Career advice

Thanks to David Smith for pointing to and summarizing this wonderful post from George Monbiot

be wary of following the careers advice your college gives you.

... What the corporate or institutional world wants you to do is the complete opposite of what you want to do. It wants a reliable tool, someone who can think, but not for herself: who can think instead for the institution.

... my second piece of career advice echoes the political advice offered by Benjamin Franklin: whenever you are faced with a choice between liberty and security, choose liberty.

... my final piece of advice is this: when faced with the choice between engaging with reality or engaging with what Erich Fromm calls the “necrophiliac” world of wealth and power, choose life, whatever the apparent costs may be.

... You know you have only one life. You know it is a precious, extraordinary, unrepeatable thing: the product of billions of years of serendipity and evolution. So why waste it by handing it over to the living dead?"

My biggest regret is that it took me so long to learn these lessons - hopefully if you read Monbiot's post you will learn them quicker

Comments

[ourman]

I would add that it is more than just career advice - it is life advice.

It took me 12 years of work to find that out for myself.

Since then, ups and downs aside, I have never been happier.

I'm just about to do VSO again - and if anyone reading this wants their career to take a new turn then I can wholly reccommend it.

[Brendan]

Ha, the story of my life! I am naturally anti-authoritarian which gets me into all sorts of trouble and all sorts of fun. I sometimes wonder if people really want to be free. Ever heard of Plato's cave allegory?

[Scott Gavin]

Good advice indeed. I've always been very ambitious, but it took me too long to realise that my ambition (life) was wasted inside a large company.

[Jon Husband]

Erich Fromm .. such an astute observer of humans, life and what it means to live.

He saw much of today's environment coming 50 - 60 years ago, and I suspect he would be truly horrified by much of what goes on today ... and the unwitting acceptance of most of it.

Escape From Freedom ... what a prescient title ;-)

[dan mcquillan]

Daniel Defoe relates that a pirate named Captain Bellamy made this speech to the captain of a merchant vessel he had taken as a prize. The captain of the merchant vessel had just declined an invitation to join the pirates.

"I am sorry they won't let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief, when it is not to my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of use to you. Though you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by knavery; but damn ye altogether: damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls. They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make then one of us, than sneak after these villains for employment?"

When the captain replied that his conscience would not let him break the laws of God and man, the pirate Bellamy continued:

"You are a devilish conscience rascal, I am a free prince, and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world, as he who has a hundred sail of ships at sea, and an army of 100,000 men in the field; and this my conscience tells me: but there is no arguing with such snivelling puppies, who allow superiors to kick them about deck at pleasure. "

[Euan Semple]

Much more stirring!