Don’t panic!

There is a chess game going on in my brain… I often think about what jobs/careers will actu­ally be around in ten years, and which will fall by the way­side. Between out­sourc­ing and advances in tech­nol­ogy, there’s this accel­er­a­tion hap­pen­ing: where once a sin­gle job might be ren­dered obso­lete, now entire fields and indus­tries are dis­ap­pear­ing. Ten years ago this hap­pened with man­u­fac­tur­ing, and now more is crum­bling around us. Post offices are dis­ap­pear­ing. News­pa­pers are becom­ing pamphlet-sized. Libraries are clos­ing their doors (hope­fully only temporarily).

As some­one con­sid­er­ing a few career options, it’s ter­ri­fy­ing. I can envi­sion this type of dystopia where “the pow­ers that be” have pity on us and re-open these types of indus­tries in the name of cre­at­ing jobs. Yet, the peo­ple work­ing those jobs are com­pletely aware that what they are doing is totally futile. Mean­ing­ful work is impor­tant. Pur­pose is important.

As this sys­tem col­lapses into itself, there will obvi­ously be jobs that are secure. Doc­tors, nurses, mechan­ics, fire­fight­ers, sol­diers… these fields that deal with direct expe­ri­ence, with the body seem safe. But there’s not enough demand to allow every­one in the U.S. to be a doc­tor, or a police offi­cer, or a farmer. What about the rest of us? What’s next?

My back-and-forth a purely intel­lec­tual pur­suit in no way con­nected to authen­tic­ity, natural-born tal­ent or the human soul.