the overwhelming majority of workers across the world don’t get a great deal of satisfaction out of their jobs. In the most recent iteration of Gallup’s annual State of the Global Workplace report, it is revealed that only very few people find their work meaningful or interesting. They note soberly that “the global aggregate fro... See more

Why do we now afford work so much more importance than our hunting and gathering ancestors did? Why, in an era of unprecedented abundance, do we remain so preoccupied with scarcity?

many hard-to-explain animal traits and behaviors may well have been shaped by the seasonal over-abundance of energy rather than the battle for scarce resources, and that in this may lie a clue as to why we, the most energy-profligate of all species, work so hard.

At its most fundamental, work is always an energy transaction and the capacity to do certain kinds of work is what distinguishes living organisms from dead, inanimate matter.

Cities quickly became crucibles of inequality, a process that was accelerated by the fact that within cities people were not bound together by the same intimate kinship and social ties that were characteristic of small rural communities. As a result, people living in cities increasingly began to bind their social identity ever more tightly to the w... See more

And while it is still too early tell, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that future historians will not distinguish between the first, second, third, and fourth industrial revolutions, but will instead consider this extended moment as critical as any other in our species’ relationship with work.

Like love, parenthood, music, and mourning, work is one of the few concepts that anthropologists and travelers alike have been able to cling to when cast adrift in alien lands. For where spoken language or bewildering customs are an obstruction, the simple act of helping someone perform a job will often break down barriers far quicker than any clum... See more

But it is the points where these two pathways converge that are most important in terms of making sense of our contemporary relationship with work. The first of these points of convergence comes when humans mastered fire possibly as long as a million years ago. In learning how to outsource some of their energy needs to flames, they acquired the gif... See more

The second problem is that beyond the energy we expend to secure our most basic needs—food, water, air, warmth, companionship, and safety—there is very little that is universal about what constitutes a necessity.

By the end of the project, Takahashi’s team had observed 268 successful matings. To their astonishment they found no correspondence between mating success and any particular tail traits. The peahens mated as enthusiastically and frequently with males that dragged underwhelming displays behind them as they did with those that possessed the fanciest ... See more