I have been thinking lately about the peculiar torture of modern employment, that curious phenomenon where millions of people spend their days performing tasks they privately believe serve no purpose whatsoever. It was the anthropologist David Graeber who gave this condition its proper name—bullshit jobs—and in doing so, he illuminated something that many of us had felt but few had dared to articulate: that much of what we call "work" in our society is, quite simply, meaningless.