1. In so far as modern society ever promises us access to a community, it is one centered around the worship of professional success. We sense that we are brushing up against its gates when the first question we are asked at a party is ‘What do you do?’, our answer to which will determine whether we are warmly welcomed or conclusively abandoned by the peanuts. In these competitive, pseudo-communal gatherings, only a few of our attributes count as currency with which to buy the goodwill of strangers. What matters above all is what is on our business cards, and those who have opted to spend their lives looking after children, writing poetry or nurturing orchards will be left in no doubt that they have run contrary to the dominant mores of the powerful and deserve to be marginalized accordingly. Given this level of discrimination, it is no surprise that ________________________________. Focusing on work to the exclusion of almost everything else is a plausible enough strategy in a world which accepts workplace achievements as the main tokens with which we can secure not just the financial means to survive physically, but also the attention that we require to thrive psychologically.

① diligence is the key to defining occupational achievement

② one would be eventually intrigued into a state of isolation

③ success no longer explains itself with the word ‘hard-working’

④ being able to stay mentally stable is the primary factor of success

⑤ many of us choose to throw ourselves with a vengeance into our careers

원문 : Alain De Botton, Religion for Atheists : A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion