How good is work?

Do we or do we not live in a world in which we assist each other? Judith Butler, Examined Life (Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor 2010), You Tube 1. We’re in the last few weeks of the class in which students use narrative methods to explore their experiences of working, along with those of their families, friends, workmates, managers and strangers. We’re thinking together about the fact that “the future of work” has a cultural history, and a vivid, anxious…

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Shared values

It happened because our corporate policies were put ahead of our shared values. Oscar Munoz, United Airlines CEO It happened: a passenger hauled by his arms from a plane to enable airline staff to get from airport to airport. His reaction to being grabbed out of his seat seemed to take everyone by surprise, and from the moment he refused to go along with things, every mistake was made. He was physically harmed, mentally harmed, and then further abused by media and social media investigations…

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In our own hands

To offer consolation is an act of generosity. Arthur Frank, The Renewal of Generosity ANZAC Day: dodging the memorialisation of war by gardening, trying to distribute worm casts without ripping handfuls of living worms to bits. I’m feeling the dirt packed under my fingernails, and suddenly hearing Thom Gunn’s poem that skids to a stop on the matter of our cellular form: when we die and fall into the earth, we become dirt, and there is no intention in this, it just is. This poem ends with…

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