Ideological Sublimation

If you’ve ever noticed your friends turning into their jobs, you aren’t alone. This essay describes process of how people’s values change over time and the way in which we turn into our jobs.

Let’s assume that a person’s values and personality is an n-dimensional vector that is drifting over time. Our values are primarily informed by the people around us¹ and the education received during our formative years, but they will change slowly as we go through life - each small interaction re-inforcing or challenging the values we hold. Large shifts in values are generally rare and likely caused by large life events, like birth, death, marriage, divorce, etc etc. Other shifts can be caused by events that drastically challenge our current values: you may be anti-violence, but if you are robbed at gunpoint, you will likely care more about security and safety - this is a sudden shift in values. Is that shift truly who you are or is it the manifestation of an event that happened to you?

One of the common events that most people encounter is getting a job. The term “dream job” is more than just an expression of aspiration - it also represents the way in which people transform into their work. If you’ve ever read a job posting that sounds like its your calling, you have been subjected to it.

It starts with reading the job posting and thinking: “Hmmm, that sounds great - I think that could be me” and before you know it, you start turning into what you read. This is ideological sublimation - the sudden shift in values that occur when you read a job posting and decide that is who you want to be². The shift started with reading about the job, but once you are employed, the sublimation continues and your values will shift more and more. Maybe your job requires you to enforce bureacracy - now you realize that paperwork is necessary for humans to co-exist. Maybe your job requires you to do harmful things to the environment or people you care about: now you find it easier to look the other way.³

This is particularly insidious because most people don’t have much freedom in where they work or the jobs they take, so they have to convince themselves that the job they work is what they wanted and is who they want to be.⁴

Unfortunately, this often causes cognitive dissonance: as time goes on, our values shift back towards who we truly are and we grow dissatisfied with the sublimation that we inadvertently placed on ourselves. We grow disillusioned, we see past the lies, we question why we took the job in the first place, but the damage is already done.

So how do you counter this process and stay true to yourself? One way is to stay unemployed and out of the system. This is not really an option for most people, though. Another way is to stay cynical and recognize when it happens to you and others. Don’t let yourself feel good about your job and don’t give other people status from their jobs: call them out when they try to gussy up their bullshit work.

Notes