However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end be internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities: in the widely held belief that our work should make us happy. All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something more than a punishment or a penance. Ours is the first to imply that we should seek to work even in the absence of a financial imperative.  Our choice of occupation is held to define our identity, to the extend that the most insistent question we ask of new companions is not where they come from, or who their parents where, but what they do. The assumption being that the route to a meaningful existence must invariably pass through the gate of remunerative employments