CONTINUUM 1:
DIGNITY OF WORK (2020)
"The dignity of work is in leisure.“ Herman Melville
With this quote a manufacturer of luxury items advertised its products in a German news magazine years ago. The only passage containing this statement I found in Melville's work is the following:
„True Work is the necessity of poor humanity’s earthly condition. The dignity is in leisure. Besides, 99 hundreths of all the work done in the world is either foolish and unnecessary, or harmful and wicked.“
(Herman Melville in a letter to Catherine G. Lansing, September 5, 1877)
When, if not now, would it be the time to think about the many dubiousnesses of our behavior as producers and consumers of goods and to examine Herman Melville's (rather old) claim?
© Fredi Hüberli
