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Dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen !
'Since jobs no longer afford any pleasure nowadays', the leader of one
Free employee union tells me in conversation, 'contents have to be
delivered to people from elsewhere. The same conclusion is reached
by the previously cited article 'Paths to Job Satisfaction' in the GdA
journal (no. 9, 1929), which explains: 'Yet the possibilities for enlivening
work spiritually and for making jobs more interesting for
employees, so that they provide more inner satisfaction - are limited.
Expedient� must therefore be sought that can counteract the spiritual
desolation of the working population.' Such expedients are seen as
including art, science, radio and, of course, sport. The idea, however,
that the desolation stemming from the world of work would be
diminished if worthwhile contents were imparted to employees in their
free time, is far from innocuous. To proceed in this way means
cordoning off mechanized work like the source of an epidemic. It
cannot be smothered like an epidemic, though, but on the contrary
influences people even at times not devoted to it; were it to take up
only five instead of eight hours, it would still be anything but a
detachable function that could simply be bracketed off. Its harmful
effects can be reduced not by a consciousness that looks away from it,
but only by one that includes it. If, on the one hand, the trade unions
advocate a rational ordering of economic life that imparts some
comprehensible meaning to the individual's activity, it is not very
consistent if, on the other hand, they seek to provide consciousness
with contents that do not alter its relationship to mechanized work. But
the contents to be imparted are also stripped of their proper sense by
the purpose associated with them. They evaporate as soon as they are
regarded as secure possessions, and simply used to fill people out or
elevate them above their everyday existence. You must be gripped by
them - and may then later also be elevated. The opinion according to
which the drawbacks of mechanization can be eliminated with the help