Midweek Takes #12
9/1's small thoughts and links
the world is totally normal no problems at all here.
The End of Work and The Last Manager.
Cal Newport says about “The Great Resignation,” which, unless you’ve never had to work and can’t fathom why someone would, that: “Many [knowledge workers] are embracing career downsizing, voluntarily reducing their work hours to emphasize other aspects of life.” Newport, in turn, recounts stories of friends and colleagues who have done just that: scaled their lives back to avoid the churn we’ve been, for so long, sold is the Dream. For better or bore, he recalls Thoreau’s “Walden”—the Minimalists’ Manifesto—as a template for reëngaging with nature, simplifying, decluttering, whatever.
This phenomenon, as well as Newport’s framing, reminded me of Francis Fukuyama’s framing of liberal democracy in “The End of History and The Last Man.” In his treatise, published near the end of the Cold War, Fukuyama writes:
The end of history would mean th…
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