I thought about making this more than one post, but figured few might read this anyways so length probably doesn't matter, ha. Also thought it was about time a post like this gets put up. Cheers.
I think that one of the biggest challenges in life is figuring out how we can pull ourselves out of our own insular daily lives that have very little, if any, impact on those outside of our direct circles of interaction. How do we make our 'mark'? This problem (maybe) is more challenging with professions that require a lot of training that is then repaid with more money and prestige Like de Botton says, we will always struggle with status anxiety, and those with more status both have more to gain (a bigger continuum) and more to lose (higher ledge from which to fall).
One way to avoid the preoccupation with status attainment is to pair life with service - to intentionally and regularly expand our circle of interaction to include those different than ourselves and in need of something. I used to (may still... jury is out) think that some professions have a much easier time solving this status/service issue than others. Physicians are an easy example. The work that they do is directly tied to serving other people. Academics are also an easy example for the opposite reason - there is almost no connection at all between the work we do and serving other people, typically. So the solution to insular status anxiety for academics makes it much harder to bridge passions, training and knowledge with helping others. It almost forces academics to bifurcate their lives into profession and service which does not really fix the problem of connecting with other people because how can one connect with others when they are in that very attempt disconnecting with their self?
But it occurred to me over this past week as I have been thinking through part of the dissertation that this may be overly simplistic. All professions have beliefs and values that are socialized into the professionals to different degrees. For physicians, one of the strongest beliefs/values in that socialization process is that of valuing scientific thought and processes which naturally is linked with detaching people from the diseases and health problems that they have. This detachment is at odds, in a sense, to empathetic and compassionate care for the person coming to see the physician. It also tends to be at odds with the religious beliefs of the physician because the one puts compassion and empathy at the front and the other devalues and at times even ignores compassion because machines and science have no need for empathy - even getting in the way at times.
So, like the academic struggling to connect their skills and passions with service to others, the physician in serving others struggles to connect two different socializations, two different modes of thinking and feeling, that contribute to how they think and feel - professional detachment and religious compassion. Some feel the tension more than others. Some ignore the tension and bifurcate their lives. Others uncritically (I don't mean this in a negative sense) accept both professional and religious socializations as they are and the tension never comes to the surface - similar to Gould's non-overlapping magisteria.
I think that many people struggle with some of this stuff when they think about what they want to do and accomplish in life. How can my life make a difference? How can I help people best? Pretty much any profession has processes of socialization in place and these will also relate to these struggles in different ways. At what point will one's religious beliefs overpower their professional socialization (if we can think of them in those terms)? How can they happily work with one another? Should they?
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