friendship3 quotes

“The leftist concept of emotional labor used to describe how service jobs require a performance of happiness and camaraderie. Now the idea is cited in a petulant demand to be paid for listening to your friends and family. Economic thinking has seeped into every domain, corrupted all relationships. We feel pressured to treat coworkers like friends and feel entitled to treat friends and family like clients. A warm smiling face for bloodless transactions and a self-interested logic applied to the most intimate bonds.”

“Every time you skirt around small frictions, you accumulate debt in the form of resentment. The debt grows, and for a while it might seem manageable, but then one day you just don’t like the person anymore.”

“Among your instincts you will find the longing for strong friendships, that the modern evil tries to snuff out. And they have good reason to try this, because every great thing in the past was done through strong friendships between two men, or brotherhoods of men, and this includes all great political things, all acts of political freedom and power. The modern zoo wants you instead to be a weak and isolated ‘individual.’”