Word: career
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Observing Harvard seniors flocking to consulting and investment banking, I am devastatingly aware that our society suffers from acute self-hatred. How else can one reconcile the social valorization of these careers with the social stigmatization of so-called "socially responsible careers"? The predominant perceptions are clear enough: a stated intention to pursue a socially responsible career frequently elicits a "How come?" whereas the intention to pursue a consulting or investment banking career seldom requires justification. It is increasingly difficult for Harvard students entering socially responsible careers to wrest themselves from the unsettling inertia of the University's cultural norms...
...heart of the intensely moral matter of choosing a career lies in recognizing the tragedy that the phrase "socially responsible career" embodies--namely, that society is perverse enough to deny the term "career" an inherently socially responsible character. That society affixes the label "socially responsible" to only certain careers implies that some careers are socially irresponsible. As Eldridge Cleaver said, "You're either part of the solution or you're either part of the problem." There is no neutral ground between working for a better world and working against...
...does even one socially irresponsible career exist in a world where 1.3 billion human beings endure the inhumanity of absolute poverty? Where severe environmental degradation persists? Where war has claimed countless lives on every continent? Where cultural disintegration and pervasive personal meaninglessness become "inevitable" by-products of materialism's circular pointlessness? Must humanity dream up new crises to inflict upon itself...
...must alter the accepted, morally casual definition of the word "career" from "what one does throughout one's working life, which may or may not be socially responsible." to "what one does throughout one's working life, which is necessarily socially responsible." The career-seeker should seek to improve the world. This goal is not an unintended, incidental by-product, not even a secondary intention. Rather, one's primary intention is to improve the world both actively and directly--as unerringly as the word "seek" implies. All other intentions and by-products, though at times important, remain subordinate...
...cannot shirk my lingering suspicion that many at Harvard--those with the power to apply their talents to healing the world's many pathologies--are (mis) guided in their so-called "career" pursuits by the primary intention of selfishly accumulating inordinate wealth. Why is this misguided, if not morally grotesque? Because it represents a conscious decision to operate under the constraints of the profit motive, which is--by its very nature--socially irresponsible. The primary intention is always to maximize private gain--to conceive of the world selfishly, as if there were no "incentive" to look out for fellow human...