Monday, June 27, 2011

Careerism.

A few days ago Roissy put up a post discussing the subject of female careerism.  The main thrust of Rossy's argument was that careerism is a form of female infidelity and to a degree I think he is right.

The problem with careerism is that fundamentally it is incompatible with the concept of marriage, since careerism is fundamentally solipsistic.

At it essence, careerism is the pursuit of self-identity through work and as such is fundamentally self-focused.

Marriage, on the other hand, was traditionally (and correctly) thought of as a union of two people. In being united, they were "one thing" and henceforth the "other" had to be factored in all calculations. Marriage, as traditionally understood was intrinsically anti-solipsistic.

A career then is only compatible with a marriage as long as it is subordinate to it. In other words, a career is quite OK when it takes the marriage into account, it's not OK when the marriage is subordinate to it. A woman whose career comes first is a woman who is attacking the very nature of her marriage.

The reason why I bring this up is that many that careerism is a vice in women, something I agree. But what they fail to see is that careerism is a vice in men as well. People can be unfaithful to their marriage by sleeping with others but they can also be unfaithful to the marriage by having an affair with their job.