What’s wrong with work?

Sample dialogue from my life:

If ever a book title was an invitation to grumble, one that asks the question ‘What’s wrong with work?’ is it. Someone once answered ‘I don’t have a couch in my office’, but I think they were joking. Answering a question like ‘What’s wrong with work?’ could well involve writing a list, as that’s a normal way to provide answers. I wish it were that easy. In the course of the book I will open out ways of thinking about ethics and politics of current work for the lifeworld of workers and for how work contributes to making the world. The task of providing an account of the problem of work is pretty difficult, given the complexities of different kinds of work, of variations across time and space, and because of the many different elements that might be important when thinking about good and bad jobs, which may easily contradict each other (for example, routines generate stability but also boredom; working with customers brings pleasure as well as pain). Further, the conceptual tools that could help – work, economy, and ethics – are not straightforward; it’s hard even to know what questions to ask.

What kind of person sets a question for a book to answer knowing that it is not answerable? An idiot, maybe. But being an idiot is no bad thing. Idiots serve the function of interrupting what is common sense, what is taken for granted often by asking naïve questions. Questions don’t necessarily have answers, or solutions. Sometimes they are useful because they pose a problem differently. It might also be that questions that get asked in a book don’t find answers there (or in any other book), but in practices. That seems important.