“The work has become unbearable. It remains to resist her. ” This is the foundational slogan of the growing world-wide “prone” movement, which originated in China in April this year as a protest against the “round-the-clock squirrel wheel of capitalism.”
In a New York Times article entitled “Work is a Fake Idol,” Cassidy Rosenblum recounts how she recently resigned from a producer position at NPR and “went to bed” at her parents’ West Virginia home. She admits to following the example of millennials in China, who recently opted for a “more relaxed” lifestyle in order to break with the “super-competitive culture of the Chinese middle class.”
The silence of the days of her new life allows her to reflect on “a world that is ablaze with fire.” “Lying here on the carpet, I look up and see a system that, even if it returns to a ‘normal’ state, will no longer interest me – a system that becomes disastrous,” Rosenblum muses. She admits that being able to just “lie prone” is a huge privilege, but explains that she is not encouraging people to give up all attempts to make a living. The problem is different – in plunging headlong into the so-called “career”, which takes time away from everything else. While work is a livelihood, a career is an altar on which everything else is sacrificed, Rosenblum concludes.
Newspaper headline:
Reign lying on your side …
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