outside of labor to the category of play and mere hobbies, our lives would become trivial to us without labor. Meanwhile, advances in production and the transformation of work into labor means that many things that were once to be lasting works are now mere disposable objects of consumption, "The solution...consists in treating all use objects as though they were consumer goods, so that a chair or a table is now consumed as rapidly as a dress and a dress used up almost as quickly as food." IV – Work Work, unlike labor, has a clearly defined beginning and end. It leaves behind a durable object, such as a tool, rather than an object for consumption. These durable objects become part of the world we live in. Work involves an element of violation or violence in which the worker interrupts nature in order to obtain and shape raw materials. For example, a tree is cut down to obtain wood, or the earth is mined to obtain metals. Work comprises the whole process, from the original idea for the object, to the obtaining of raw materials, to the finished product. The process of work is determined by the categories of means and end. Arendt thinks that thinking of ourselves primarily as workers leads to a sort of instrumental reasoning in which it is natural to think of everything as a potential means to some further end. Kant's claim that humanity is an end in itself shows just how much this instrumental conception of reason has dominated our thinking. Utilitarianism, Arendt claims, is based on a failure to distinguish between "in order to" and "for the sake of." The homo faber mentality is further evident in the substitution of the notion of "use value" for "worth" in economic discourse, which marks the beginning of the disappearance of a notion of a kind of worth that is intrinsic, as opposed to value, which is relative to human demand or need. Although use objects are good examples of the products of work, artworks are perhaps the best examples, since they have the greatest durability of all objects. Since they are never used for anything (least of all labor), they don't get worn down. V – Action The third type of activity, action (which includes both speech and action), is the means by which humans disclose themselves to others, not that action is always consciously