productivity – The Portly Politico

Yours portly doesn’t have any new music or covers this week, although I have arranged a delightful rendition of the theme from Agatha Christie’s Poirot and hope to record that soon (thanks to Ponty for that recommendation). Here’s the theme song itself, which is a killer sax solo:

The one thing that has forestalled my practicing and recording of my arrangement of the piece is my printer. I purchased an Epson printer some years ago because I’ve had good experience with other Epson products (we use their projectors frequently at school). The printer was, as most printers are, always a bit finicky, but it worked well enough for my needs, and it’s typically rare for me to need to print anything at home.

Then one fateful day I made the mistake of updating the firmware. Suddenly, the perfectly serviceable third-party ink cartridges I used weren’t good enough for my printer, which demanded only the finest (and overpriced) Epson ink. That took me down a rabbit hole of cheapskatery in an attempt to locate an earlier version of the firmware online.

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Americans are obsessed with productivity. Our entire ethos—a witch’s brew of the Puritan/Protestant work ethic and a form of capitalism that sends the message that a person’s value is linked to their ability to produce something(s) that other people will buy—screams that if we aren’t doing something, we’re nothing.

My older brother has covered this topic much better on his Substack, The Highlight Zone, but I wanted to tackle it here. His piece largely examines the curse of productivity from the academic’s perspective, but I suspect its specter haunts us in every facet of our lives.

Before getting to the bulk of my thoughts on this topic, I’ll share another source, from the YouTuber Horses:

Horses and my older brother are socialists of some degree or another. I am not—strenuously not. But if conservatives want to win hearts and minds, we should probably listen to the legitimate concerns our ideological opponents are making, because they are diagnosing and addressing a real problem. Their solutions might not work—they may even be abhorrent—and I suspect no change in the form of government, no tweaking of government policy, will solve the problem, because it’s not a problem of government policy, or even economic policy.

Rather, it’s a problem of the heart, of the soul, of the mind, of the culture. I doubt there is any one solution to this cult of productivity—this worship of the pagan goddess Efficiency.

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The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: productivity

Printing: The Brother DCP-L2640DW Laser Printer