Purpose vs security is a false choice

Purpose vs security is a false choice

Today's FT includes an (as always) informative piece by Andrew Hill (paywall) about life, work and the pursuit of happiness. It highlights research by Erin Cech at the University of Michigan.

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As a career coach I welcome all the illumination we can get on the fact that a lot of human life is not 'what it says on the tin'. So, work which appears to offer meaning and fulfilment may not do so, and could be exploitative. And if you think of purpose as a 'luxury' for whoever's left in the middle class who still feels secure, then it's vital to notice how very many people don't get offered that choice. To me these perspectives are important but not quite enough.

At a practical level, the 'choice' of well-paid security has been turning into a mirage for some decades now. Most of the security on offer today is bogus; how could it be other given the global turmoil which must flow from climate inaction?

At a theoretical level, my book 'Elites: can you rise to the top without losing your soul?' explores the possibility of a mistake in the predominantly Anglo-American idea of individualism, but my path differs from Cech's. It leads me to new reflections on the relationship between the ordinary and the extraordinary in human life. I end up wondering whether the apparently different desires which show up at different points in the socio-economic pyramid as the hunger for survival and security; and then merit-based progression; and then admission to an elite; are not better understood as one desire in common - the struggle to exist.

A suggestion that this perspective may be worth exploring has been the way 'Elites', primarily crafted in the upper reaches of corporate life (terrain I know well thanks to my own struggle to exist) has had resonance with readers in - for example - the priesthood, rock music and stand-up comedy. We may have more in common than we think. We certainly have more in common with elites than they want us to think!

In this century of all centuries, framing career choices in terms of purpose versus security is misleading. My current best understanding is that we all crave, and have the potential for, a worthwhile ordinary life and an admirable extraordinary life; that to have one without the other, or to have neither, falls gravely short; and that (in company with Cech) I want to see institutional and societal changes to achieve this - not simply individuals trying to boot-strap their way via either purpose or security.

If the purpose of labour is to serve the flowering of human beings (which to my mind is what the book of Genesis hints), right now labour isn't working.





Cheryl Garvey

Growing people and places

2y

Accurate and thought-provoking piece. I have a default 'systemic inequalities prism' that I see most of the human experience through. Labour hasn't been working for the least powerful in our economic systems for a while...and for some, it has never worked. The 'not working' space is growing, consuming those that felt safe in a system that was never designed for safety.

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