I'm very lost. I'm 64, graduated in philosophy (and psychology) with honors a deal of years ago, and have been working dead-end jobs since.

I don't think there is a job or a life that is not dead-end. To live by thinking is no different from stacking shelves, it is to stack library shelves instead of supermarket shelves.

But work is not soul-destroying. Recently, I have been a cleaner and night porter. One cleans the kitchen, not to have a clean kitchen, but so that the dirt is always fresh. One cleans the toilets so that folks will not get sick and die. One stacks the shelves so that folks can eat. One does work of value to the world, and it sustains the soul.

What destroys the soul is the fantasy that there is something more valuable than doing what needs to be done, something fulfilling. The Nobel prize is never awarded to cleaners, no prizes at all are awarded to shelf stackers. Is that what you want? To give a gracious speech as you clutch the Oscar, thanking the world and his brother for enabling your achievement? Would that fulfil and satisfy?

My advice is to stay lost, stay dissatisfied (as if there is some other condition you might be in).

no prizes at all are awarded to shelf stackers — unenlightened

Don't you believe it!

Cleaning was my favorite job, I got to listen to audiobooks all day, I used to listen to audiobooks and lecture course for hours a day every day for a couple of years, it was great.

Funny thing about the award thing, while I was working at a military base, I was of course not hiding, and work avoiding, and I don't like sitting around or boredom, so I was constantly just finding something to do. Eventually the supervisor there began to discreetly go home half the time at like 10 am, and was actually awarded for the cleaning at the base, and he cried about it, as if it was super meaningful, when he was doing fuck all, and taking all of the credit.

Oh shit, my life has been wasted and I never even knew.

It's not so much the job that you do but how you approach life in general that's important. My experience suggests to me that what most makes people happy or unhappy, strong or weak, is the cultivation of habit. Your job can be a part of that but never the whole. So, cleaning and listening to audio-books could very well be more fulfilling for an intellectually-minded person than most jobs out there if it forms part of a coherent approach to life. Following a career in academia could also work. Note though that generally the further up you go on the career ladder, the more compromises you need to make in terms of your values and your free time. It can end up being a fool's errand. I would figure out a big picture of what you want to spend your time on and then work a career into that rather than let your career dictate the overall pattern of your life.

See if there's any openings around you for philosophy teachers, maybe in grade school or a community college. You might have to have education credentials, though.

I notice here in Australia there's an uptick in the employment category 'non-routine cognitive work'. That would include such things as technical writing, business analysis, IT support, professional services and so on. I found my way into technical writing via a lucky break in the computer industry. If you're a philosophy graduate presumably you can write and think, which actually puts you ahead of a great number of people already.:-) And it may not feel like it, but at 25 you're still very young with many possibilities.

I'm retired after 40 years on the job. I'm 70. When I was 25 I desperately needed employment guidance that I didn't get. Hope you'll be luckier.

First, the bad news:

I'm very lost. ...have been working dead-end jobs since. I had this fantasy that it didn't matter what I did to make money as long as I could pursue my interests in my spare time. But the work is so soul-destroying and exhausting (labouring, factory work, stacking shelves, working checkouts) that I'm finding it increasingly difficult to sustain enthusiasm for life. — Welkin Rogue

That was my theory too. Get a job, any odd job will do, earn enough to make ends meet, live cheaply and live a fascinating and vibrant life between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.

It didn't work.

Low quality white collar work, in my opinion, is much more soul sucking and mind deadening than blue collar work. I generally stuck with the white collar crap. The blue collar jobs I had were better. They weren't enriching, but I didn't feel dead at the end of the day, either.

I worked in a quite a few different places; some of them were doing good, important work -- but short term employees generally are not hired for any sort of interesting work.

The two best places I worked were opportunities to begin new human service programs with relatively little supervision. The first was working with failing students at a Catholic college, the second (about 10 years later) was doing safe-sex outreach and HIV

health education in the gay community.

My first job sort of fit my college training, the second was a total non-match. I majored in English Lit, so I could readily work with students on critical verbal skills. The second job -- promoting the use of condoms, safer sex, clean needles, and the like in a sex-positive way had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with English Lit. It was my own sexual life-experiences that qualified me for the job. That and other work experiences. I spent 17 years altogether in these two jobs.

The remaining 23 years in the work force were spent doing full-time permanent work for non-profits in a variety of functions or short-term temporary work. Sometimes the work was tolerable, and the people were usually reasonably pleasant, but since I hated detailed paper work, I'd get totally bogged down.

At 5:00 you're beat, used up, spent, fried... whatever phrase you like. You'd like to do something interesting and useful, but... it's night time. Time to relax, have a few beers, see a movie, spend some time with friends. Go to bed.

Then there is the issue of self-esteem and the regard in which others hold you. Oh, you're working temp at a factory -- what good did your philosophy degree do you then? What is wrong with you?

Who do you discuss philosophy with at 10:00 at night?

Now, the good news:

I'm 25, graduated in philosophy with honors a couple of years ago... — Welkin Rogue

You are young and smart. You have skills. You even have some experience now, doing those boring jobs. Time to take a fresh look at what you can do.

Maybe you've been through all this already. Maybe you're sick of it. But take some time to think about the kinds of work you would find interesting -- whether it fits your college degree or not. What kind of work do you hate? Not so much white or blue collar, but whether you have to attend to detail or deal with generalities; are you a big picture person or a little picture person?

Separate task: Make a list of your real skills. A degree in philosophy is not a skill. Reading a text and analyzing it for inconsistencies, contradictions, or influences is a real skill. Persistence and the ability to apply yourself are valuable characteristics. You degree proves you have that. What were your favorite classes and why did you like them? Can you write well? (compose, not can you weald a pencil)

What sort of person would you like to be in 5 or 10 years? Of course you will still be you, but what kind of income will you need to wear the kind of clothes you want to wear, or live in the kind of house you want for a roof over your head? If you have a clear picture of what you want for yourself in the future, what will it take to get there?

What if what you want to be in 10 years isn't attainable: What's second in your list of objectives. If you want to teach, can you teach? Are you good at teaching? Can you sell otherwise uninterested students on the reason they should be interested in philosophy? or anything else...

Do you like working with people? (It's not a sin to not like working with people). Do you find plants, animals, and machines better company than other homo sapiens? What does your answer tell you about what sort of work to move toward and what to avoid?

Who do you know who might help you find information about jobs, and/or a job opening? Personal contacts are the source of a lot of information about job openings. Who could you get to know who might know about probable job openings?

The amount of working memory is the only criteria anyone has ever discovered for measuring someone's career potential. When looking for a career the question you should be asking yourself is how good is your memory.

the question you should be asking yourself is how good is your memory. — wuliheron

The more you remember, the more you will wish you could forget.

I'm glad I reached out. You all have given me much to think about. Thank you. Just a few replies.



I like the sentiment. I think you're right that the 'problem' is largely a matter of perspective. Keeping control of one's perspective is, however, a struggle, especially in a materialistic/extroverted culture which becomes fairly inescapable as long as one is connected to social media.



Yeah having time to alone is a big plus in such lines of work. As long as I can disappear into thought or audio, it's not so bad. I also enjoy the opportunity to move. You feel much better than you do after 8 hours at a desk. That was one of the reasons I eschewed white collar drone labour. What do you do now?



Cheers Bitter Crank, you've given me meaningful questions with which to refine my general despair.

I think you correctly identified an important, if regrettable fact about our simian psychology:

Then there is the issue of self-esteem and the regard in which others hold you. Oh, you're working temp at a factory -- what good did your philosophy degree do you then? What is wrong with you? — Bitter Crank

Although I had imagined I was above these anxieties, and I think adopting a more enlightened perspective can mitigate them, they are tenacious, as I said in response to unenlightened. Perception of status, even among friends and family, is to a large extent based on socio-economic position. There is also research indicating correlation between cortisol levels and leadership (http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/2012_PNAS.pdf). I think this suggests a causal connection between well-being and two associated factors - control over one's environment and status (although this goes beyond the evidence of the study). Thus while I enjoy being free from serious responsibility and the bother of managing other people, perhaps the long-run outcome could actually be more stress insofar as the roles which confer these 'advantages' lead to lack of control and lowly status. But they needn't. I've found that some low-responsibility jobs (working checkouts) tend to be unpleasant because of this, but others (cleaning) are not. Maybe that's a possibility... find more solitary, autonomous jobs. Then eliminate Facebook and forget about materialistic expectations... Not sure.

Another consideration is what employment does for one's romantic/sex life. What finally made my concern about status transparent was when I lost confidence around girls. I suddenly realised that I was no longer a 'recently graduated student' just doing jobs to fill in time and get money. I was now a 'real person' having to contend with the dominance hierarchy of society. My crude understanding is that girls tend to 'date up', so the lower one's rank, the smaller the pool of romantic prospects. But perhaps thinking it makes it so! (I have next to zero experience in this domain, incidentally).

See if there's any openings around you for philosophy teachers, maybe in grade school or a community college. You might have to have education credentials, though. — darthbarracuda

Teaching would be great in theory. Guess I'd have to do it to see if I was any good at it. I sort of want to be a student forever, and teaching would facilitate that to some extent.

Have you taught?

Cheers Bitter Crank, you've given me meaningful questions with which to refine my general despair. — Welkin Rogue

You're entirely welcome. Anytime you need a heavy foot on your head when you are about to go under, just give me a call.

I don't know where you live or what the employment situation is like, but generally speaking, take some comfort in your having plenty of company in your situation. Your difficulties are largely not of your own making. And bear in mind, a lot of women also got degrees that haven't automatically paid off well, either.

Are there any 'alternate careers' you can investigate? In the US there is "Americorps" which used to be called VISTA, decades ago. I was in Volunteers In Service To America for 2 years, back in 1968-1970 -- it was terrific experience though it offered a meager stipend to live on. It helped me get good jobs, because it was excellent experience.

Stress on the job... My last job (which drove me into retirement) was in a professional capacity, but it was with the sickest, craziest non-profit social service program I have ever seen. It was awful. So was a low-level administrative job at the University, which just about drove me mad--literally. It was all complicated detail, which I had not yet admitted to myself that I just can't manage, anymore (or ever, maybe).

Cleaning? There are two retired people at the church across the street who volunteer time to do cleaning. There's me with a masters degree in education and a woman who has a masters degree in theology and management experience. Both of us like doing this work because it is nicely concrete work, no ambiguity, and very little detail. Plus, it's greatly appreciated.

Some college educated people have started house-cleaning businesses--they do the work. I tried it when I was much younger and discovered I found it too humiliating.

Good luck. Remember to call me in your darkest hour.

It pains me to hear the stories of you 25 and 64 year Philosophy graduates.

I hope, we are talking only about the lack of satisfaction of being successful, and not of not making enough for sustenance.

I cannot directly relate to your situation, since I have had relatively successful career. But I have had my share of pains; actually deep long duration pains. Therefore, my thoughts might help.

When we are growing up, we look around and at the world and identify which glories we would like to acquire. Later, I realized that finding the road that I should take, instead of the road I want to take is the only satisfying way. In this scheme of creation we all have our appropriate places. We have volitional control on our mind, but not on the world. Call the area out of control as our fate, if you like.

Once we identify the right road we drift towards it easily. The idea is to stop struggling against the universal scheme, and let our efforts cooperate with it. I wanted to study to become a writer, but fate took me to another road. After a while I learned to obey the universal wish, and started applying myself fully. Are you familiar with the myth of the Greek king Sisyphus, who was condemned to hell? There his task was to roll a boulder uphill. When the boulder reached the top, it rolled down on the other side. Then he had to roll it up the other side, and so on and on. Well! after a while he fell in love with the rock. The same thing happened to me. I started enjoying my work.

How to find the right road? My disappointment took me deep into my mind. After a while, the sad search turned into soul-searching (introspection). I found that solitude expedited the progress.

Later this process helped me out of deep pains. Even now, my life is far from being good, but my levels of forgiveness and tolerance are higher that before.

Good times come and go. But what we do with our minds stays with us. The question is do we digest the poison life gives us during the bad periods or just store them in our mind. If we learn to take life in the right way, our bad times feel milder, and during good periods we capitalize on opportunities easily. We ought not let life defeat us. Life itself can be bad enough at times, why help it by making the bad periods worse, and the good periods less good? Some people call this faith; may be it is that.

Academic philosophy never appealed to me. But may be we can apply whatever discerning abilities we have in understating the life; how add to our happiness, learn to tolerate pains and not mind the defeats.

How are you two now?. May be by this time you two have good news for us.

Best wishes.

It pains me to hear the stories of you 25 and 64 year Philosophy graduates. I cannot directly relate to your situation, since I have had relatively successful career. — Ashwin Poonawala

As well it should pain you.

But what about us JUST TRAGIC 70 year old English Lit graduates? It apparently didn't pain you much to hear about our suffering (and great it was, you may rest assured).

I hope, we are talking only about the lack of satisfaction of being successful, and not of not making enough for sustenance. — Ashwin Poonawala

There are, you should know thousands of graduates of Philosophy, English Lit, and Cross-Cultural Studies in Gender and Race who populate the homeless shelters across America and who queue up daily for stale cheese sandwiches, long-past sale date apple sauce packets, and hard, indeterminate cookies. News Flash: Soup kitchens haven't make soup in decades. It's stale cold food you get.

All those none-too-articulate, kind of unkempt panhandlers on city streets and freeway exits? They're all liberal arts graduates in the more arcane fields, with masters theses on Vegan Praxis in Suburban Poughkeepsie, New York, or POMO texts on sites of resistance at high-fashion discount stores like Off Saks 5th... The irrelevance of their scholarly work is proportionate to their humiliation while panhandling--experience which would be, btw, excellent material for some real scholarship. Too bad they're too immiserated to do it.

Your post leaves me verklempt.

How are you two now?. May be by this time you two have good news for us. — Ashwin Poonawala

Oh, they have! They've moved up from the open dormitory shelter on the first floor to the 4-per-bay facilities on the second floor.

tongue in cheek alert

no prizes at all are awarded to shelf stackers — unenlightened

Don't you believe it! — Barry Etheridge

Barry, dear, you quoted an irrelevant article on awards for grocery bagging--an altogether different existential experience than shelf-stacking. Bagging is a non-essential perk offered by better grocery stores. Shelf-stacking is the soul of the grocery business

There are, you should know thousands of graduates of Philosophy, English Lit, and Cross-Cultural Studies in Gender and Race who populate the homeless shelters across America and who queue up daily for stale cheese sandwiches, long-past sale date apple sauce packets, and hard, indeterminate cookies. News Flash: Soup kitchens haven't make soup in decades. It's stale cold food you get. — Bitter Crank

There is a girl I once worked with - who is 25 now - who attempted suicide about six months ago. I had not seen her for a long while except for once or twice just after I had a car accident a couple of years back as I was going through my own thing, so when I heard about her I was determined to help her through it. It turns out that there were a plethora of reasons for her desire to end her life, but it was one reason alone that caused her to attempt it.

She could not, for the life of her, think for herself.

She did not know who she was at all. She just had no clue as to how to actually make a decision for herself, no ability to articulate herself and she did everything, all the 'choices' in her life were based on others. When she was around me, for instance, she copied me, she tried to absorb the things that I did and mimicked it as her own; she even messaged my friends on FB and tried to connect with them. Her suicide attempt came when she got married and her partner left her; when such people end up alone, they have no idea what to do and it is also the reason why people keep bad people in their lives as they would rather be miserable then alone.

She worked in sales and other dead-end jobs for money, but after talking with her and getting to the root cause of her problem, I realised all she needed was a helping hand toward her learning how to think for herself. She was originally religious, for instance, but not because she actually wanted to be, so I helped her build the confidence to be herself. We talked about the things she liked to do and together I convinced her to apply for a graduate course in education to become a teacher, which she has started to do. I took her to the gym and talked to her about the benefits of healthy eating and she developed an eating plan and joined the gym. Step by step, you teach the bird how to fly.

But it is amazing how many people that age are clueless. And 25 is no child. That is a full adult, there should be no excuses by then, but it amazes me how many people in their late twenties have no idea how to think.

Sheltered lives leads to their inevitable destruction.

It seems like my response to the Philosophy graduates offended some people. I am sorry for making some persons feel bad. I had no intention of it.

I am a new member, and not good at navigating through the website yet. I did not notice the 70 year old's previous write up.

I have a mind with limited means. I cannot relate to all the situations portrayed on the forum. I only select the ones I understand and respond. If I this is causing any resentment, I am willing to take a back seat.

An interesting case. It was good of you (really) to help this chick fly.

But it is amazing how many people that age are clueless. And 25 is no child. That is a full adult, there should be no excuses by then, but it amazes me how many people in their late twenties have no idea how to think. — TimeLine

Is it because, when these people are children or adolescents, that they do not have enough real experiences in unprogrammed life?

"Middle class children" are wrapped in a sort of cocoon by school, extra-curricular classes (like dance, Suzuki violin classes, sports) driven by parental aspirations, 'immersive' games, and so on. They do not spend a lot of time alone. Many/most don't have gainful employment in adolescence. Toward the end of adolescents they go to college, live in dormitories, and attend classes. Then they are turned loose, finally.

None of it is bad, but it doesn't leave "extended time alone" and real-life open-ended situations where you have to learn how to cooperate but remain 'who you are'.

It seems like my response to the Philosophy graduates offended some people. I am sorry for making some persons feel bad. I had no intention of it.

I am a new member, and not good at navigating through the website yet. I did not notice the 70 year old's previous write up.

I have a mind with limited means. I cannot relate to all the situations portrayed on the forum. I only select the ones I understand and respond. If I this is causing any resentment, I am willing to take a back seat. — Ashwin Poonawala

Ashwin Poonawala, welcome to The Philosophy Forum.

You haven't offended anyone. You haven't made anyone feel bad. The fault is mine. I apologize to you for using your perfectly fine post as the basis for a joke. There is nothing wrong with joking here, but I definitely did not intend to make you, or your post, the object of the joke.

We all have minds with limited means. Stay up front where you are; don't take a back seat.

Again, welcome, and understand I encourage your participation here.

I heard that at Disney, they don't hire workers, but they hire actors. So, if you were assigned the job of sweeping the street, you would wear the clothes you'd imagine a street sweeper might wear in a Disney movie, perhaps suspenders and an old style hat, you'd whistle, say hello to the kids who walked by, and you'd show an optimism impossible of any actual street sweeper.

I'd imagine those folks look at their job differently and go home feeling differently than those with just routine jobs. They aren't street sweepers after all; they're just playing them convincingly.

Next time you must stock shelves, ring up some customers, or do whatever it is you do, don't buy into the notion that that is you. You are you, with all your amazing nuances, but by day, you're an actor, playing a role. If you find yourself not doing your job very well, maybe work on your acting skills and do what any fine doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief would be expected to do.

I misunderstood the intention, I thought your feelings were hurt.

You are being mighty nice. World with people with honesty of heart makes it beautiful.

Your kindness has helped me forgive myself readily for my mistake of misunderstanding. This is not my first mistake.

his is not my first mistake. — Ashwin Poonawala

And it won't be your last, so press on with diligence.