I met this person named Cleo the other day. Cleo got her masters in public policy then did non-profit work focused on increasing renewable energy usage. By the time I met her, she had given up that work and joined a cloud company as a salesperson. She makes more money in the sales role, but has lost her interest in contributing to civilization. Over the years of not being well compensated doing her non-profit work, she was driven to a less civilizationally valuable role- at least as judged by Cleo’s expressed feelings towards her cloud sales position. Not only that, but Cleo expressed not having the motivation to contribute to civilization at all anymore. I was struck by that because it felt like a 180 from her commitment to public policy education and then her non-profit work. She said that if she had it her way, she wouldn’t have to work at all.
I liked your Cleo example very much. It aptly describes the problem. But ultimately Cleo didn’t want to work. Perhaps that was her underlying disposition and not a function of her being sidetracked from a meaningful career path to a more lucrative one lacking meaning. One of the problems with any analysis is that we have strayed far from essences. Imagine the first tribe that had each member doing something that furthered the tribe’s s interests. Then over time with the advent of more tribes a medium of exchange was needed to promote economy. It likely worked well for a while but eventually people played games with the production end and with the money until it reached a point where nobody knew what the money was for or what it was really worth but they just kept on going with the inertia of it all. It is a complex situation with many moving parts. I applaud your effort to deal with it.
I liked your Cleo example very much. It aptly describes the problem. But ultimately Cleo didn’t want to work. Perhaps that was her underlying disposition and not a function of her being sidetracked from a meaningful career path to a more lucrative one lacking meaning. One of the problems with any analysis is that we have strayed far from essences. Imagine the first tribe that had each member doing something that furthered the tribe’s s interests. Then over time with the advent of more tribes a medium of exchange was needed to promote economy. It likely worked well for a while but eventually people played games with the production end and with the money until it reached a point where nobody knew what the money was for or what it was really worth but they just kept on going with the inertia of it all. It is a complex situation with many moving parts. I applaud your effort to deal with it.