If work dominated your every moment would life be worth living? | Aeon Ideas
假如工作支配了你，人生还值得玩味吗？
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Imagine that work had taken over the world. It would be the centre around which the rest of life turned. Then all else would come to be subservient to work. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, anything else – the games once played, the songs hitherto sung, the loves fulfilled, the festivals celebrated – would come to resemble, and ultimately become, work. And then there would come a time, itself largely unobserved, when the many worlds that had once existed before work took over the world would vanish completely from the cultural record, having fallen into
oblivion
.
想象一个被工作统治的世界，人为工作而活。它支配一切，那些你玩过的游戏、唱过的歌、心心念念的钟爱之物、庆祝过的节日，渐渐无异于工作，或者彻底成为工作的一部分，而你对此几乎毫无察觉。最终，同样是某个无人察觉的时间点，那些曾经的时代，在文化史中了无踪迹，彻底
无人问津
。
oblivion
/əˈblɪviən / n. the state in which sb/sth has been forgotten and is no longer famous or important 被遗忘；被忘却；湮没
And how, in this world of total work, would people think and sound and act? Everywhere they looked, they would see the pre-employed, employed, post-employed, underemployed and unemployed, and there would be no one uncounted in this census. Everywhere they would
laud
and love work, wishing each other the very best for a productive day, opening their eyes to tasks and closing them only to sleep. Everywhere an
ethos
of hard work would be championed as the means by which success is to be achieved, laziness being deemed the gravest sin. Everywhere among content-providers, knowledge-brokers, collaboration architects and heads of new divisions would be heard ceaseless chatter about workflows and deltas, about plans and benchmarks, about scaling up, monetisation and growth.
那么在这个世界生活的人们，是怎样思考、交谈与表现的呢？在他们眼里，人以雇佣状态加以区分，所有人概莫能外：雇用前，已雇用，雇用后，已失业，以及大材小用的。他们
赞美
、热爱自己的工作，对他人的祝好之词均是“祝您工作顺利”，每天只有睡眠时双眼方可短暂闭上。
勤奋工作
通往成功，将会博得赞誉，怠惰则是滔天大罪。不论是内容提供商，学问经纪人，合作模式设计者还是新部门的主管，都在滔滔不绝地讨论着工作流程、增量、计划、基准，如何提高业绩、实现货币化以及增长。
Laud
/lɔːd / v. to praise sb/sth 赞扬；赞美；称赞
ethos
/ˈiːθɒs / n. the moral ideas and attitudes that belong to a particular group or society （某团体或社会的）道德思想，道德观
In this world, eating,
excreting
, resting, having sex, exercising, meditating and commuting – closely monitored and ever-optimised – would all be conducive to good health, which would, in turn, be put in the service of being more and more productive. No one would drink too much, some would microdose on
psychedelics
to enhance their work performance, and everyone would live indefinitely long. Off in corners, rumours would occasionally circulate about death or suicide from overwork, but such faintly sweet
susurrus
would rightly be regarded as no more than local manifestations of the spirit of total work, for some even as a praiseworthy way of taking work to its logical limit in ultimate sacrifice. In all corners of the world, therefore, people would act in order to complete total work’s deepest longing: to see itself fully manifest.
为了身体更健康，用餐、
排泄
、休息、滚床单、锻炼、冥想、通勤等活动的效益都将被充分利用，并且受到严密监视。而保持身体健康，则又是为了提高工作效率。无人再酗酒，部分人服用
迷幻剂
也只是为了在工作上表现更好，人类的寿命将无限期延长。偶尔有人偷偷造谣，内容也是某人过劳死或者因精疲力竭而自杀。但这些无伤大雅的
闲言碎语
不过是为工作奉献自我的一个小小例证，对有些人而言，这是一种赞誉：他为工作将自己逼至极限，做出了最大的牺牲。在世界上任一角落，人们辛勤工作，为彻底实现“工作至上”的世界添砖加瓦。
excrete
/ɪkˈskriːt / v. to pass solid or liquid waste matter from the body 排泄
This world, it turns out, is not a work of science fiction; it is unmistakably close to our own.
然而，这不是科幻题材中的内容，而是与无比接近于我们现实生活的世界。
‘Total work’, a term
coined
by the German philosopher Josef Pieper just after the Second World War in his book
Leisure: The Basis of Culture
(1948), is the process by which human beings are transformed into workers and nothing else. By this means, work will ultimately become
total,
I argue, when it is the centre around which all of human life turns; when everything else is put in its service; when leisure, festivity and play come to resemble and then become work; when there remains no further dimension to life beyond work; when humans fully believe that we were born only to work; and when other ways of life, existing before total work won out, disappear completely from cultural memory.
“工作至上”是德国哲学家约瑟夫·皮普尔于二战后出版的《闲暇：文化的基础》一书中
创造
的名词，表示人类成为一种一心工作无心其他的物种。我认为，当人为工作而活，当万物在工作面前俯首称臣，当闲暇、节日和娱乐带有工作性质并最终成为一种工作，当人生除了工作别无其他，当人们相信人生来就是为了工作，当“工作至上”之外的、我们曾经拥有的生活方式开始土崩瓦解并最终从人类文化史彻底消失的时候，工作将主宰一切。
coin
/kɔɪn / v. to invent a new word or phrase that other people then begin to use 创造（新词语）
We are on the verge of total work’s realisation. Each day I speak with people for whom work has come to control their lives, making their world into
a task
, their thoughts an unspoken
burden
.
这一天已经临近了，我每天都在跟别人强调，工作控制了他们的生活，他们的人生由此变成了一项任务，思想则变成了难以言说的负担。
For unlike someone devoted to the life of contemplation, a total worker takes herself to be
primordially
an agent standing before the world, which is construed as an endless set of tasks extending into the indeterminate future. Following this taskification of the world, she sees time as a scarce resource to be used prudently, is always concerned with what is to be done, and is often anxious both about whether this is the right thing to do now and about there always being more to do. Crucially, the attitude of the total worker is not grasped best in cases of overwork, but rather in the everyday way in which he is single-mindedly focused on tasks to be completed, with productivity, effectiveness and efficiency to be enhanced. How? Through the modes of effective planning, skilful prioritising and timely delegation. The total worker, in brief, is a figure of ceaseless, tensed, busied activity: a figure, whose main affliction is a deep existential restlessness fixated on producing the
useful
.
与通过冥想度日的人不同，工作至上主义者基本上将自己视为面向世界的一种中介，世界不过是由无穷尽的任务所组成，未来也充满着不确定性。他们遵从着世界的任务化法则，因此时间在他们眼中是一种稀缺的资源，需要审慎利用。他们时刻操心着未完成的任务，满是焦虑地问自己：“现在做这个合适吗？”“还有更多的事要做吗？”。全面了解这种工作至上的态度的关键不在于看到他们过度工作的事例，而是在于看到他们每日心无旁骛，只关心如何高效、有效地完成待完成的任务，思索着如何进一步提升效率。何以为之？通过把任务有效计划好，根据重要程度对任务进行优先级安排，及时将任务安排给下级处理，工作至上主义者代表着一类永不停歇、绷紧神经、日理万机的人物形象，最让他们殚精竭虑的是如何在有限的人生但无限的劳作中创造出价值。
What is so disturbing about total work is not just that it causes needless human suffering but also that it eradicates the forms of playful contemplation concerned with our asking, pondering and answering the most basic questions of existence. To see how it causes needless human suffering, consider the illuminating phenomenology of total work as it shows up in the daily awareness of two imaginary conversation partners. There is, to begin with,
constant tension
, an
overarching sense of pressure
associated with the thought that
there’s something that needs to be done
, always
something I’m supposed to be doing
right now. As the second conversation partner puts it, there is
concomitantly
the looming question:
Is this the best use of my time?
Time, an enemy, a scarcity, reveals the agent’s limited powers of action, the pain of harrying, unanswerable opportunity costs.
这种人生除了让人们承受不必要的痛苦，也芟除了那些需要沉思、发问以及回答最基本生存问题的有趣冥思，所以才会令人感到不安。至于其如何带来不必要的痛苦，读者可以从下文提到的两个虚构人物的一日一悟中获得启发。一人发问：“为什么我在想着‘还有待完成任务’‘眼下有任务要做’的时候，总是感到无穷无尽的焦虑、无处不在的压力？”第二个人回答：“这
引发
了另外一个更加重要的问题，即你是否利用好了自己的时间？”。时间，既是敌人，也是稀缺之物，工作至上主义者注定了只能拥有有限的精力，注定要承受被时间追赶的痛苦，要计算永远算不清的机会成本。
concomitant
/kEn5kBmEtEnt/ adjective
existing or happening together, especially as a result of something伴随的，并存的
Together, thoughts of the
not yet but supposed to be done
, the
should have been done already
, the
could be something more productive I should be doing
, and the
ever-awaiting next thing to do
conspire as enemies to harass the agent who is, by default, always behind in the incomplete
now
. Secondly, one feels guilt whenever he is
not as productive as possible
. Guilt, in this case, is an expression of a failure to
keep up
or
keep on top
of things, with tasks overflowing
because of
presumed neglect or relative idleness. Finally, the constant, haranguing impulse to get things done implies that it’s empirically impossible, from within this mode of being, to
experience things completely
. ‘My being,’ the first man concludes, ‘is an
onus
,’ which is to say an endless cycle of unsatisfactoriness.
“还有事情有待完成”、“这个任务早该干完了”、“我干事应该更高效一点”、“还有新的任务等着我”，这些不断来袭的想法骚扰着工作至上主义者们，因此他们永远都无法完成“现在”所有的任务。而且，当工作至上主义者没有达到高效工作的要求时，便会产生负罪感。负罪感在这种语境内，表示的是无法跟上进度、无法掌控任务。他们怪自己不上心、比他人懒惰，从而导致工作越积越多。这种行为模式内在的，由心里不断冒出的、强迫自己去把事情干完的念头揭示了一个事实，即从经验主义的角度来看，你永远无法完整参与一件事。而亚当曾经说过：我生来便肩负
责任
。因此，人们永远不会感到满意（永远有待完成的事情）。
Onus
/ˈəʊnəs / n. the responsibility for sth 职责；责任
The burden character of total work, then, is defined by ceaseless, restless, agitated activity, anxiety about the future, a sense of life being overwhelming,
nagging
thoughts about missed opportunities, and guilt connected to the possibility of laziness. Hence, the taskification of the world is correlated with the burden character of total work. In short, total work
necessarily
causes
dukkha
, a Buddhist term referring to the unsatisfactory nature of a life filled with suffering.
任务无穷无尽而又使人上火，人们对未来产生恐慌和人生被工作压垮的绝望感，又害怕错失机会而产生
难以摆脱
的烦恼，也因担心自己懒惰而产生负罪感。这些决定了工作至上会给人带来负担，这种负担和将世界任务化是相关联的。总之，工作至上必然会带来“苦”（佛教用语，表示人生痛苦的原因在于感到不满足）。
Nagging
/ˈnægɪŋ / adj. continuing for a long time and difficult to cure or remove 纠缠不休的；难以摆脱的
In addition to causing
dukkha
, total work bars access to higher levels of reality. For what is lost in the world of total work is art’s revelation of the beautiful, religion’s glimpse of eternity, love’s
unalloyed
