In the Name of Love

by Miya Tokumitsu

 “Do what you love” is the mantra for today’s worker. Why should we assert our class interests if, according to DWYL elites like Steve Jobs, there’s no such thing as work?

“Do what you love. Love what you do.”

The commands are framed and perched in a living room that can only be described as “well-curated.” A picture of this room appeared first on a popular design blog, but has been pinned, tumbl’d, and liked thousands of times by now.

Lovingly lit and photographed, this room is styled to inspire Sehnsucht, roughly translatable from German as a pleasurable yearning for some utopian thing or place. Despite the fact that it introduces exhortations to labor into a space of leisure, the “do what you love” living room — where artful tchotchkes abound and work is not drudgery but love — is precisely the place all those pinners and likers long to be. The diptych arrangement suggests a secular version of a medieval house altar.

There’s little doubt that “do what you love” (DWYL) is now the unofficial work mantra for our time. The problem is that it leads not to salvation, but to the devaluation of actual work, including the very work it pretends to elevate — and more importantly, the dehumanization of the vast majority of laborers..................................

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love/

The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare

By Matt Taibbi | November 6, 2014

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-9-billion-witness-20141106

She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't take it anymore. 

"It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'" 

Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She's had to struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a common symptom of a not-so-common condition called being a whistle-blower.............

what history teaches us about the super-rich

Tuesday 14 October 2014 

In 1774, one of Britain’s wealthiest traders was summoned to parliament to account for profligacy and corruption. Frustrated by the MPs’ persistent questioning, he told them: “I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels. Mr Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.” Nearly two and a half centuries later, another rich and confident man was equally affronted: “There was a period of remorse and apology for banks. I think that period needs to be over.”

Lord Clive of India and Bob Diamond of Barclays share many characteristics. They both claimed to be self-made (the truth was less romantic). They displayed skill, guile and tenacity to get to the top, and they could not understand why anybody might resent their success.

Ever since a tiny slew of Russians made silly money by expropriating their country’s natural resources in the early 1990s, the psychology of the super-rich has fascinated us. The people who are blamed for the economic crisis and for widening inequality are still living in their parallel worlds, raking in the bonuses, taking their private jets to their private islands, while dolling out the odd scrap known as philanthropy................................

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/14/history-teach-us-super-rich-john-kampfner