#at least almost all my duties in higher education policy are fulfilled

[johanna-swann]

Maybe if I just stop sleeping and start consuming cafffeine and ibuprofen en masse I will survive this semester.

[onwardlyfaring-blog]

what is something vexing that you’re currently wrestling with?

what am i going to do with my life?

it’s a question i usually find pretty easy to avoid.

i choose classes to take, not based on how they will be helpful to me in the future, but on the basis of weird sporadic urges to learn things, that feeling of i-can’t-go-any-further-as-a-human-being-in-this-world-without-understanding-this-thing, whatever that thing might happen to be: real analysis. kantian ethics. the nitty-gritty philosophical foundations of probability. quantum mechanics. and up though now, everything else has filled in around those strange, urgent desires pretty nicely. i’ll graduate with a math major and a philosophy major almost less because i decided, i want an education in math and philosophy, and more because by chance i will have picked up all the classes needed to graduate. it’s all coming from where my heart is at right-this-very-second, and not at all from thinking about where i want to be three or seven or ten years down the line. so avoiding thinking about the future has been easy.

but while for the last two years i’ve been able to tell myself, i’m still young, i’ve barely started college, i have time—this summer hit, and suddenly those sweet-sounding words felt less satisfying. i might have time, but time passes.

the inside of my head sounds different, now. oh goodness, i’m halfway through my undergraduate education. oh goodness, i’ve taken half the classes i’ll take while i’m at mit. oh goodness, there are classes being offered next semester that won’t be offered again while i’m here, and i may or may not be taking them, i may or may not even know what they are. suddenly, it feels like the stakes are higher. because, sooner-and-sooner, i’m going to have to figure out what i’m /doing/.

granted, of course, i don’t mean “doing” in any grand sense. what i choose now does not determine what i’ll be doing for the rest of my life, or even the next year or six. i try to remind myself of this. people shift jobs and move and change a lot, and these days even the notion of a ‘career’ is dissolving. but still— i’m at least going to have to find something to do with myself to earn a living pretty soon. and while this is exciting, recently it has also been really, really confusing.

there’s thinking about your future work in the sense of figuring out what kind of work you want to be doing—what are you interested in, what kind of skills do you want to be using, what kind of space in your life are you willing to give it, what counts as fulfilling, what puts money in the bank? and this is not straightforward for me. there seem to be innumerable options, and sometimes none seem right, and sometimes all of them do, and i often just feel paralyzed by the sheer number of possible futures.

grad school?…in math? philosophy? logic? something else all together—linguistics? education? heck, architecture theory? theology?…or not grad school at all?—work, at a nonprofit? at a company? in finance or consulting? in please-anything-but-finance-or-consulting?…journalism? teaching? something in the government?…education policy? management? advocacy?… or maybe thinking about job titles isn’t even quite what i’m looking for?—the goal, after all, is not to cognize myself as being something but rather as doing something, and maybe that ‘something’ is a little complicated. maybe my work will be better described as a series of projects or undertakings than as a career, per se. or maybe these urges to learn things will continue and leaning into them will take me in some interesting directions, and i’ll figure it out. point being, i’m not at all clear on what i want to do.

but i’m also coming to find that i’m not sure why or when i can take “i want to” as reason for doing anything, and that includes my future work. this was something that i first came face to face with about in my kantian ethical theory class last fall— having a desire to do something isn’t sufficient reason to will it. on inspection, this is maybe obvious within any moral framework which calls some things impermissible: if you desire to do something impermissible, you still have an obligation not to do it. just wanting in general can’t be enough. and so i have this question: is there a moral system which is binding on me, and if so, what is permissible and impermissible within it? the problem is, i’m encountering so many ethical systems which have different demands and fundamentally different standards, and i’m not sure how to resolve the tensions or where to focus. i have the suspicion (or at least, recognize the possibility) that i have more moral obligations than i have intuition for, and these obligations might then actually influence the way i choose to live my life. but in what way?

for example, helping people in need is part of most ethical systems, but it shows up in different ways, and (glossing over the actual philosophical underpinnings) i’m left with questions. is the duty to help people just general? when are there specific instantiations of it? is there a quantitative aspect?— do i help the most people i can, or eradicate the most suffering i can? is there ever a point where i can stop? do i just do something intentionally in the world? and what do these conditions (“helping people”) really entail?—is this about saving human lives, or about reducing suffering, or helping make people healthy and their souls whole? and what people—those most in need? those easiest to save? those i know and see face to face? what’s the right relation to stand in with the big world, and with the little sliver of the world that i encounter, and are those different at all? what’s even idealism here, much less pragmatism, and which of those lenses am i supposed to look at my choices through?

i came across a paper by kieran setiya (a philosophy professor at mit!) this summer entitled “does moral theory corrupt youth?” (…is it philosophical clickbait?…are there any titles of philosophy papers which aren’t philosophical clickbait?… like i’m laughing, but also it caught me). in it, he writes about how we assume the epistemic standards for moral theory are identical to those of science, why this assumption is incorrect, and how we’re left without quite knowing what the epistemic standards for a moral theory could possibly be. and so, when we get exposed to all these different ways of thinking, presented on par with each other, each with their various pros and cons, in the process we lose sight of all of them. lose faith in morality in general, the way sometimes even devout students fall into deep doubt when taking comparative religion classes. because, it seems, how can you tell which one is right, and what does it mean if you can’t tell that? it’s a quick path to moral skepticism. i read the introduction to this paper and was like, yes! me! this is articulating something about where i’ve been at that i’d been finding hard to put to words. i’m trying desperately to not let these gaping feelings from epistemology numb me to morality in general, but it’s difficult.

(for what it’s worth, near the end of the paper, setiya offers thoughts on the epistemology of morality which might provide direction on judging ethical systems, but it’s not quite concrete enough to help me yet.)

it’s hard to think of the future when you’re in the young-confusing-haze where you don’t quite know what you believe, or where your priorities are, or even what you would want to do next summer, if given the chance to pick. there’s no point to hold firm to and everything just feels like it’s falling through space and breaking apart. and maybe it’s good and appropriate that the inside of my head is not a comfortable, quiet place to reside these days; maybe this is part of what college is for me. i’m thinking and my thoughts are changing and growing more nuanced, at least, if not more well-formed. but i can’t say i always appreciate the absolute overwhelming confusion and chaos.

of course, the future is coming whether i’m ready for it or not.

and there is something deeply exciting about that. i feel funny to know that i’ll know how my future life turns out, in the future. just not now. but—the lack of knowledge about what i’ll be like in the future no longer makes me feel insecure in my present feelings: even though my thoughts and opinions and choices might change in the future, doesn’t mean that i shouldn’t take myself seriously now.

and i’m starting, bit by bit, to feel like i can take myself seriously now. it’s a change; i didn’t used to feel this way. i felt like i was too young, too immature, changing so quickly that i couldn’t trust even the strongest feelings i had. but now—i might be unsettled, but i put enough trust in the conclusions i do come to to take action. i finally gave myself standing to set out long-term plans for myself. for example, while i haven’t decided yet whether i want to pursue a phd, i finally feel like i’m able to make such a decision legitimately, even if i change my mind later. similarly, i recognize that all these moral questions will likely settle differently for me in the future than they will now, but i finally feel like i should still act in accordance with genuine conviction i have now. and it’s freeing, and a little scary, but it feels proper, somehow.

i can feel myself growing.