What goes by the name of work for the vast majority of the members of our society rots the very soul and body. It is work which takes no account whatsoever of the personal qualities of the individuals engaged in it; it has no direct connection with what a particular person really is or with that by virtue of which he is himself and not someone else; it is purely external to him and he can exchange it - if there is anything available - for an alternative which is equally impersonal and exterior. In relation to our work, the vast majority of us in our society are equivalent to mere units, or objects or commodities, and are condemned for all our working lives to purely mechanical activities in which nothing properly human exists and whose performance is not in any way consistent with our inner and personal aptitudes and identities.
When it is remembered that if an individual does not fulfil the function for which he is destined by nature and which is his vocation, but is forced to perform some other function, not essentially connected with him, then he will produce in himself a dislocation and disharmony which affects the whole society to which he belongs, something of the sickness of our state may be grasped. For in our society that is not the exception, it is the rule; and in these circumstances the dislocation affects not merely society, but the whole cosmic realm itself.