I have had no career or profession. I am amateur, lay, uncertified and entirely lacking in technical expertise and occupational status. And happy about it!
There is nothing wrong with a career or profession as I understand it: a lifelong, well-paid occupation, involving elaborate training and certification, social status, participation in a guild, expertise in a specific field, path for progression, in providing a defined service to society.
In our complex society, we need tons of good professionals. Our seven children are all such: teacher, lawyer, physician's assistant, psychologist, social worker, theologian, nurse. They have a total of 8 bachelor and 9 graduate degrees. I am proud of them and happy for them.
What I criticize is careerism. That is a system of belief and practice that:
1. Values a person according to career achievement or lack thereof.
2. Divides society into two tiers: the winners, professionals, with specialized expertise who reap the rewards in salary, security and status; and the losers, the low-achievers, who work dead-end jobs with low income, security and prestige.
3. Rewards technical expertise in a very specific, limited area, as it undermines agency and initiative in most human activities, developing a dependency upon a vast bureaucratic, technological network of specialists.
I would have loved to be a psychologist, theologian, or lawyer. But I am happy with what I am: a non-professional, amateur, worker. I had a good job, for 25 years, in UPS as clerk, driver, supervisor. I supported my family. It was a job, not really a career. It did not define me.
A career or profession endows you with a body of knowledge, beliefs, values, practices, expertise in a specific area. It is enriching for the professional and the community. In modernity, it normally positions you as a piece within a larger, mechanical, mathematical system: of law, engineering, medicine, schooling and so forth. In varying degrees, one becomes a cog in broader system, with diminished agency, autonomy and liberty.
Being career-free brings its own values. One is free from the techno-regulated-bureaucracy, free to wander in wonder among many fields of learning and study. One stays closer to common sense, concrete experience, ethnic wisdom, prudence, working class culture, and the simplicity of our faith. An unending, fascinating dialogue follows with a symphony of random, non-systematic partners. One slowly develops a unique, creative, personal point of view. One finds his/her own distinctive voice.
At the age of 22, 1969, I graduated college, left the seminary, uncertain about a call to the priesthood, entirely bereft of career aspirations. I had my very first date with a girl, Mary Lynn Remmele; fell madly in love; courted her patiently; married in January 1971; and lived happily ever after.
Free of career constraints, I pursued, with my partner, my three life defining aspirations: study, of our Catholic faith and of psychology, culture, history; catechesis, the sharing of our faith with others, especially the young; and closeness to the poor.
In a marvelous few years (1970 to 19744, when our daughter was born), I: studied at Woodstock Jesuit Theology School, Union Seminary, Columbia University as an non-matriculated mendicant; taught religion at Jesuit Xavier H.S.; taught English as a Second Language in the South Bronx; lived with a lovable Puerto Rican Hippie and then with an Orthodox, Jewish, maverick, neurotic, endearing linguistic scholar; hang out with my friend George in the gay community of the lower East Side; chaired the religion department and taught in St. Mary's H.S. Jersey City; served as parish representative and also summer bible school teacher in St. Al's parish and Duncan Projects Jersey City; participated in Second Chance Family, a sensitivity group in NYC.
Together we: studied Spanish in Ponce, Puerto Rico; spent lots of times in Manhattan, seeing movies and eating out; made Cursillo and Marriage Encounter; did Ecumenical Institute conference on imaginal education; participated passionately in a Charismatic prayer group and parish at Christ the King Church, Jersey City; and started our family.
I was particularly blessed by marriage to the best mother and wife of my generation. She entirely supported me and enabled me to throw myself into my amateur studies, catechesis and service of the poor. Early in our engagement, it occurred to me that I should not marry as I had no interest in the ordinary bourgeois life: successful career, security, house in suburbs with picket fence and 2-car garage. I wanted something countercultural, radical. So I told Mary Lynn, in some ways an ordinary middle class woman, that we should not marry as I intended what I called an "apostolic" life: out of the ordinary, low in achievement and status, interest in study, catechesis and service of the poor. She responded: "I want that too." She has been a superb partner.
Looking back today, age 76, I make my own the famous words of Lou Gehrig in 1939: "...today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
Hall of Fame of Amateur (from "amo" out of love), Lay, Non-expert, Uncertified, Credential-free Learner-Catechist-Philosophers
John Rapinich my beatnik, eccentric, poetic, artistic, autodidact, Jewish, convert, charismatic, neo-cat, best friend,
Pat Williams, my ex-pugilist, ex-marine, librarian, catechist, college mentor.
Frank Sheed, lay catechist, writer, publisher, theologian.
G.K. Chesterton. Everyone knows him.
Baron Friedrich von Hugel, aristocrat, genius, free-ranging, modernist, mystic and loyal Catholic.
Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker.
Kiko Arguello and Giuseppe Generenni of the Neocatechumenal Way.
Catherine DeHueck Doherty, Adrienne von Spier, Madaleine Delbrel, Carol Houselander.
Eric Hoffer, hobo, autodidact, working class philosopher.
Charles Peguy, French poet, journalist, activist, playwright, convert, mystic.
No comments:
Post a Comment