I came across an interesting bit in a video I was watching yesterday. “How many health care providers are in the room?” asked the kind lady in it. After a show of hands, she said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I feel like a lot of the work both of us care about so much is in service of others and all of you are dedicating your life for that same purpose.”
The dedication to the “service of others” part caught my attention. It’s curious that healthcare providers such as doctors and nurses, and other people like firefighters, military personnel, etc., are popularly held in higher esteem than sanitation workers, bus drivers, computer programmers, sales people, etc. Somehow some occupations are more “selfless” than others. Sorry to be contrarian but it’s simply not true that occupations can be categorized that way.
Certainly occupations can be justifiably categorized as immoral or moral, legal or illegal, intellectually hard or easy, physically challenging or easy, and so on. But as long as one is getting paid and not doing voluntary work, there’s no selflessness involved. That is not to imply people in various paid occupations are narrowly selfish and lack human decency; it is only that all of us are most of the time primarily — though not solely — motivated by self-regard and not by self-denying altruism. Continue reading “Honoring Those Who Serve Us”
Life is a Random Draw 