Dangers of careerism

Have we once and for all turned to a future in which what matters is just what we do, and not who we are? Are we taking our learning as merely a ground for preparing ourselves to a career- determined future? Will the benchmarks of correctness and professionalism steer us away into a world where we will live rest of the lives in three piece suits with ever turned on smiles? Will the only concerns of our young who frequent institutions of higher education will be to act and to talk in a way that they will look right as per the employability manual? Will the fear of not being employed , not selected for the prospective job, hurt them into a kind of docility and domesticity which is equivalent to a premature maturity that denies adventure and promotes only ventures?

What provokes these questions are the career fixation and apoliticisation which are increasingly becoming quietly acceptable in our campuses. In a number of ways, it is becoming clear that Generation Y is taking on the contours of the crowd we find in movies who merely look on as the villain fights the hero on the street. A bloody fight  which fails to draw the attention of the passersby and one in which the people around don't try to make peace is the height of unnaturalness. They don't serve who simply stand and watch. The tame crowd of limp knowledge seekers who refuse to take interest in the lives around is a gangrenous message for the times to come. 

A generation which has taken up on itself the goal of career, striving not to be deficient in tone  or the right gait or in the lift of the face or in the modulation of the voice, will find itself to be left to itself unable to defend oneself from the artifices of a career and profit driven world of utility. What this is doing to our campus is damage of generations. There are a number of ways in which this is becoming evident in the temples of learning these days. The prominent sign of this mental putrefaction is the anathema to revolt. The bunch of students who fail to take up causes is on the rise around us. Until we do something to stop this rot and put them also on a crash course on how to get upset, how to differ and to know that others are different, generations will go down the drain. 

It is important to be aggressive too, not just assertive. The careerism promotes a mode which teaches assertiveness, which though good as it keeps passions from going wild, from impressing others without upsetting them, this assertiveness bit should not be overdone. The price we will have to pay for a generation which is over fed with assertiveness, and is totally lacking in aggression, is one in which the young will be too tame to raise voices of protest when in dire need. This is not to champion violence. This is to promote cautious sense of aggression when ones basic identity is on crisis. 

Thou it is true that in an ideal set up, educational institutions general interaction should teach the young on being responsible, it goes without saying that often this fails to happen. How many of the institutions teach their young how to take up bases and to fight for the right? How come the pedagogy fails to ensure the sense of fairness so that the young will react when their basic minimum of rights are not met? The increased apoliticisation has to be understood in this context? Though politics overdoes at times, this is no reason to turn the young backs on politics for good, because there is no life without politics. The  career craze is drummed up to excess. The result is that life's responsibilities are left unattended. Life shrinks to oneself. Community is forgotten. 

In a sense, what career readiness demands is not far removed from what life demands. Career demands effective communication and that is what life demands too. In career one will come across situations in which, for the sake of professional survival, truth has to be softened. You can communicate what you feel but not bluntly. Often this is advised to be so because the style and, anger of speaking of an employee may not read in the same spirit b the employers of some times by the cool. The corporate motto trains the young to dress up smart and to button up the sleeves. The social reality may well demand that the sleeves be rolled up. The hands will need to be dirtied and socks rolled off too.

But let the young not be wanting in social vision. A vision which talks of the need to protest, need to raise voice, need to be part of informed rebellions.