The idea that your job should be the primary source of meaning in your life is an elaborately made trap, propped up across industries, designed to make you a loyal worker who uses the bulk of their intellectual and creative capacity to further their own career.
Ever wondered why you’re always being encouraged to download the app?
But zero percent of app users have installed an ad-blocker, because they don’t exist, because you’d go to prison if you made one. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it.
The quest for more is a kind of prison that we make for ourselves. The idea that if we work ourselves to the bone now we can live a better life later is a convenient lie that we’ve been conditioned to tell ourselves.
An open and honest post from Ben.
I see decentralization as a way to lead to a more equitable society through disassembling existing hierarchies, for example, but I see straight through the people who see these ideas as a way to build a new hierarchy for their own benefit. We used to talk about abolishing gatekeepers in the early days of the web, too, until it became clear that many people just wanted to become a new kind of gatekeeper themselves.
There is a huge world out there where design isn’t embraced, where designers are clawing for resources, and where design isn’t prioritized. Most of the organizations that are changing your world don’t know much about design, aren’t looking for designers, and won’t even understand what designers are talking about when they show up at the front door.
I have a lot of admiration for Reverend Dan Catt.
I don’t want to be in a position where I say “Hey, I’m working at Google, no no, don’t worry, the good bit of Google”, because goodness knows I did enough of that at Yahoo.