What began as a general frustration with economics and politics, has now given me motivation to try and extend things a bit further. What will follow in this post, and the ones to come, will be descriptions of the ways that—in my view—‘economics’ has captured the human imagination in different domains of life. After I feel that I have made a descriptive case worth taking seriously, then, I will try to draw-out some conclusions and see where that gets us. Thanks, as always, for reading!
So, tell me son: What do you want to be when you grow up?
This question may or may not be a new one, but its meaning has surely evolved over time. At the heart of the question, is the question of what one is and might become. This, as I see it, is the vocational question: the question of what I am called to be.
There is a longstanding tradition to equating what one is with what one does. In its most basic form, this is not necessarily problematic.
There is a much good that can come from seeing what one does as more than just a “job”—i.e. seeing what one does as related to what one is. In Spanish, there is a simple phrase—“hacer las cosas bien” (do things well/right)—that describes good work in terms of doing good things. A vocation, then, is more than just what a person does “for something,” it becomes an opportunity to be an artist. First and foremost, an artist in becoming a person—the arts of the ever-changing self.
The imagination of vocation with regard to labor or work has clearly moved away from the idea of person-at-work as artist. We see a formidable commentary in sources such as these: Dilbert comics; the movie, Office Space; and the current American adaptation of The Office (my personal preference is Are you Being Served?). Popular culture verifies the banality of work nowadays.
Among Hispanic workers, I have seen a generational difference between ways of cutting and welding steel. One (older generation) sees it as an opportunity to “hacer las cosas bien” the other (younger one) sees it as a means to a paycheck, pure and simple.
There is no doubt that one of the rewards of a vocation is a means to provide for one’s welfare. This is not my dispute here.
However, as I elaborated before (in “Economics and the Political Imagination,” hyperlinked in the introduction), there comes a point when the meaning of vocation goes from an economic concern among many other concerns to a purely economic concern—mere and total economic survival. When this happens, the very meaning of vocation is not merely directed at monetary gain, it also elevates money and capital to the status of an end in itself and loses sight of the vocational question, “What am I called to be?”
When this happens, the vocational imagination is impoverished by economic wealth and the order of love that makes the relational person the end of a true vocation is lost. The person is “called” to be a slave to money and capital.
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