Sex and Cash
Dare is discussing the ?Sex and Cash? theory over on his blog. Basically, the idea is that you always have a tension or duality between ?paying the bills? and doing the ?sexy? work that really interests you. The thesis is that people who say, ?do what you love, and the money will follow?, are overly naive.
In essence, this theory is agreeing with Maslow’s ?hierarchy of needs?; first you take care of your security, then you can focus on ?self-realization?. I agree that ?paying the bills? is not always the same as ?self-realization?, but I tend to think that ?self-realization? is a rather vain fancy anyway.
If you ask a random sampling of people, ?what would you do if you had all of the money you could ever want??, none of them would say ?pursue self-realization?, and the ones that said anything remotely like that would be lying. If you stuck a wire into their hypothalmus that could stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain, and then told them ?you can feel this good every day for the rest of your life?, Maslow (and the money) would go out the window. The only reason that people don’t smoke opium all day is because they can see beyond the immediate present, and despite our best efforts to fool ourselves, the most universal and omnipresent consideration is the desire to live as long as possible.
And once you admit that your only real concern is long-term survival, it’s easy to see how arbitrary the rest of it is. People get ?passionate? about all sorts of bizzarre things; like jumping out of airplanes, climbing on the sides of rock cliffs, fly fishing, and so on. These passions that people have are choices; they are not pretedermined by fate or genetics. Collecting baseball cards is not an innate part of someone’s personality. Watching NASCAR is not a reflection of someone’s deeply realized ?self?. These are all vanities. If someone can be passionate about NASCAR, why on earth can they not be passionate about their day job? Being passionate about one is no more or less arbitrary than being passionate about the other.
To be clear, I am not recommending that someone seek ?self-realization? from their day job. I am simplypointing out that to seek self-realization from other activities is equally absurd and arbitrary.