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Time to quit your pointless job, become morally ambitious and change the world
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
59 points (84.7% liked)
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This article has real "It's just a banana, what could it cost, $10?" energy.
Despite all of the commentary about slavery and the abolitionist movement, saying "just quit your job and be an activist" sounds like they've never read Marx and have no idea about the modern-day trend of wage slavery.
People don't want to work pointless jobs. They're tethered to them, because the alternative is poverty and homelessness in an era where social safety nets are being eroded faster than ever before. The article acknowledges this (barely) by comparing people in this situation to "American Dream" types (i.e. a limited subset of mainly white people) with a house and family and lawn (complete with robot mower) and labradoodle, as if that is the only excusable albatross hung around the worker's neck, while everyone else has nothing to lose.
They fail to acknowledge that the majority of workers are living paycheck to paycheck, precariously standing one major unplanned expense away from disaster. The only people who can quit their "pointless" jobs in the name of "moral ambition" are those who are lucky enough to not need them in the first place.
I agree with most of what you said, but feel there is more to it. Slaves of the past had to risk everything despite having little to nothing. The same applies to modern day wage slaves.
One point of value of the article is the history lesson that the abolition of slavery took massive efforts from the people at the top and the bottom to get the job done. It had to be envisioned, articulated and proponents recruited and plans made and remade to shift civilization to make a new reality.
The rise in populism is not a natural phenomenon either. Intellectuals like Bannon, and Harper and Farage et al articulate a vision, recruit proponents, high and few at first, then wide and low. They have devised plans and carried them out over decades.
If we want anything other than a deepening of this distopia into the stuff of nightmares, it will take the same efforts and more. Time is not on our side.