Disclosure: I am not a professional in any sense, but an ordinary layman, bereft of expertise. As such, I exercise "first order" knowing, common sense, prudence, which is superior to all specializations.
What follows is not a Luddite ingratitude for the miracles of our advanced, complex society. But a realistic recognition of temptations, dangers that come with those marvels.
By "profession" we here mean a financially compensated expertise in a specific area, entailing training and certification, within a community with an elaborate body of shared beliefs, values, practices. It brings with it as well social status, authority and power.
By "first order knowledge" here I mean the personal, experiential, concrete, integral encounter of the person with the Real. By "second order knowledge" I intend specialized, abstract, especially scientific knowledge that is not the actual experience of a real person. So for example, Artificial Intelligence is incapable of first order knowledge.
Anecdote: Over 20 years ago, a friend was describing the battle of his lawyer with that of his wife over alimony in the impending divorce. He had destroyed his career, reputation, marriage and family by a bad habit, caressing the breasts of his female medical patients. He went on to jail. He was working a 12-step program including "amends." He valued my counsel. I suggested: "Overrule your lawyers. Direct them to give your wife everything she wants...as part of your amends to her." He laughed dismissively. Did not honor the suggestion by engaging it or addressing it. Why was this unthinkable, indeed ridiculous, to him? Because he valued his money and wanted to keep as much as possible? Yes, I think so. But I think there was another, possibly stronger motive. His personal identity was deeply invested in his medical expertise. In the parallel realm of law, it was inconceivable that he, a mere layman, would contradict his lawyers, the experts. He had forfeited the freedom, dignity, sovereignty of his own intellect and conscience, as well as the primacy of his spiritual life and that of his family, to the dictatorship of expertise.
Anecdote: Frank, parish deacon and retired social worker making about $95 hourly as a consultant was positive about our residence, in the convent, for low income women until there was an incident and he told me what he really thought: "What you are doing is crazy, reckless, dangerous. You have no professional social workers, nurses, psychologists, security system! You take women directly from the psych ward! Anything could happen here! This is not good!" I said nothing but thought to myself: "Professional!"
We inhabit a complex, elaborate social universe of interlocking mega-techno-bureaucracies. Almost all human work is performed, not by the personal agent, within a convivial community, on a human scale; but by enormous, powerful, science-based, machine-like systems. This mega-machine-universe produces astonishing results in medicine, law, production, services, travel, communication, entertainment and every field. Highly educated "professionals" maintain this overgrown, largely impersonal universe. Economic and social (status, power, authority) rewards are distributed according to a hierarchy of what is considered most valuable to "the machine." We have become a two-tiered society, with the upper class, especially professionals, enjoying rich rewards and the lower very few.
The problem: a dependency upon "the machine" for all human needs has induced an impotence, a paralysis, a loss of agency in daily life, for all of us. Indeed, it is likely that the more "successful" among us, higher up the social hierarchy, with more money, access more goods and have even less agency (aside from their narrow expertise) than the poor, who must fend for themselves and rely more on ingenuity and solidarity.
Work, we learned from John Paul II, is a quintessential action for the human person, it is transitive as it moves from the actor to recreate and reorder the world. The capacity for work, we learned from Freud, is a sign of psychological health. Work is a flourishing of the human body and spirit; it is communal; it is generous and generative; it is physical, concrete, specific in time and place. But the malignancy of our technology is a cancer that disables us, persons and communities, in our agency and potency.
And so we do well to cherish and cultivate all forms of work that are non-bureaucratic and non-technological: gardening, child rearing, reading, conversing, cooking, decorating, home schooling, walking, sports, prayer, liturgy. The more concrete, simple, small, local... the better. The less elaborate, technical, regulated, certified...the better.
This is not to reject modern technology tout court in the manner of the Amish and the Luddites. But it is to recognize the toxic consequences of mega-technology and compensate for them. It is to deliberately prefer the concrete, the local, the immediate, the small in scale.
The professions and the techno-universe they inhabit have inherent biases, some very bad. There is an assumption of knowledge as control, rather than contemplation and grateful reception of the Real as already/always Given as True, Good and Beautify. There is an exaggerated confidence in human achievement over much that is uncontrollable: suffering, death, guilt, sin. There is a presumptuous compulsion to engineer and save ourselves by our efforts and expertise. There is a righteous rage when this expectation is, inevitably, frustrated. There is immersion in a network of practices and institutions that are technical, mechanical and not inherently receptive, contemplative, grateful.
A second foundational bias of the professions is a compulsion to protect, to defend, to avoid risk, to detect and combat threats. Safety is the reigning value in the professional world. The lawyer is attuned to liability. The medical professional deals daily with serious sickness and is quick to suspect it and eager to diagnose and treat. The insurance salesman...need I go on?
Immersion in any profession, years of training-testing-certification followed by 40-60 workhours weekly, involves an immense concentration in a narrow second order of knowing specialty (tax law, heart surgery, etc.) and can easily unbalance one's first-order of knowing, prudence. In particular, service within the mega-technology leans into a preference for control, a defensiveness about danger, an aversion to risk, a loss of agency outside of that expertise, and a diminishment of wonder, reception, serenity and gratitude.
And so, increasingly we find ourselves subservient and obedient to the experts in child rearing, diet, health, legal matters, fitness, mental wellness, housing and almost everything. With diminished agency, we are more prone to depression, discouragement, anxiety, addictions, and a quiet nihilism. Work becomes mechanical, vacuous, oppressive rather than fluent, creative, refreshing and convivial. And the more affluent and prestigious among us are possibly the most effected as they labor abstractly, removed from the real, the concrete, the physical.
My Lay, Non-Professional Resume
I have made my living as a Catholic religion teacher, a UPS supervisor, and director of a residence for low-income women. Happily, I have cherished my lay agency and independence.
In teaching religion I was always the protagonist in my classes. I used the text and curriculum freely, treating a range of topics (liturgical seasons, current issues, saints). I benefited from the support of those, usually religious sisters, who ran the schools. I enjoyed community, agency, freedom, creativity an serendipity.
In 25 years at UPS, most as a supervisor, I was indeed a cog in the "big brown machine," an exemplar of bigness, technology, regulation, and industrial engineering. Early on, I was warned by a priest: "Do not sell your soul to the company." I retained always a lively sense of the impersonality of the system, and so maintained an interior detachment. Yet, my family benefited (good salary, benefits, etc.); I was loyal to the company; and always proud of our work which was a genuine, if mundane service within a generally wholesome moral context.
However, there were always two management cultures, often contradictory of each other. The "by the book approach" upheld all the protocols, rules, laws, industrial engineering standards, safe work and driving methods, and so forth. On the other hand, the "get the job done" culture was the "macho" willingness to throw away the rule book and do what it takes to get the packages where they had to be. If a trailer load was late for the train, we would exceed the speed limit; if it had bad brakes but no time to be repaired, we would pull it anyway (exercising extra caution.) I recall as a pack car driver seeing a little, fragile lady in the rain with groceries falling all over the place in wet bags. I carefully helped her into the truck and drove her home, all the time nervous and cautious but also laughing that the safety committee, human resources, lawyers and tons of others would have heart attacks if they knew about it. And so, while I observed and taught the rules with fair diligence, I retained my "lay" autonomy to throw the book out when prudence and common sense directed such. This "can do," entrepreneurial, confident approach was a triumph over the mechanical, engineering, impersonal nature of the "big brown machine."
Finally, I have delighted in my work in our boarding home because of the large space for initiative and agency. No we are not social work professionals; we are entirely lay, vernacular, lacking in expertise but guided by our paternal/maternal intuitions. The rules and the inspectors are reasonable. We comply with laws and regulations but we do not go crazy about it. Our operation is simple, lay, uncomplicated...nothing complex or elaborate about it. We enjoy collaboration with staff, volunteers, contributors, along with state health insurance and social security, as well as the police, ambulances and fire department. It is a happy world: convivial, organic, synergistic, dramatic and active.
The Joy of the Layman
I can happily report that all our seven children are professionals; I am proud of them and the good work they do. But I am not jealous. While I lack the deep, rich body of expertise each has in a specific field, I am happily a lay man, an amateur, in the sense of one who pursues an activity out of love. Primarily I see myself as a catechist, echoing the voice of Christ within the Church, but along with that I am an amateur theologian, psychologist, philosopher, blogger, and student of culture. This leaves me free of the inherent obligations, bonds, and biases of a profession (especially control and protection) to move in and out of various disciplines in the spirit of joy.
In addition to freedom from a profession and the amateur's privilege in exploration and learning, I have benefited in other ways in growth towards prudence and wisdom. I have lived in close contact with the urban working class and poor and their humility, simplicity, piety and gratitude; at a remove from the affluent and powerful. I have lived in the heart of the Church, the place of reception of the Word, sacrament and worship. Here I treasure a deep connection with Tradition and thereby an enhanced immunity from the bourgeois delusions and pretensions of techno-progressivism. I delight in the benefits of our amazing society, but strive always to live simply, gratefully, locally, reverent before and attentive to The Given, here and now.
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