It’s work, the most important thing is work
§ 1. Stress is a prosthesis we received in exchange for our capacity to care.
§ 2. We were too lazy or too selfish to care.
§ 3. No one is too lazy or too selfish to be stressed.
§ 4. What we nowadays call “work” is also a prosthesis, given to us in exchange for what used to be called “meaning.”
§ 5. Once we were freed from the burden of devoting ourselves to meaning, we became better at working but worse at taking action—that is, at doing things that are meaningful. We simply became stressed. It was inevitable.
§ 6. Work is not labour: something that must be done continuously to sustain life.
§ 7. Work is a form of uninterrupted mass-consumption that undermines life functions.
§ 8. Work is the large-scale transformation of things we need—tender fingertips, oxygen, songs, soil—into things we do not need.
Jens Soneryd, November 2025