The Spell of Total Work: A Fairytale

Starring the Mischievous Magician, The Clever Ones, & a Band of Merry Pranksters

Andrew Taggart
7 min readJan 28, 2020
Merry Pranksters, circa 1964

Casting A Spell

Once upon a time, there lived a mischievous magician in a realm just above that of upright, ambulatory, hairless creatures who’d taken to calling themselves homo sapiens.

One day the magician, slapping his knee, said to himself, “Well, let me see how wise these top-heavy creatures really are!”

“But how?”

He thought and thought until the answer struck him: “I’ve got it! I shall cast a spell on them and, by this means, I shall test them to see how wise they really are.”

And so he did, and from that day onward homo sapiens believed and felt that they were Workers.

The Early Days And The Clever Days

In The Early Days of Total Work, homo sapiens toiled long and hard because they believed and felt they had to.

Many said, “We must work the good part of each day, and we must work throughout much of our lives. Aye, this is our lot in life, and besides, tis so, work builds character.”

But then came what has since come to be known as The Clever Days. Some precocious homo sapiens

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