June 26, 2025: the deep history of meaningful work

Thinking about how to think about work. Quotes are pithy, but that’s why they can hold such power. There are 77 to choose from here. You might find one that helps you get through the day today. Or perhaps you’re better off making your own list of instructions and inspiration like James Reeves did, which inspired Peter Rukavina to turn them into a little book. Gifts of wisdom and advice made beautiful by the giving.

Don’t squander the gifts. It took us 13.5 billion years to evolve these brains we have, 60,000 years of living with them in their current state and 10,000 years of organizing ourselves in way that requires us to list quotes and instructions to ourselves to remember what really matters.

History is much more complex than that of course, and this amazing article about “the gossip trap,” which is also about the myriad ways that our species has chosen to organize, or not organize itself, reminds me that I still haven’t read The Dawn of Everything. Anyone familiar with my idea that almost everyone in a complex systems has access to the constraints of connection and exchange will probably anticipate how delighted I am by the retrospective coherence I find in this piece!