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Hannah Arendt

The human condition

'This unpredictability of outcome is closely related to the revelatory character of action and speech, in which one discloses one's self without ever either knowing himself or being able to calculate beforehand whom he reveals. The ancient saying that nobody can be called 'eudaimon' before he is dead may point to the issue at stake, if we could hear its original meaning after two and a half thousand years of hackneyed repetition; not even its Latin translation - 'nemo ante mortem beatus esse dici potest' - conveys this meaning ... For 'eudaimon' means neither happiness nor beatitude ... It has connotations of blessedness, but without any religious overtones, and it means literally something like the well-being of the 'daimon' who accompanies each man throughout life, who is his distinct identity, but appears and is visible only to others.'
(p.190.90)

What I learnt from this book is that mechanised living is not a norm but an aberration and that there is indeed a better way, well recognised in the past, through which people could live as people, not as consumers, workers or instruments of any kind. Hannah Arendt compares the ancient Greek and modern meanings of 'labour', 'work' and 'action' and exposes a modern blindness to social presence, as opposed to work and labour, as a reason for living. Given this I see how 'unemployment' as we call it (supported by no-growth automation) could be enjoyed by everyone, as it once was by the few. The modern age could be a reversal of what it has been.

(I see now that I mistakenly copied the quotation from p.192 not p. 190 but let it stand, assuming there is hidden wisdom in mistakes.)

Edwin Schlossberg

Marshall McLuhan

Walt Whitman

Joseph Beuys

William Morris