Many of those students seem to have a blinkered view of their options. There's crass but affluent investment banking. There's the poor but noble nonprofit world. And then there is the world of high-tech start-ups, which magically provides money and coolness simultaneously. But there was little interest in or awareness of the ministry, the military, the academy, government service or the zillion other sectors. Furthermore, few students showed any interest in working for a company that actually makes products...
[C]ommunity service has become a patch for morality. Many people today have not been given vocabularies to talk about what virtue is, what character consists of, and in what way excellence lies, so they just talk about community service...In whatever field you go into, you will face greed, frustration and failure. You may find your life challenged by depression, alcoholism, infidelity, your own stupidity and self-indulgence...Furthermore...[a]round what ultimate purpose should your life revolve? Are you capable of heroic self-sacrifice or is life just a series of achievement hoops? ... You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck. You can spend your life on Wall Street and be a hero. Understanding heroism and shmuckdom requires fewer Excel spreadsheets, more Dostoyevsky and the Book of Job.
David Brooks, quoted in ...Endeavour..., p107
No comments:
Post a Comment