Advice is offensive, not because it lays us open to unexpected regret, or convicts us of any fault which had escaped our notice, but because it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves; and the officious monitor is persecuted with hatred, not because his accusation is false, but because he assumes that superiority which we are not willing to grant him, and has dared to detect what we desired to conceal.
—Samuel Johnson
I haven’t detected anything in you and I don’t mean to assume any sort of superiority, but I believe that if you rant about something more than three times you should write it down. Here are a few suggestions I’ve often repeated to my friends which I’m passing along for your consideration:
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Mother Night (1962)
Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.
—Cassio, Othello, II:iii
Two concepts that have helped me make career decisions are:
Mimesis
Be wary of the extent to which your desires are not really your own. On Rene Girard's view, desire is mimetic. He sees the human world as a theatre of envy where we mimic each other's desires and actions. It's like a big game of monkey see, monkey do. Only by looking to others do we figure out what we should want and how we should act. Girard thinks mimetic behavior is the root of all human conflict because when we all want the same thing, we compete with each other. Like lions in a cage, we mirror our enemies, fight because of our sameness, and ascend status hierarchies instead of providing value for society.
Mimetic desire rears its head in the job market of the 21st century as ambitious young people strive to secure prestigious jobs at goliath firms. The drive for prestigious positions is highest amongst high-status people. A series of studies by researchers at the University of Queensland found that, “relative to lower-class individuals, upper-class individuals have a greater desire for wealth and status...it is those who have more to start with (i.e., upper-class individuals) who also strive to acquire more wealth and status.” A more recent set of studies led by Cameron Anderson at the University of Berkeley, titled ‘The Possession of High Status Strengthens the Status Motive’, also supports the idea that high-status people care the most about status. They found that social class, measured in terms of education and income, were positively associated with the desire for social status. People with more education and money were more likely to agree with statements like “I enjoy having influence over other people’s decision making” and “It would please me to have a position of prestige and social standing.” In short, people who are well-off care the most about others’ opinions of them.