The Mythology of Careerology
The Myth of the Perfect Career: One Year Later
A year ago I wrote a article titled “The Myth of the Perfect Career”. In which I examined the problems with the idea of finding a perfect career. It was a important essay in which I examined the problems within the Capitalist system today for millions of young people. The problem of placing yourself into a box and the problem of focusing on one interest your entire life. There are several points from that essay I would like to return to and several points I would like to make that I have experienced since.
Early on in the essay I explained my perspective on furthering education:
“That college is not a experience or a right, but a means to achieve a higher social status. It is this petty-bourgeois mindset that is a poison of the Capitalist society.”
Unfortunately, as true as this point is, the price tag of a college education makes the experience to better ones self, unfeasible. People must give up their dreams and ambitions to find a “lucrative career”. Artists must give up their talents in exchange for a commodifiable office job. Musicians must give up singing or playing a instrument to go, and to learn how to become data analysts. Gymnasts become accountants. Football players become Computer programmers. The list goes on and on.
“ When people go to college they come out thousands of dollars in debt and do not always find work, especially if students choose to graduate in not STEM related majors. Which makes me question if you are a STEM major why not just go to a tech or vocational school? The fact these jobs don’t exist though after students graduate shows direct flaws with the Capitalist system.”
The problem of not finding work, good work, not going into the field you studied shows the flaws. Though your major may have taught you many skills. It is most likely your dream to do something related to what you studied, otherwise I still ask, why would you have studied it? Because you found it interesting. Otherwise why would you have studied it? Though their is not a linear path to a career, it seems only a slight of reassurance and wishful thinking to say, hey just because you majored in a Humanity or in a Social Science, you can still find a job. Sure it might not be what you expected but you will still find a job.
Below was one of my biggest and most angry points made towards Political Science:
“ Opinion is taught as objective fact, especially in economic, business, and a social science classes.”
I found that Political Science, which is essentially a Opinion of how Government and Politics “work”, is taught as fact. Any one who subscribes or thinks that things should be changed, that things aren’t working the way they are, is outcasted, lambasted, and treated as a moron. A fool, naive, and a clown. Theory is accepted with “scientific accuracy”. There is no room for debate and the conversation is made to be limited. Statistics are treated as if they are the only form of reality that matters. Cold without feeling, and chaotic. Opinions are made into worthless polls that can never truly explain reality, and a theory is just that, someones opinion argued to be the truth.
History is not like this at all.
History to me, involves dealing with many different perspectives. Taking those perspectives and creating a narrative and a important story to be told out of them. The narrative created will be different depending on each Historians own personal life. We as Historians, must deal with the reality, that our lives shape us, our experiences lead us to focus on what is important in our work. There may be some historians who teach that their story of history, their view of it is the only one to be told. But these Historians are frankly incorrect in their approach and analysis.
From my perspective, the concept of having a long lasting career is one in which, a person accepts the fact that they are willing to prolong the selling of themselves to a employer. Necessarily in the Capitalist system we live in now this is essential to ones own survival.
“ The best way to look at a career is to say what would you enjoy renting yourself to as a wage slave for the rest of your life? If you jump through the right hoops you can have one type of misery that is slightly better than another type of misery.”
This point may still seem incredibly negative. But it is failing to bring up another perspective. The perspective that you are either the one who works for a company or the one who owns the company. You are the master or the slave. It is a simplistic way to look at the Capitalist system but it is not incorrect nor wrong. Obviously you are not a outright slave, as wage slavery, differs completely from chattel slavery.
The focus then turns to debating with myself the point of Academia and of continuing my education:
“ I decided that I would like to go into academia and get a PhD. However, I realized after sometime that I had been to focused on this dream of mine. That there might be a possibility that this doesn’t happen, which I have come to accept.I saw being in academia giving me the possibility studying things I really care about but after reflecting on a career in Academia, I realized that in my research I’ll have to offer a solution, especially if I go into Political Science. Since academia is mainly a institution that holds up the status quo and ideology of the Bourgeois, I realized that it may become difficult to do and make this path very challenging, considering my views stray strongly against the status quo, Capitalism, and Liberalism.”
Today, this point has changed. As I changed my field of study to History, I focused on a actual collection of skills and collection of knowledge, rather than learning someones opinion and regurgitating it. I began to appreciate History as a deeply intellectual field. Something that I could actually study and use to apply to my real life. I found that History for me focused on the big Questions. It answered and explained how the world works, in no way that anything I ever studied has. I communicated with several intellectuals and historians. Many who encouraged me to go into History, that even though I have a different way of looking at the world and understanding it, my views and the stories I would tell, would be valued within the intellectual Community. Particularly communicating with Intellectuals like Al McCoy, Paul Buhle, and Gerald Horne. Really changed my perspective on what was possible for me.
Another thing that really changed my perspective was this past summer. I came into summer, thinking that I could do my research on my own, without having a degree, or without having a job that creates time to do research. I tried that this past summer of 2019, which smashed the flawed view of this.
I worked a 12 hour swing shift schedule at a factory. I worked 4 days on days 6am-6pm. Than 3 off and 6pm -6am. The job at first was not to bad. But as it went on it got more and more tiring. To a point when I would be done, I’d sleep for 10–18 hours after. My body and my mind where broken. My sense of time was dismantled and I had become nothing more than a cog in the machine. This job paid me 16 a hour with overtime, and double time. Good money, but the pain and physical exhaustion was too much. I was not able to do research, even on days that I had off. I just felt like I had no energy. I felt like I had no motivation to do anything other than sleep.
This experience made me realize that if I wish to pursue any form of academic research or write any form of book. That it must be my full focus. It must be something I put 100 percent of all my energy into. It is what has kept me going in school and changed my view on what I do for a career. Though I realize the pain of wage slavery, and the fight to abolish it, I simultaneously wish to pursue interests and opportunities of my own desire. If they can mix at some point in any way than that is a by product of my existence, and my work.
Lastly I stated:
“To focus on finding ones career and finding a career that one feels is perfect is just a distraction that the Capitalist Class uses to keep people from revolting. The perfect career doesn’t exist and will never exist.”
I do think this notion is something still used as bourgeois propaganda. That we should solely focus on ourselves. That we should distract ourselves from the problems of reality, and that those who suffer are none of our concern. This is essential to the monolitic hegemony of bourgeoise mind posion, in which we are divided. This individual selfishness, and disconnection from each other, leading to division is the only way in which a few with a large amount of wealth and power, the bourgeois. Can dominate the the majority, the many, the working class, the people, the masses, the Proletariat.
In conclusion I would like to examine the final paragraph of my original essay:
“The chains of the Capitalist “career” wage slavery will be and must be abolished. The problem is not finding the perfect career, the problem is that we need to find a career. What I oppose is the end of that work. How it operates and how it functions. What I am against is a system that is driven by profit, commodity production, money, greed, senseless competition, selfish individualism, mindless consumption,private ownership and massive inequality.”
Capitalism and History. History is about time, it is the study of the human species, it is the analysis of the whys and the hows, the study of cultural and social change. It helps us explain the world and understand it. Essentially History is life. Capitalism is about profit, it is the subjugation of a large group of people and enslavement through wage labor, to a small yet powerful group of super wealthy individuals. Capitalism is about the buying and selling of commodities. History is about life, experience, feelings. Capitalism does not sense or care about feelings, it cares about buying and selling. Capitalism in this view destroys life. If your joy is not able to be bought or sold, than it has no value on the market. But this is a direct contradiction, because somethings are personal, that is what it means to be human.
In this sense, we can see that Capitalism is a not about life, its about a repetitive action that can quickly lead to profit. It is in the ultimate overthrow and uprising of the proletariat, the working class, that will finally see History in its fullest most elegant form. When humanity can fully thrive, so will the written accounts during the birth of a new world.
