Every talented person likes to think that they’re spending their life doing very important work.
If you’re a scientist, I’m sure you’ll tell me about how science has transformed the world we live in. The role scientists play in expanding the frontiers of human knowledge. The opportunities scientists have to speak on important issues. And so on.
If you’re an actor, I’m sure you’ll tell me about the power that theatre has to express ideas. The unique role that actors play in bringing stories to life for people. The opportunities actors have to speak on important issues. And so on.
If you’re a doctor, I’m sure you’ll tell me about the miracle of lifesaving medicine. The challenges that you alleviate from peoples lives every day. The opportunities doctors have to speak on important issues. And so on.
But this is misdirection.
These are myths. Not because they aren’t true, but because they came after you decided what you wanted to do, not before. The purpose they serve is one: for the world, most especially you, to feel like what you do is important.
Let me explain.
The story begins when you were around 4, starting to figure yourself out. In kindergarten, you excelled at some things, and not at most others. To distinguish yourself (to feel special and important), you identified with your strengths. These strengths gave you the ticket to compete in a dominance hierarchy; a status structure built around achievement in a specific domain.
Let’s imagine you were a better-than-average writer. The teachers told your parents what great stories you wrote. You could be the next Tolkien! You never heard of Tolkien before, and he wouldn’t have been important to you even if you had. But this makes you special now. So, you spurn all other pursuits as inferior to you, and make writing your “thing”. The rest of your life is consumed by success in this domain. This is the dominance hierarchy you chose to make yourself feel important.
To reinforce your participation in a dominance hierarchy, you immerse yourself into the myths built around this dominance hierarchy by your fellow travelers. All of those flowery reasons why people like to say they’re in the career they’re in, all those claims to the supposed intrinsic value of the thing. The true purpose is to breath intrinsic value into something a group of people are better than the rest of society at. You, being a member of this group, thus benefit in perpetuating these myths.
All of this happens without you even realizing it, because you didn’t have to invent any of it yourself. It was already there. The many dominance hierarchies in the world surrounding different skillsets already existed, and the myths that are built up around them were well storied by generations of dominance hierarchy climbers. Your parents, your teachers, your peers, themselves already self-enslaved to these dominance hierarchies, offer you the chains when they witness your strengths. You happily clasp them onto your wrists.
Let’s summarize your career in a flowchart.
Child has ego → wants to be important → demonstrates a certain talent → identifies a dominance hierarchy predicated on that talent → consumes the mythology of the intrinsic importance of that dominance hierarchy, storied by generations of those who climbed it → spend your life climbing to the top of that dominance hierarchy.
Everyone has some kind of skillset/competency/passion. Every skillset/competency/passion has an associated dominance hierarchy (many even). Every dominance hierarchy has a self-justifying myth.
Someone might object that this is actually normal, and that I’m just framing life in an overly cynical way. But no; believing in myths is wrong and unhealthy. Spending your life climbing semi-contrived dominance hierarchies and lying to yourself with its myths is a waste of life. We should not spend our lives enslaved to our own egos, latching onto a dominance hierarchy, endlessly proving to the world how important and relevant we are. We should choose the kind of work that we think we can genuinely make the greatest impact doing. That which Allah, not our egos, would be most pleased with.
Besides, these thoughts aren’t original. I first read about them from Ted Kaczynski of all people, except instead of ‘dominance hierarchy’ he used the terms ‘power process’ and ‘surrogate activity’.
Life looks very different once you adopt this outlook. One unsettling corollary is that, because every dominance hierarchy is set up for the same purpose, they are in some sense interchangeable. The striving actor, scientist, or doctor, are really the same kind of person motivated by the exact same thing. They are all just striving to ascend a dominance hierarchy. The details of their domain are irrelevant; it’s all about asserting their importance within their dominance hierarchy and by extension to wider society. They all buy into a myth that gives value to the dominance hierarchy they derive their importance from, and they all exert their strength to climb it. Even though we may think of theatre and science as two very different things: when it comes to the motivations of the rats in the race, they’re just different vehicles driving on the same road.