『もし四六時中、仕事に支配されていたら、そんな人生を生きる意味はありますか？』ー 翻訳挑戦

世界が「仕事」に{乗っ取られた}、と想像してみましょう。人生は仕事中心に動く。他の全てが{付帯的｝になってしまいます。そして、ゆっくりと、知らぬ間に、残り全てー遊び、歌た、恋、祭りーが仕事に似るようになり、{あまつさえ}仕事になってしまえます。そしていつかはこのような日がくるでじょう、仕事に{乗っ取らる}前の数々の世界が文化の記憶から消え、無と化す。

その完全仕事の世界の住民の思考と行動は？どこ見ても、視界に入るのは{早職}、｛就職}、{退職}、不完全雇用と無職だけ。誰もそのセンサスからは除外することがありません。仕事がたたえられ、お互いに良い成果をもたらすようにと挨拶。まぶたを開いた瞬間に課題、そして閉じるのは床につく時。努力が祭り上げられ、怠惰をもっとも酷い罪とみなす。

そんな世界には食事、排せつ、休養、セックス、運動、瞑想、通勤、全てが｛観測｝され最適化されます。もっと丈夫に生きてもっと働くために。時折、自殺やら過労死やらの噂は流れますが、そんな甘い囁きは仕事のために一生懸命身を徹した結果とされ、褒められます。つまり、世界の各地で人は皆、仕事が実るようだけに生きるということです。

そんな世界はフィクションでもなんでもありません。我々の世界にはかなり近いです。

Source:https://aeon.co/ideas/if-work-dominated-your-every-moment-would-life-be-worth-living

If work dominated your every moment would life be worth living?

Imagine that work had taken over the world. It would be the centre around which the rest of life turned. Then all else would come to be subservient to work. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, anything else – the games once played, the songs hitherto sung, the loves fulfilled, the festivals celebrated – would come to resemble, and ultimately become, work. And then there would come a time, itself largely unobserved, when the many worlds that had once existed before work took over the world would vanish completely from the cultural record, having fallen into oblivion.

And how, in this world of total work, would people think and sound and act? Everywhere they looked, they would see the pre-employed, employed, post-employed, underemployed and unemployed, and there would be no one uncounted in this census. Everywhere they would laud and love work, wishing each other the very best for a productive day, opening their eyes to tasks and closing them only to sleep. Everywhere an ethos of hard work would be championed as the means by which success is to be achieved, laziness being deemed the gravest sin.

In this world, eating, excreting, resting, having sex, exercising, meditating and commuting – closely monitored and ever-optimised – would all be conducive to good health, which would, in turn, be put in the service of being more and more productive. Off in corners, rumours would occasionally circulate about death or suicide from overwork, but such faintly sweet susurrus would rightly be regarded as no more than local manifestations of the spirit of total work, for some even as a praiseworthy way of taking work to its logical limit in ultimate sacrifice. In all corners of the world, therefore, people would act in order to complete total work’s deepest longing: to see itself fully manifest.

This world, it turns out, is not a work of science fiction; it is unmistakably close to our own.