The rat race

 

When I was young, the main purpose of the professional "rat race" was to earn enough to keep up with the Joneses. This of course is a clear sign of an affluent society: as soon as actual survival (water, food and shelter from harm) ceases to be an issue and people are in their comfort zone, they focus on issues like status. And I would have expected this displacement process to have continued all through Maslow’s pyramid of needs. But in fact, people have shown themselves capable of simultaneously tending to their own immediate needs and looking to the longer term and the needs of others as well, by also caring about the environment, the poor, etc., and status seems less important now than 50 years ago. But there is still a rat-race: it is called life-long learning (one of my personal pet peeves).

Another thing that I seem to remember was that, although almost everyone wanted to climb the social ladder, most people also felt that “belonging” and remaining “true to your roots” was very important, and that the best you could realistically hope for was for your children to have a better life (you yourself would never really rise more than a few rungs of the ladder). Nowadays, many people I know still want to climb, but they seem to want to ignore the class factor altogether.

After almost half a century of doing that myself, I have come to the conclusion that although this idea (like communism) is a very nice one, it is not really very practical. Class differences still exist, and trying to ignore or hide them will not make them go away. The best we can hope for there is that people from different classes will treat each other with respect. And one way to make that easier is to keep in mind that in any society we all need each other, in the same way that each individual organism needs its organs and parts. You might have a personal preference for one specific organ above all others, but there is nothing inherently better to a brain, compared to a heart, or a muscle, compared to bone. You need them all to survive and thrive.

Of course, it is important to distinguish between an organ and a tumor. All areas of human activity - construction, retail, transport, financial services, management, the arts and the entertainment industry, etc. etc. could be seen as similar to organs, in the sense that each one has a specific function to fulfill within society. But they can all develop tumors, (such as has happened recently in the financial sector). And tumors are of course are different story altogether, because we may have to operate just to survive. And when we do, it would be nice if we could distinguish between the greedy, arrogant and selfish people who actively helped create the tumors, and those that just drifted into the situation by chance and are now hanging on to the only job that they know how to do.  It would be nice, but I don't think it is going to happen.