Causes and Underlying Issues

Career problems are a subset of the larger issue: why is it so difficult for an obviously intelligent species like humans to live without constantly trying to damage each other? I like to focus on career issues because, while "saving the world" seems unlikely, I believe it is still possible for individuals to improve their lot by making better decisions. With that in mind, here is my view of some of the fundamental problems we face in our attempts to create workable societies:

• We don’t mature fully. Prior generations, saddled with their own frustrations over the lack of meaning in their lives, support the same institutions and practices that kept them from reaching their potential, which have the same effect on us.

  More specifically, we insist on forcing external regulation onto a species – human beings – that requires a development based on internal regulation in order to live truly satisfying lives. It hasn’t worked, doesn’t work, and isn’t going to work – news reports every day of our lives confirm this – yet we keep trying, child-like, hoping somehow that “this time it will be different.”

• We are angry. We realize that something vital has been stolen from us by our broken societies. We see the effects everywhere we turn: tension, anger, poverty, endless wars. At some level we realize how wrong and unnecessary it all is and we are angry.

• We require distractions and “consolation prizes.” The empty spaces in our lives – where our own values and capabilities would be had they been allowed to develop – require filling. We try to fill them with, among other things, ever larger amounts of stuff, which we of course must then pay for.

• Due, perhaps, to the artificial delays imposed on our independence, we are impatient. Rather than wait until many of life’s good things fit comfortably into our budgets, we want them now. We will frequently sacrifice our financial flexibility for these things. This limits our flexibility and frequently puts the “golden handcuffs” on that much sooner. And tighter.

• We don’t know how to deal with each other. We’ve been pushed around by one group or another all our lives; we have buried the pain with alcohol and drugs or distracted ourselves from it with entertainment, slogans, and trivia. When we obtain some positions of power in our own lives, we are tempted to “get even” by doling out to others some of what has been done to us.

  Those on the receiving end don’t like it any more than we did, so they react. We then get to complain about how “good help is hard to find.” Or that “teenagers today sure are difficult to deal with.”

• We don’t know what we want, and our mechanisms for figuring it out are rusty from disuse. We are told what to study, what’s important, what to think, what’s good, what’s bad. Pleasing the “authority figure” – parent, teacher, president, cop, clergyman, whatever – is presented as our most important concern. What’s important? Wait for the news to find out.

• Our heroes are always somebody else – never us. Being our own hero is not an option

• We don’t usually see many examples of good career habits in our lives. Parents typically don’t like their work very much. And even when they do, as a rule the children usually aren’t told much about what it is that parents are doing… “adult’s world” and “children’s world” are pretty much kept separate. As a result very few children grow up with much of a feel for what the world of “work” is all about.

  The exceptions – those lucky enough to grow up in a household where work and career are frequent topics of conversation, where the whole family develops an understanding of how work, career, and life all interact – generally wind up with more satisfying careers.

• We tend to go along with the program, in many cases reaching adulthood without forming a strongly held set of values, ethics, and core beliefs. This is not hard to do in a society where we are constantly told what to do, what’s important, and what’s not.

  The trouble is, without a strong inner sense of right and wrong, it’s much easier to be manipulated; the temptation to go along with the crowd can be irresistible. Since we tend to be needy due to a lack of genuine emotional contact, the promise of some kind of approval from the “group” reinforces this tendency.

To be continued.