There is a strange piety that governs the modern world, a religion that no one names but that commands greater obedience than any god ever known to antiquity. It is the mythology of the economy. Its rituals are daily performed, not in temples, but in offices, factories, fields, and screens. Its dogmas are not debated but presumed, passed from parent to child as surely as language or custom. And among its most devastating doctrines is this: that a human being, to possess worth, must produce.
To exist without utility is to be regarded with suspicion, even disdain. The unemployed, the aged, the infirm, the dreamers, the idle—these are not only pitied but subtly despised, for they are not seen as participants in the holy labor of the economy. The economy does not ask whether a man is good, whether a woman is wise, whether a child is joyful. It asks only whether they produce. What they produce is almost irrelevant—so long as the product can be consumed, bought, sold, or measured.
This mythology has become constitutional. Not in any charter or bill of rights, but in the deep, unspoken assumptions that govern how we live. We feel guilt when we rest. We apologize for being tired. We speak with pride of being “busy,” as though the fragmentation of our time were a badge of moral accomplishment. Even leisure is contaminated by the need to be “earned.” We are not allowed to simply be. We must justify our breath.
Yet what if this entire architecture of meaning is built upon a lie? What if the true worth of a life cannot be counted in completed tasks or units of output, but in the fullness with which it inhabits time? What if the wasted hour—the hour spent staring at the sky, talking nonsense with a friend, lying silent with a loved one—is more holy than all the hours spent in toil?
To ask this is to commit heresy. But it is a heresy that sets the soul free.
Among peoples untouched by this modern mythology, there is another way of measuring life. In many tribal societies, where the idea of money is unknown or peripheral, the central values are not production but presence. Time is not divided by the clock but by the sun, the seasons, the rhythm of hunger and joy. A man is not valuable because he earns. He is valuable because he is part of a whole—family, tribe, earth. A woman is not praised for her productivity, but for her wisdom, her courage, her laughter.
In such communities, the very notion of time “wasted” would be unintelligible. To sit by the fire, to tell a story, to sing, to dance, to weep—all these are not detours from life’s purpose but its very substance. Time is not a commodity. It is the medium in which life unfolds.
But with the advent of money, an abstraction entered the heart of life. Money has no smell, no taste, no voice. It does not grow, or breathe, or remember. It is pure potential—always becoming, never being. It converts everything into itself. A tree becomes timber; a song becomes content; a moment becomes a billable hour. And with this abstraction came a new conception of life itself: not as something to be lived, but as something to be spent.
This is the great inversion: that we no longer live in order to love, to see, to know. We live in order to earn. We are told that we must work to live—but we are made to believe, more deeply, that we live to work.
This economic mythology has colonized even our inner life. We speak of “investing” in relationships, “spending” time with friends, “getting a return” on experiences. The language of money becomes the language of the soul. And in this way, the soul is made legible to the market—and then, sold.
The question is not whether we must work. Life in the body, life in time, always requires labor. The question is whether labor is the measure of our worth. The economy promises freedom through work, but it delivers a subtler slavery—one in which our chains are forged not from iron, but from invisible expectations.
To be free is to reclaim the right to waste time. To sit beneath a tree without agenda. To watch a child’s game without thinking of productivity. To speak without purpose. To pray without words.
The economic gods will not bless us for this. But the soul will begin to breathe again.
We must begin, gently, to unravel this mythology. Not with slogans or revolutions, but with quiet refusals. Refuse to measure your day by output. Refuse to think of your worth as quantifiable. Refuse to accept that your purpose lies in what you produce.
Instead, look toward the quiet people, the slow people, the ones who seem always to be falling behind. They may be the ones who are most alive.
And let us remember: it is not the efficient machine that best resembles the human soul, but the wandering star.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.