"College Kids" and the Narrative of Egotism

Money, Frantisek Kupka

Short of brimming with delighted anticipation at the next years harvest of ripe young graduates ready to enter the professional world, employers seem less than enthused.

They publish articles describing why they refuse to hire college graduates, and generally project an air of disapprobation, at best.  And why not? College graduates lack, well, everything needed to succeed in the North American sea of capitalistic furor.

And indeed, there are a host of reasons for this failure to be perfect.

But let us examine the disposition that allows resentment toward the ignorant.

Why are employers actively en garde against the little-cocky-twerps-who-think-they-know-everything who veritably drown HR department in resumes (as instructed)?

I submit that all of the popular reasons are a farce.

The modern corporate employer seems to suffer from a sort of amnesia regarding human nature and personal development. Either he is a totally disconnected father of college-aged children, or he is somewhere in the range between 35-45 and his children are still at home.

Is there any reason to think that college graduates should know better than the corporate employer the difficult and only semi-permeable sphere they are trying to access. Is it any wonder that graduates are inexperienced, unskilled (regarding a potential employer's values), and immature? No. It is, however, increasingly wondrous how immature men of power can be in their disbelief in the face of youth.

But this disbelief reveals them. This disbelief betrays them as credulous little boys and girls who seem to think that human dignity can be stratified into castes, that the college graduate is an opponent, an entity to be staved off, an invasive species that will set upon their financial security like locusts in a cornfield.

Is there anything more childish than attempting to blame someone for circumstances which are beyond his control? The college graduate "lacks interviewing skills", as Mr. O'Toole so kindly informs us. But isn't this a no-brainer?  Of course he lacks interviewing skills. How many interviews has he experienced?

Why does the modern corporate employer seek what cannot be found? Why does he endeavor to discover a fully grown whale in a tide pool? Either he is stupid (quite possible) or he is attempting to defend what he believes to be his very self: a position of pride, power, wealth, and enviability.

Symptomatic of an abortive culture, the employer hates the youth because they signify his death, his imminent irrelevance, the loss of his having. They signify humanity, and the employer has forgotten that humaneness does not sustain selfishness.

Reveling in his fortress, the employer ironically dispossesses himself of every professional "skill" he claims the graduate lacks: "communication skills", "interpersonal skills", adaptability. If the corporate employer owned any of these, he would not be concerned about the host of unknowing humans entering the workforce.

He would instead acknowledge that they -- as he himself had learned -- will learn the ways of men and women. He would acknowledge that new eyes uncover unknown possibilities. He would instead focus on training up these young minds to receive the great task, and the great debts, that will be laid upon their shoulders. He would be apologetic about messing everything up instead of arrogant about his own achievements. He would not look for their faults, but seek their virtues, and thus accelerate their education by encouragement. He would not see them as a threat, but as both a responsibility and a blessing.

Instead of proffering a throw-back to freshman year's clashing ivory towers of faux-intellectualism, the corporate employer would display a wise bearing, a patient hand. He would make that windowless office seem appealing.

As it is, the bully mocks the blind beggar. But one doesn't need so much reliance upon analogy when, straight from the horse's mouth, he hears "You were two minutes late."

The youth may make some changes.


(And if we take a closer look at Mr. O'Toole's lovely slideshow, we might just notice that the more young graduates feign knowledge and experience, the more likely they are to be hired. He loves the glitz. What a shiny door to an empty vault. Maybe corporate America is empty after all. ;) )

Freedom in a Culture of Hotdogs and Scapegoats

Self Portrait, Istvan Ilosvai Varga

Rene Girard speaks of a tension that necessarily arises in society with many individuals seeking the same thing. This tension, for Girard, has most evidently in ancient cultures involved a scapegoat. For instance, in Aztec culture, a scapegoat was offered up to the gods in satisfaction. In turn, those who offer the sacrifice require a remediation of their hurts and the bestowal of what they desire.

When we think of this current in American culture, we may encounter some fairly astounding revelations regarding our use of scapegoats and the ends we seek by external sacrifice. The world has its own Lent, its own process by which it seeks to approximate itself to the things it values. America, in brief, values a peculiar definition of freedom. 

This concept of freedom is manifested more or less materially: the trappings of pleasure (e.g. boys and cars, girl and boats, the NFL), laws protecting entitlement (e.g. welfare, separation of church and state, and the incoming so-called “gay marriage” laws), and convenience (e.g. internet, pre-nuptial agreements, contraception).

Freedom involves sacrifices. Egotism threatens freedom; violence threatens freedom; intellectual oppression destroys freedom – these are not welcome in a free society. Quite often, however, we conflate two different concepts, and in doing so place human rights in danger of utter loss. These two concepts are 1) free will and 2) freedom. 

Free will refers to the inherent and obvious capacity of a human being to choose one thing or the other: a sandwich or a smoothie (not green). 

Freedom refers to a state of being in which the human is able to make the best possible choice without hindrance (e.g. “I will better myself and no one can stop me”). The concept of “freedom” thus involves the moral idea of goodness, whereas the concept of “free will” allows for both good and evil. This is simply a matter of defining terms. 

Many Americans use “freedom” in the sense of “free will”, and truly believe that they may do as they please whilst they dwell in this country. Of course, they will enter into argument about how their sense of “freedom” depends upon the cultural context in which they were raised. However, this cultural context is ever-shifting: the argument means nothing if the concept of “freedom” can change at the whim of the masses. How can we define “freedom” if the word becomes unmanageable due to uncertain content? 

And America has multiple cultural contexts! Oh, the rabbit trails we could run.

We could ask the contextualist, “And so ‘freedom’ could refer to a position of complete oppression depending on the context in which it is used? This is simply a matter of language, then. You are using one word which previously had one meaning to refer to another. How can one know what he values, then? How can we discuss this thing called a ‘cultural value’? And if we assert that freedom is changing, how can we decry the dictatorship?” Indeed, we do not decry the dictatorship.

What the American is truly trying to say is that he has the right not to be bothered by any doubt of his correctness in living how he chooses to live, and he will deflect any doubts with whatever means necessary, including casting doubt upon the value of language and its ability to order our world. Language even becomes a scapegoat. When language becomes a scapegoat (it hasn’t worked with us), this is a sign that the self is willing to sacrifice his communion with other human beings in order to have whatever he craves. The autonomous self – the dead self.

In the end, the sense intended is this: “Freedom”, for many Americans, refers to uninhibited will.

However, as we see in effect today, this uninhibited will often clashes with the will of others. What is needed to mollify the escalating anxiety caused by the infringement upon our will by another? A scapegoat. To preserve a semblance of peace, the members of society come together at various points – waves reach over the sandbar and touch. As long as the scapegoat is there, society may go on with its mediocre state of temporary pacification. When the scapegoat disappears, war – the waves clash.

And what preserves our American stasis, our lone wolf syndrome of doing what one likes? What preserves our pleasure, entitlement, convenience?

• We all believe that love can and should die.
• We all believe that children can and should die if they interrupt our particular phase of life.
• We all believe that the enemies of uninhibited will should be scorned and defaced.
• We believe in the dead self, a hatred of self sold as a love of self.

And if these things hold our society together, they are like the abyss that opens in the ground, so that the walls of earth seem to join as they collapse, falling inward upon themselves. We commune only when we wish to break apart, and we shall break apart if we do not commune.

The self is not autonomous. It depends upon its intricate bonds to other members of society for survival, comfort, and even personality. When it begins to sever these bonds for the cry of mere inclination, it ceases, in unsustainable ways, to be human. It distorts nature and bends her to its will like Kim Jong Un, Hussein, Hitler. Imagine the horror and the isolation of an entire nation of “autonomous selves”, each attempting to sacrifice each because of the turmoil caused within, until the scapegoat becomes the self in that final surfeit of guilt that is yet a selfish act. Alone in a bunker with cyanide.

And true guilt? The answer that G.K. Chesterton gave to the question, “What’s wrong with the world?”:

 “I am.”

This is freedom.




"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish"
-- Mother Theresa of Calcutta