Vacation and Ellul, Part 1

I'm taking a stab at posting from my iPad...I've never blogged from here before! I'm on vacation this weekend with my grandparents, and we spent most of the day driving. I loaded this week's reading on my device and got some of it done on the way (three cheers for technology)! Please excuse any gramatical errors and the lack of pictures/etc...it's a little harder to edit on here and the Internet connection isn't the greatest (one cheer for cheap hotel wifi).

I figured I would post a short post now and add a longer one when I've completed the reading. I found out I will be back in time for class on Tuesday so I won't be missing anything, but we reach our destination tomorrow and I wanted to get some thoughts down before things get quite busy. We're headed to Virginia for a wedding and I haven't seen my family there in years.

The first thing I thought about the reading once I got a few pages in was that it has a sort of film noir feeling. Society is painted as a sort of machine and the world is bland, dismal, and tiring. Urbanism creates neurosis and crime. The same things can be found in film noir, such as in titles like Double Indemnity. People go to their jobs and resent them. The main character in the movie dislikes his job so much (insurance agent) he tries to help a woman cheat the system because he knows how to. The mechanical society themes were brought up in a book section we read in a previous class of mine...I believe it was called Voices in the Dark by J.P. Telotte (but don't quote me on that). I just think it was interesting to see so much relation between Ellul and film noir themes.

One thing I do want to say about what I read today is how much I think society is changing as far as careers go. Although Ellul says work is "aimless, useless, and resented" and that people basically are overworked from 9 to 5, I see a lot of businesses changing - at least in the tech world. Companies seem to be learning that happy workers are productive workers and more places are putting effort into making the workplace more comfortable and fun (especially places that want to draw in young professionals). More people are given the opportunity to work remotely (and studies show a change of scenery can lead to an increase in creativity). I will cite some of this research in my next post. Although not all jobs are like this obviously, I think it is a step in the right direction. 

At this point I think it's time for bed, so I will continue my thoughts later on. Here's hoping this publishes correctly!