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.
