A professional skill has no use outside the system that connects it to other professions. Professionals today are finding the system to which we devote ourselves is utterly corrupt, perhaps beyond repair. But we have invested such a great part of our lives in acquiring a skill that has no use outside the corrupt system, we are left with no choice but to pretend the system is fine. We must be the ones at fault. We can adapt. That’s what we tell ourselves. Over and over. But it never feels quite true.
Our disruptive doubts lead us to psychiatrists, who have been trained to help us adapt to the system of which they too are a part. Once we put ourselves in their care, the matter is already decided. We won’t start a new life. We’ll adapt to the old one.
I didn’t know her. But I wish I had a chance to talk to her before she died. Everyone who worked with her, everyone loved her, everyone who knew her, would have forgiven her if she had to stop being a mother—to stop being a coworker—to stop being a friend. Everyone would have so much preferred to see her leave them than to see her leave this world.
Professionals who see the crimes of the powerful, and understand our complicity in them, don’t need to adapt and return to our old corrupt lives. We need time to repent, to think, and to change.
She sought help from an expert in neurochemistry who knew nothing about repentance, who never even considered the possibility that the system, not her brain chemistry, might be the problem.
When our world is as corrupt as it is, to respect its rulers is impossible. At the same time, we need to motivate ourselves to do competent work. That means we must respect our employers. We must respect a system unworthy of respect. The contradiction would take a lifetime of thought and research to understand. But understanding and insight aren’t on the psychiatrist’s agenda. The goal is adjustment.
Professional training teaches us to be timid. We have faith in our ability to reason within a clearly defined realm of competence. Outside that we have no faith in ourselves. So we put our faith in the system.
Those who place their faith in the system have misplaced it. The saints and sages might have taught us this. But who has time to read them? We’re busy learning marketable skills.
The market has taught us to see ourselves as commodities, for sale to the highest bidder. If we speak about any ideal other than enhancing shareholder value in the workplace, we get disapproving stares. For professionals, in our professional capacity, the market has usurped the place of God.
She saw the system was not God. But no one offered to help her find a replacement. Coworkers assured her everything was fine. Of course they had their doubts. But they were too frightened to express them. The system was fine, she concluded. It must be her that was not.
I didn’t know her. But I know she woke up. She understood our rulers are committing crimes in our name. She understood her entire life had been spent learning a skill that had no use but to serve criminals. The only way she saw to avoid making her life complicit in their crimes was to end it.
Is it possible to leave the system without leaving life? Yes, I think it is. It’s never too late to reinvent ourselves and our lives. It’s never too late to turn our backs on the corrupt rulers of this world and begin looking for better role models.
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