Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M Pirsig

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People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There's no villain, no "mean guy" who wants them to live meaningless lives, it's just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.

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bvw 5 years ago
A great book published in 1974, 34 years later the age of the factory in the US was pretty much over. Only the meat packing plants and a few others. In the Pacific Rim, however the factories are strong and use slave labor, or at least much harsher lock ins to the "structure" -- today it might be called the "hegemony". But this particular quote by the author Pirsig is wrong even then. The jobs were not meaningless. And there is no "structure". That's magical fantasy. It's always men, us. We humans, men and women.

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