Muriel Rukeyser thought that the universe is made of stories, not of atoms. I suspect the same is true of our economies, as we have moved from economies of tangible goods and services made and sold, to stories: promises of what they will become, rather than what they are today. In a world predicated on perpetual more, the story of enough is a commodity.
Somewhere along this journey, we have adopted the same principles; that our value is in what we might enable and become in the future, rather than who we are today. We value the promise of tomorrow over the reality of today, and the idea of life on Mars over the reality of life today. Elon Musk’s notional wealth would buy two thousand hospitals at five hundred million each; enough good done now to make tomorrow on a distant planet look like the poorer bargain.
And that values drift seeps into every aspect of our work lives. Resumes have become stories about our ability to create stories that we have got others to buy, more than our abili…