Tarragona author Juan Evaristo Valls Boix has published JOMO, a book about contemporary exhaustion, constant availability and the pressure to keep working. He argues that modern production conditions are built around a worker who never sleeps, and that rest has become a luxury.
Valls says people are surrounded by devices and routines that normalise being always reachable. In his view, this often turns the body into the problem, because it cannot keep pace with the demands placed on it. He also says there is a wider contempt for the self when people are pushed to stay connected at all times.
He links this to sleep deprivation and capitalism, saying that one of the clearest signs of life under capitalism is the loss of sleep. In competitive settings, he says, sleep is often treated as something weak or unproductive, and he argues that sleep should be understood as a public matter. For more local coverage, see our news page.
Valls also says work has become tied to fulfilment and constant self-improvement, which leaves the body neglected. He suggests this helps explain why some people fall ill when they go on holiday. He adds that capitalism has also blurred the line between work and rest, with home becoming work and work being presented as home.
He says companies often use family language or the idea of fun colleagues to make work feel more personal, while neoliberal work culture keeps people in a cycle of blame. In his view, this weakens relationships and makes it harder to look at the material conditions behind work. He describes this as a decline in the language of responsibility.
Valls also writes about rest as a political question. He refers to the Greek idea of eleutheria, or the freedom not to act, and says rest can reconnect people with limits, pain, fear and other people. He argues that quality, free rest for everyone should be treated as a social goal, and that work should not be seen as the thing that gives life its dignity.
