We recently got news that most of the unemployed have a college degree or have at least taken some college classes. Recent graduates are having a horrible time finding work, particularly work that involves their area of expertise. But David Brooks is concerned about something else. Why, he wants to know, are so many kids from our elite institutions going ‘to work at investment banks, consultancies, hedge funds and the like?’
If you’re reading a David Brooks column, you know it will involve a stupid dichotomy. He never disappoints in this regard.
Furthermore, few students showed any interest in working for a company that actually makes products. It sometimes seems that good students at schools in blue states go into service capitalism (consulting and finance) while good students in red states go into production capitalism (Procter & Gamble, John Deere, AutoZone).
Ever wonder why about 95% of our top schools are in blue states? That’s truer than ever now that Obama put North Carolina and Virginia in his pocket. But, I digress. Mr. Brooks isn’t actually concerned primarily with these elite students’ decision to eschew ‘production capitalism.’ He wants to know why they aren’t more concerned about morality. Sure, they have all kinds of altruistic instincts. But they see ‘doing good’ as a matter of time allocation rather than character perfection.
The discussion also reinforced a thought I’ve had in many other contexts: that community 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 which way excellence lies, so they just talk about community service, figuring that if you are doing the sort of work that Bono celebrates then you must be a good person.
Let’s put it differently. Many people today find it easy to use the vocabulary of entrepreneurialism, whether they are in business or social entrepreneurs. This is a utilitarian vocabulary. How can I serve the greatest number? How can I most productively apply my talents to the problems of the world? It’s about resource allocation.
People are less good at using the vocabulary of moral evaluation, which is less about what sort of career path you choose than what sort of person you are.
Is it me, or is this an odd way of looking at things? I think it’s a sign of good moral character if you are asking yourself how you can help the greatest number of people and how you can productively apply your talents to the problems of the world. Assuming you do this for more than two seconds between surfing internet porn and updating your Facebook status, you’ve already distinguished yourself from most of your generation. But it’s not good enough for Reverend Brooks. Here’s his conclusion:
When I read the Stanford discussion thread, I saw young people with deep moral yearnings. But they tended to convert moral questions into resource allocation questions; questions about how to be into questions about what to do.
It’s worth noting that 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 schmuckdom requires fewer Excel spreadsheets, more Dostoyevsky and the Book of Job.
Now, I’m all for reading Dostoyevsky and the Book of Job. However, I don’t think the most pressing problem facing college graduates is that they’re being offered high-paying jobs on Wall Street while searching for ways to have meaningful lives without the aid of the wisdom of Prince Myshkin. The real problem is that too many kids are not being offered any kind of job at all. And a normal person would be concerned that our best and brightest kids are going into the world of high finance where moral character isn’t exactly prized or rewarded, rather than worrying that kids are seeking to do good the wrong way.
It’s almost as if Mr. Brooks wants these elite kids to feel more existential angst. If you’re not wondering why God has put all these choices and obstacles in your path, then your decisions aren’t worthy. And if you think passing up a job with JP Morgan to work with the poor is going to make you a good person, you got another thing coming, schmuck.
I think this reflects a general tendency of conservatives to determine how “good” you are by who you are (class membership, race, gender, nominal religion, etc.) and pretty much ignore whether what you do is “good.” It would explain why so many on the right can, for instance, claim to be the Christianest of all Christians, but in their actions screw the poor at every opportunity.
I think that’s related to the source of Brooks’s complaint. But it’s more that Brooks buys into (or pretends to buy into) the idea that rich people got the way they are by being harder working, more productive, less distracted, etc., than everybody else. And he’s got shallow, fallacious interpretations of the latest psychology and social science research to back it up. It boils down to the idea that morality is about adhering to strict, arbitrary codes of personal behavior so you can look down on people who don’t follow the code. It’s certainly not really about developing any actual good personality traits. Otherwise, being the kind of person who wants to help others would count as a kind of personal virtue.
I would guess one of the factors would be a kind of protestant outlook. Its the difference between Calvinism and Lutherism, which sees faith as the most important thing, and Catholicism and to a lesser extent Anglicanism, that sees both faith AND good works as the key to salvation. [/massiveoversimplification]
Perhaps people here who are more familiar with Christianism than I am can chime in – this sort of hypocrisy is what turned me off at a very early age – but isn’t there an awful lot in Christ’s teachings that emphasizes good works and actions over empty words? Is it me, or has Brooks throwing his very own precious Judeo-Christian morality out the window in order to make the predatory rich and their spawn feel better about themselves?
That’s the thing about any David Brooks column. You can totally tie yourself up in knots wondering where he comes up with this crap, and why anybody takes him seriously or keeps offering him lucrative high-profile platforms. I could write stuff like this in my sleep – literally – and it would be more coherent.
To these guys Jesus would be a hippie commie.
He pretty much WAS a hippie commie, even by the standards of the time.
Because their parents know someone who works there and/or work at those investment places themselves? No offense to those who came from a less privileged background and ended up at Harvard, but people who go there are already wealthy as it is. Or they’re related to someone who’s wealthy if they’re doing more community service related work (I know a few at non-profits). Or they’re so wealthy they can afford to do that work.
Whatever it is, that’s why. Also, the reason kids from the less-than-stellar schools (but still top 25%) are going into finance and Wall Street is because of huge college loan debt.
Sidenote to anyone else who recently graduated college with a degree in the sciences: the USPTO is still hiring a lot of people to deal with our backlog of patents. And the best part is your job isn’t dependent on the whackjobs in Congress. So if they go slash-happy, you’re secure so long as people submit patent applications. Though you’re on a “production” schedule, the pay to start is fantastic, with good benefits.
Hell, actually, if you’re looking for a career change do it. It’s not for everyone, sure, but I have a lot of older people (some transfers from NIH) in my group.
Brooks is a man with no morals and has never worked hard at anything. Snob.
He works hard at being an arrogant, judgmental prick. It comes naturally, sure, there’s no denying the man was born with a special gift. But he’s taken years to further hone his craft.
He’s literally bitching that Stanford grads aren’t interested in going into ministry or the military. It’s not Texas A&M for chrissakes. And if you want to join the military, do that before you go to Stanford. It’s makes much more financial sense that way.
For me the most disturbing thing about David Brooks is how many generally aware, self-described ‘progressives’ buy in to his social engineering/philosopher schtick and regard him as a credible ‘voice of reason’.
I once knew a guy who was quite smart, an electrical engineer in fact, who told me with a straight face that he thought George Will was a great columnist. This was just before the Lewinsky thing blew up.
I think I looked at him kind of funny after that. We worked together for five years.