Work

A lot of spiritual writing seems to come from people who’ve never had to make rent. It talks about letting go and renouncing the world, and then you close the book and there’s an invoice due Friday and a manager who wants the report by noon. The Gospel of Thomas has a reputation for being that kind of book, mystical and otherworldly, a string of riddles about light and solitude. But scattered through its 114 sayings is a handful that talk about money with almost no metaphor at all. They mention merchants, rent, loans, and a man planning his investments. I’ve been reading them as a set, and they add up to something I didn’t expect, which is advice for people who still have to go to work in the morning. ...

Every serious conversation about automation arrives at the same reassurance. People, we are told, will finally be freed from work. For anyone whose work is dangerous or crushing, the promise is real mercy, and nothing below argues otherwise. Still, a question hides beneath the reassurance, and the debate almost never touches it. If work were nothing but a burden, why did the traditions that thought hardest about the soul keep treating it as a practice? Before the machines take the tasks, it is worth asking what the tasks were doing for us. ...