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Modern Misery

A specific kind of anxiety is on the rise: one coming as a result of overspecialization, a narrowing of one’s personal passions, life skills and purviews, the growing replaceability of human labor with automation, the seeming insignificance of what today passes as “work”, and ultimately the fact that, so often, the product of one’s own labor (his marginal output) is essentially useless to him if not for compensation in other terms (i.e. money, some medium of exchange for other goods that are actually useful); anxiety compounded by the fact that his occupation remains viable only to the extent that it continually satisfies others, for the end product (or result) is of no apparent use in and of itself to the one selling or marketing it. 

This creates an unending sense of dread, doom, depression, resentment, and paranoia amongst individuals just as confused about the purpose of their “work” as they are about the purpose and meaning of life — with, regrettably, so many mistaking the seeming insignificance of the first as cause enough to give up on finding anything worthwhile in the second, in many cases cause enough to even condemn life and ridicule those still remaining optimistic or hopeful about theirs.

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