is the way we look at work and in particular, the way we think that work should be about two things:

Making money of course. But also in far more strangely:

Finding fulfillment, creativity and meaning

It's a beautiful idea, of course. But it's also a highly unusual one

which causes us quite a few headaches as well

It's worth taking a look into the history of work...

The garden of Eden 3,900BC

According to Christian doctrine

when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating an apple

that punishment for defying God's wishes is work.

"By the sweat of your brow, you'll lead your food until you return to the ground"

the Lord informs them

Work is what distinguishes life in paradise from the world we know.

Adam will have to work

until his 930 years old

Athens 335 BC

Aristotle opens his public school: the Lyceum

a central learning for wealthy in cultured young Athenians

Aistotle make a bold claim:

The life of the mind is only open to rich people.

Anyone who has actually to earn money to live is a slave." Aristotle tells us.

However, outwardly grand their life might be,

the pursuit of money and good intellectual work is simply impossible, the philosopher declares.

and he's widely believed for hundred of years.

Hippo, Roman Africa, 396 AD

Saint Augustine becomes the Bishop of Hippo

and in his sermons resurrects the Christian notion of work

as a result of original sin.

In his sermon of the New Testament,

Augustine tells his audience:

Many of whom is slave, the work is always going to be miserable.

From this cup of sorrow, no one may be excused.

The cup that Adam has pledged must be drunk.

The only relieve is to look forward to the next life in God's kingdom.

Rome 1508,

The Florentine painter, sculptor, architect and poet Michelangelo

begins painting the ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel

commissioned by Pope Julius the 2nd.

He's given complete freedom to design the work and promised a lot of money in return.

Michelangelo, along with his fellow Italian genius, Leonardo da Vinci

embodied a new approach to work:

They work for money; hiring out the talents to the highest bidders in the Courts of Europe

but they're evidently not slave.

At the same time they do not work just for the money,

They do it for the inherent fulfillment that the work brings.

Our modern ideas of work are a lot the Renaissance idea of the remunerative creative genius.

Our own ambitions are now democratized versions

of the aspiration of men like Leonardo and Michelangelo.

We too, wish to be paid and creative.

Wüttemberg, Holy Roman Empire 1520

Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, makes mementos point

That one could serve God through work of many different kinds

and not just what had previously been occupied by Catholicism,

simply by and trained the priesthood.

He proposes that, the common workers like the servant of handmaiden, can be more acceptable to God

than all the fasting and works of a monk or a priest.

God is milking the cows through the vocation of the milkmaid

For Luther, God has endowed each one of us with talents

that can be used to help another out, which is how work becomes moral.

Everyone undertaking essential tasks, he mentions cleaning, milking, darning, teaching

is wearing what you've call the mask of God, since God is behind each task.

This, Luther says, demonstrates God's love. He ensures that we're endowed with the qualities to look after one another through our work.

Work for Luther, is the best means to employ the doctrine of "Love thy neighbor".

Protestantism is responsible for a momentous reevaluation of the worth and dignity of ordinary labor.

Paris, France 1750,

Diderot and d'Alembert published the first volume of the Encyclopédie

which sets out to cover each and every branch of human work

As one chapter in which Diderot writes a particular admiration about bakers

There are others on the work of farmers, bellmakers, locksmiths, and cloth weavers.

In his longest illustrative poem "In praise of ordinary work" ever written and has a huge impact

on how people perceive the prestige of work.

Paris, France, 1844

the exiled Karl Marx finishes his economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844:

A series of notes on capitalism containing some of his most interesting thinkings about work.

He attacks capitalism not because workers don't get paid enough or are exploited

but for a far more interesting reason: because too often, their work is boring.

And it doensn't allow them to develop their characters.

That's the true problem with capitalism in Marx's eyes.

Marx, who worked 12 hours a day most days is no enemy of work.

What infuriates him about capitalism, is that it seems to prevent us from enjoying our work, as much as he enjoyed his.

because it encourages the production of goods, disconnected from the talents and aspirations of the workers.

that's what he so desperately wishes to correct.

Communism isn't a project for getting rid of work, it's about making work more enjoyable.

University of Chicago, USA, 1899,

An irritable American academic publishes his first book: The Theory of the leisure class

In this Thorstein Veblen captures very clearly an idea of upper-class that's about to die out forever

Veblen argues that as soon as people make it in society, they try to show that superiority by displaying signs

of what leisurely and idle people they are

Veblen writes that:The characteristic feature of the rich is a conspicuous exemption from useful employment.

Veblen might be right for his old day...

but everything is about to change.

Within a few decades, everyone falls prey to a new cult: the culture of working hard and being very very busy all the time

Soon, only the unemployed are idle. Everyone else is working way furiously.

The richer you are, the more you keep working to show that you're good and serious.

Be idle is the new taboo.

Washington DC, USA, 1945,

With work newly prestigious, one of the major challenges of the society becomes that of correctively mining the talents of everyone.

and helping them to find their way into the right job, that is job that fulfills them and makes money.

Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers run the first Briggs Myers indicated test

On George Washington medical school students.

This test developed throughout the second World war, indicates personality types, who try to pair people up

with ideal job. The test uses 93 questions to figure out which one of 4 main personality types you might be.

Introvert/Extrovert; Thinkers/Feelers; Sense/Intuition; Judgment/Perceivance

So for example, an introvert will enjoy thinking and working alone in small peaceful group, and will be suited to work as an accountant, a dentist or librarian.

but an extrovert will enjoy action-dominated, high-acting work and might go for acting, salesmanship or trading in financial institutions

The goal, Briggs Myers said: is to find the type of work that suits you best, work is about making correct lifestyle choice

that suits your personnality. It's not about arbitrary aims, such as money.

Living rooms, USA, January 22nd 1984,

Apple computer launches his only national airing of his famous 1984 advert during the halftime commercials of the Super Bowl.

The 62nd advert sees a heroine, dressed in bright running gear, saving army of soulless workers

from the conformity of standardized work, by destroying their Big Brother-like leader

It's an idea as old as Renaissance, with the good work and bad work

And the good work is the creative kind, except now, unlike Michelangelo's day, thanks to technology, this is for everyone.

The advert carries the famous tagline "You'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984"

The advert underlines deliberating colorful and energetic Mac as the deliverance from the technophobic drudgery of industrial labor.

The future of work is going to be fun, original and expressive in Apple's hands.

But, for millions of the unemployed or the unhappily employed,

the dream has not turned out to be so easy. It can be doubly painful, when you meant to having such fun at work

to find no work at all. All work that doesn't fulfill your soul.

The modern world has made the career crisis, one of the central difficulties of existence.

We're asking so much of our working lives. So no wonder they sometimes don't deliver against the expectations that we now have of them.

Too often our jobs are closer to the toil of Adam

than the life-enhancing creativity of Michelangelo. That remains the challenge for the future of work.