The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

performed by a machine. The ultimate goal of
machine production - from which, it is true, we are
as yet far removed - is a system in which
everything uninteresting is done by machines, and
human beings are reserved for the work involving
variety and initiative. In such a world the work
will be less boring and less depressing than it has
been at any time since the introduction of
agriculture. In taking to agriculture mankind
decided that they would submit to monotony and
tedium in order to diminish the risk of starvation.
When men obtained their food by hunting, work
was a joy, as one can see from the fact that the rich
still pursue these ancestral occupations for
amusement. But with the introduction of agriculture
mankind entered upon a long period of meanness,
misery, and madness, from which they are only
now being freed by the beneficent operation of the
machine. It is all very well for sentimentalists to
speak of contact with the soil and the ripe wisdom
of Hardy’s philosophic peasants, but the one desire
of every young man in the countryside is to find
work in towns where he can escape from the