The artifacts associated with work have become fetishized, while the impact, the human emotional and conceptual changes that result from that work now feel ephemeral and fleeting, when they’re the whole reason anyone does anything.

From Poetry and Prophecy, Dust and Ashes, on plough.com:

Biblical inerrancy is a modern doctrine, and these kinds of reactions, too, invite the accusation that I am judging an ancient text by standards not native to it. Indeed, I am. This is a necessary step in a process called "reading." My disgust and confusion are forms of information; they measure my distance from the text's world. A reading that entered fully into the text's thought-world, that required no haggling or silent dissent on the way, would be a useless exercise - you could bring nothing back from it; it would dissolve like a dream. Nor are such objections simply modern. Alter's notes detail many instances in which medieval and early-modern textual critics tried to smooth away the violence and contradictions of the text.

from １４歳の恋, or “Love at 14”.