Читать книгу Why Smart People Hurt - Eric Maisel - Страница 12

We can imagine a situation far back in time in which nothing in a person's life could be singled out as one's profession or line of work. If you had to grow or catch your own food, make your own clothes, dream up your own metaphors for the night sky, heal your own injuries, make your own love matches, concoct your own stimulants and sedatives, and in every way imaginable take care of yourself and amuse yourself, you had no profession or line of work. You were simply living; you were simply a human being.

You weren't a baker or a homebuilder or a utensil maker or a natural philosopher; you were all those things. Now such a life is virtually impossible. While you can be several things—a lawyer during the day and a painter on Sunday; a grocer during the day, a cabinet maker in the evening, and a fisherman on the weekend; and so on—there is an undeniable sense in which our species has sorted itself into jobs, professions, and lines of work.

Smart people, if they get the chance or make the chance, will find themselves needing to choose from among a standard menu of work opportunities with names like doctor, lawyer, teacher, scientist, novelist, entrepreneur, and so on. Each job on this list may hold some cachet in society, but each may also hold no meaning for a given smart individual. The sorting out of society's needs creates jobs and professions—some of which putatively allow for thinking, many of which do not—but that very sorting reduces the chances that a given smart individual can find a line of work that feels genuinely meaningful.

There is no necessary connection between the value that society puts on a line of work and its meaningfulness to a given individual. Society may hold the profession of doctor in high esteem, but if you do not find medicine a meaningful line of work, it is not meaningful to you. Society may not hold the profession of elementary school teacher in high esteem (whatever lip service it may pay to the value and importance of that work), but if you find that a meaningful line of work, then it is meaningful to you. To repeat a central fact about meaning and a core teaching in natural psychology, meaning is a subjective psychological experience. If certain work isn't meaningful to you, it simply isn't.

This problem is compounded by the following additional reality. People do not become lawyers, doctors, or scientists. They become corporate lawyers or litigators, pediatricians or brain surgeons, geologists or physicists. That is, people are forced to specialize—and that specializing typically further reduces the meaningfulness of that line of work. Maybe practicing law might have proven meaningful if you had not also wanted to make money and had chosen poverty law instead of corporate law. Maybe science might have proven meaningful if you could have stepped back to look at the biggest issues rather than having to drill down into a niche where you work with one organism, one atomic particle, or one geological formation. But the way that professional work is constituted nowadays, you are bound to have to specialize.

There is no contemporary category of general thinker that matches the ancient job title of natural philosopher, in which people could do science, philosophy, art, and anything else that caught their fancy. Smart people today must become clear somethings—college professors specializing in the early works of Melville, engineers specializing in bridges, lawyers who know tax law, and so on—and, having become that something, must stay right there, trapped with the duty of preparing another journal article, pondering another bend in the river, or familiarizing themselves with another tax code change.

Marilyn, a biological researcher, explained:

The journey to get where I am today as a biological researcher at a prestigious university was long and hard, and because it was so hard, with so many hurdles to jump over and hoops to jump through, I never noticed exactly what was happening. I never noticed that in some of my undergraduate classes, I was actually excited by the material and actually enjoyed thinking about the big questions but that as each year progressed and as I had to narrow my focus, find my niche, and choose my life form, as it were (I've ended up an expert on a certain worm), I stopped thinking and spent my days in pretty dreary fashion trying to find some enthusiasm for my own research. Biology is amazing—I am a biologist—and yet it has all come together in a very disappointing way.

Martin, a professor of philosophy, described his situation:

I've spent the last two months defending a journal article I wrote about praise and blame in Kantian ethics from the three peer reviewers who nitpicked my article to death. In order to have a chance to get it published, I need to address every one of their concerns—and the problem for me isn't so much that I'm spending all of my time on what feels like a silly and mind-numbing task but rather that this is the box I've put myself in, this exact box, where I make some fine logical or linguistic distinctions and then have to act like that matters, like I am increasing human knowledge or something.

The academy is a comfortable place to be, and I suppose I could turn myself into someone who does think bigger than I currently think. Maybe I can't really blame the system. But if I don't blame the system, then I would have to look in the mirror—which, by the way, Kant would have called a praiseworthy act, as for him, it was important that we praise that which we find difficult to do. You see that I could write about Kant all day. . . .

I don't know what the problem is: if it is the system, if it is philosophy itself that I don't believe in, if it's a lack of genuine interest in thinking, if it's a lack of confidence, if it's a lack of necessary arrogance, if it's a fear of biting off more than I can chew, or what. Can I really do this for twenty or thirty more years? That seems completely unbearable.

Professions and lines of work as they are currently constituted come with countless challenges. Most do not actually make much room for thinking. They look like thinking professions, but day in and day out, they may amount to something considerably duller instead. Maybe you find yourself in what you consider a really interesting corner of evolutionary biology working on enriching the concept of fitness. But what are you actually doing on a daily basis? Moving cultures from one controlled environment to another controlled environment and taking measurements. That is the nature of the beast, but can it provoke the psychological experience of meaning?

Genetic drift is one of the mechanisms of evolution. It is an important aspect of human existence and an interesting subject to study. But as important and interesting as it is, if you find yourself researching in a corner of genetic drift, perhaps researching some group analogous to the Bounty sailors and their Pitcairn Island experience to see if the group you've chosen also manifests the reduction of genetic diversity you would expect to find in such situations, you may find yourself quite bored. The concept is powerful, the subject is interesting, and your research is logical—yet it may amount to a yawn.

Can you know this growing up as you look out at the world of jobs and professions? How could you? You are probably going to do your best to shy away from jobs that allow for little or no thinking. Except under dire circumstances or as a day job to support creative endeavors, a smart person is not so likely to want to wait tables, file forms, work on an assembly line, or sell shoes. It isn't that he disparages these lines of work as beneath his dignity; rather, it is that he can see clearly how his days would be experienced as meaningless if he had to spend his time not thinking. But as well as you may know what you don't want to do, how clearly will you be able to gauge what you do want to do?

As a smart person growing up, you're likely to consider many of the traditional smart professions or be told that you ought to consider them. Casually mention that you might like a microscope for Christmas and you may be on your way to a job in the sciences whether or not you actually find scientific research meaningful. Get an A on a short story and that may mark you forever as someone who ought to write, even if your genuine loves are music and cooking. We've already discussed how your intelligence may be disparaged as you grow up. On top of that, the apparatus of society and the natural progression of life from childhood to adulthood will force you to pick some work—work that you can't really visualize and that may prove much less interesting and meaningful than you expected.

Let's tie some of these threads together. The themes of our first three chapters—that how a smart person construes meaning matters, that a smart person's smartness is often disparaged, and that a smart person comes into the world with an original personality that then collides with that world—come together in the following report. Jack, a lawyer-turned-actor, explained:

In my own case, I must admit that I was blessed with two very intelligent parents. My mother chose to remain at home while my father was the sole breadwinner. I have four older brothers who are considerably older than me (I think I was an “oops” baby). My parents were younger and I believe more hands-on with my older brothers, and with that attention came great expectations. By the time I reached school age, my parents were either too tired to care or perhaps they had mellowed as far as expectations went.

Consequently, my oldest brother had to bring home straight-A report cards, but when I brought my own report cards home, my parents would ask me, “Are you happy with this result?” I'd shrug and they'd reply, “Well, as long as you're happy.” Oddly enough, this reaction didn't make me happy. Actually, it left me rather confused and uncertain since I knew my grades didn't come close to what my older brothers achieved, but it gave me permission to do what I wanted to do, which was to complete all my schoolwork during school hours and then spend all of my free time playing outside or watching television.

My brothers were all encouraged to develop their own musical talents in a classic school band setting. When I was old enough to play an instrument, someone decided that I should learn how to play the drums since my older brothers played brass instruments. The thing I couldn't seem to make my family realize was that I hated the drums. I didn't have any sense of rhythm. So I endured years of this torture before I was mercifully allowed to drop music altogether.

The thing was, I never knew that I actually had choices in life. My older brothers all went to university. I thought everyone went to university. I was so surprised when my father informed me that I didn't have to go into sciences if I didn't want to. I then suddenly switched from sciences to arts, but I had no idea what I was to do with my life. And then two of my older brothers went through law school and became lawyers. It became assumed by my family that I would naturally follow their path. I took the LSAT but didn't come close to what my brothers scored when they took it. Consequently, though I submitted the expected application to law school, I was fairly certain I would not be accepted.

When I started considering my options, I finally admitted that I felt incredibly drawn to acting. I was also attracted to writing, but a few choice comments made innocently by my father had squelched any confidence I might have had about my writing. But acting . . . it was something I thoroughly enjoyed and even proved to have some talent for. I applied and was accepted to a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting program at my university. One month later, I received a call from the admissions secretary for the law school that I'd applied to, saying I'd been accepted.

Naturally, thinking only of how happy it would make my father and brothers (my mother had died by this point), I dropped out of the theater program and took my seat in law school. I made it through and got my law degree but was then convinced by my older brothers to take the next step, namely take the bar exams. “Once you're a lawyer, they can never take that away from you,” they said. My father impressed upon me that at least I would have something to fall back on. When I completed my training, passed the bar exams, and became a lawyer, I still felt that I was meant to take a different path.

I was all set to audition for the acting program again, but then I was set up on a blind date by one of my older lawyer brothers. Rather rashly, I became infatuated with my date and then allowed myself to be convinced by my new girlfriend that she would not be willing to wait for me to establish myself as an actor. She loved material things, and that need had to be fed. I abandoned my dream and accepted a life as a lawyer.

Though my heart wasn't in it, I would have to say I was a fairly decent lawyer. I rationalized my choice to work in small law firms as opposed to the huge wealthy law firms my brothers worked in. I even set up my own law practice. All the while, I started to die inside. It got to where I knew I had only a few short months left to live, so I discovered I had a backbone and that I could choose what I wanted out of life. I got divorced, closed my law practice, and embarked on a path to become a professional actor.

Do I feel that I have failed to meet expectations, or that I have met them (just), or that I exceeded expectations? Quite frankly, I don't care. I feel I am in the right place, doing what feels right for me. My lawyer older brothers make as much in one billable hour as I do in a typical month. I don't own a house anymore, I paid a huge financial penalty for closing my practice, and I now live in a subsidized apartment just getting by. But if I had remained a lawyer making lots of money, I would have been dead a decade ago. I don't feel I need to prove anything to anyone at this point.

The challenges that smart people face when it comes to finding meaningful employment, surviving dull, routine work, avoiding a lifetime in a claustrophobic corner of a profession, choosing between work that pays and work that interests them, and generally adapting their smarts to the contours of society's configurations are worth a book in themselves. You may prove one of the lucky ones and make a beautiful match. More likely, however, you will find yourself among the majority of smart people who perennially find the world of work to be a problem.