'[I]t is the aesthetics of consumption that now rules where the work ethic once ruled... The status occupied by work, or more precisely by the job performed, could not but be profoundly affected by the present ascendancy of aesthetic criteria. [W]ork has lost its privileged position – that of an axis around which all other effort at self-constitution and identity-building rotate. But work has also ceased to be the focus of particularly intense ethical attention in terms of being a chosen road to moral improvement, repentance and redemption. Like other life activities, work now comes first and foremost under aesthetic scrutiny. Its value is judged by its capacity to generate pleasurable experience. Work devoid of such capacity – that does not offer ‘intrinsic satisfaction' – is also work devoid of value. Other criteria (also its supposedly morally ennobling impact) cannot withstand the competition and are not powerful enough to save work from condemnation as useless or even demeaning for the aesthetically guided collector of sensations.'
Zygmunt Bauman
