Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescenc… - Studs Terkel

Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.

Nora Watson may have said it most succinctly. “I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.

When I get kind of low, I’d think about a verse I learned at one time, when everybody was fighting me. It went something like this: He has no enemies, you say, My friend, the boast is poor. He who hath mingled in the fray Of duty that the brave endure Must have foes. If he has none, Small is the work he has done. He has hit no traitor on the hip, Has cast no cup from perjured lip, Has never turned the wrong to right, He’s been a coward in the fight.

There was a terrible depression in Germany. Along comes a man who tells them they’re a great nation, all they have to do is believe in themselves and follow him. He promised them the sun, the moon and the stars. The German intellectuals and comedians made fun of him and the Nazis in their night clubs. I heard one in the Platzl in Munich. The audience loved it, adored it. But it didn’t stop Nazism. They won over the lower middle classes. . .