[8th of August, 2024: it's been way too much time and this isn't yet in its final form; I'll leave it as it is and shall come back later; nevertheless, this needs to be public, as the idea, that I seem to have immensely simplified, between consuming vs. caring, one that would ideally transform our collective workforces, seems to stem from here. Plus, the talk is publicly available on Youtube.]

This lecture was presented in the context of a day under the theme of Against inequalities. These notes and thoughts were assembled many days after; a deficient recollection of all points and their structure is hopefully compensated by my own enthusiasm in nevertheless archiving it. Because, of all of the lectures given in the week, this was the one that stood out the most, as it identified (thus, in a way, validating) many of the ideas I have been struggling with.

It followed a four-point structure, starting with the concept of inequality. There was a critique to the concept of inequality (one that, unfortunately, I cannot replicate), although I have a note on equality without solidarity or liberty, which might pertain to a possible deficient working definition of the term as we use it. The following point was on capital, on which I again have no relevant notes, except for a highlight to a brilliant quote by Marx,

“Capitalist production… disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth… All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility… Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the technique and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.” (Karl Marx).

Marx, Karl. 1976. Capital (vol.1). London: Penguin (p. 637-8)

which encapsulates many of the sustainability issues with capitalism today – in particular to what ecology is concerned.

But from the third point onward, concerning the definition of labour, Bue made some very poignant assertions. A question was raised: what labour must be suspended to avoid disaster? Many examples were given of highly pernicious jobs for the current state of affairs (mining, marketing, even, arguably, the finance sector), while establishing some other, highly necessary jobs: knowledge work (academia, etc.), earth-care labour (ideally responsible farming, etc. – I might be here!), city-waste management, etc.; and Bue went as further as to introduce the idea of caring jobs