slackademic wrote:The tough part about this thread is precisely that "special snowflake syndrome" will allow many to ignore it, in that they believe they are more conscious and informed than the people this thread must be attempting to reach. I would have felt that way before law school.
Now it hits pretty close to home.
I imagine a cloud of consumerist dust being blown away from the part of many posters' minds where once there was some material gleaned from a philosophy course probably not germane to this discussion but nevertheless all they have in their arsenal to "argue" with and make themselves feel intellectually equal (who am I kidding: superior) to business lady. It speaks to what I think is the bigger, underlying problem with our current strivery, capital based society: a fear of death and a resulting, kneejerk narcissism. This is basically another way to say false consciousness, but I think its important to identify whats behind the phenomenon and to examine how it also affects the elite (and, sorry, going to law school does not make you an elite).
I just got to this thread so forgive me if I'm addressing things from a few pages back all at once here.
Anyway,
First, re: debt. Its bad and enslaving, yes, but look at why that is. Its a quantifiable form of the vengeance principle; it is the antithesis of forgiveness. I find it telling that even among friends people are nervous whenever the check comes at a restaurant. Even if someone pays for the whole thing, everyone else feels obliged to give thank-yous out of proportion to the act of paying. They seem uncomfortable with generosity, or in the alternative, are uncomfortable because they are too unsure of even the near future to feel confident they will pay the group's next meal. What's surprising from a strictly quantitative perspective is that the richer the bill payer is, the more insecure he often is that the ritual thanking will be performed insufficiently. This is a clue that behind simple notions of the value of money, or even social capital, the far more valuable thing is a defined hierarchy. Marxist thought might miss the mark somewhat when it focuses on the how capitalism works rather than why it developed; i.e. what is it about human nature that desires this system?
Second: Ritual is an absolute necessity to life, and any philosophy that tries to strip the "empty" rituals of life completely away from people will just see new, equally absurd ones spring up in place. Ritual is less commonly religious than it once was, but that context is the one in which its easiest to understand the point I'm trying to make, which is that rituals are cultural habits that we have to fill up the down-time. Sitting down in the morning to post on TLS before studying/working does not add anything quantifiable to any of our lives. But everyone here does it, or if you just lurk or use this website for admissions advice, you probably have others time-filling habits. Some would call them hobbies. Others might say passions or interests or something like that. Yet for some, ritual is everything. In olden times, these kinds of people entered the priesthood. In modern times, these type of people are the true, Faustian, strivers. What the older, religious system provided that the modern doesn't was a solid endgame. I think my best advice is if you want to make a life out of scratching your way to the top, know that a) you will probably fail but b) if you succeed, there's nothing there and you'll probably just end up getting really good at something like golf or birdwatching and wishing you'd spent more time on these little rituals/hobbies from the beginning. But for some rare people, there might be an option c) actuating world change. The people gunning for option c) frankly terrify me, and I hope those that get there leave the rest of us alone to play at our rituals in our little sandboxes. This type of elite typically does not actually care about the world, he is just the most in the grip of the narcissistic death-fear.
Third: Fear of death is natural and unconquerable without the aid of something supernatural. Defeating death is not a realistic goal for a modern world system. But narcissism and solipsism, the symptom of this fear that is most nurtured by capitalism, should absolutely be put up on the chopping block by any ideology seeking an alternative to the current system. Make this happen by dis-emphasizing partnership. Replace it with friendship between people irrespective of hierarchy. How? I don't know. Through ritual or superstition maybe. A firm conviction that a thing is so can make it so. Maybe get some poor people jobs as caddies at the local country club and let the rich golfers get a mulligan or a point on their handicap if they, like, kneel down and wash the caddie's feet or something. Or make welfare checks way bigger but only for poor people who can learn, like, a national dance or how to swallow fire. Use rituals like these to undermine self-obsession?
tl;dr: don't go to law school-- play golf with poor people
I'm applying to law school because what else even is there for me?" and the related focus on consulting, finance, or other very structured and directed career paths as the other possible post-collegiate results that didn't warrant killself.
