Success in the Fluid World

“She achieved great success in life,” a student writes about a character I’d call anything but successful, “because she moved a lot and lived in several different countries.”

While we fret about the erosion of the nation-state by the flows of the increasingly liquid world, the young people are embracing the new reality. We, the members of the older generations, see the nomadic lifestyles which require one to be endlessly on the move, chasing temporary employment as torture but the young shrug off our concerns and discard the concept of a career altogether. Success is uncoupled from professional fulfillment and the satisfaction of building a career is substituted with a search for new experiences. Precariousness of employment becomes an advantage.

And I just erased the conclusion to this post because I don’t want to be an ancient spoil sport.

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31 responses to “Success in the Fluid World”

cliff arroyo

April 7, 2015

Young people in the US have pretty much always felt like they were ten feet tall and bulletproof (to quote a country music song, a habit I indulge whenever I can).

But how do people form families in this reality? Marriage (let alone children) and perpetual rootlessness don’t seem to mix well. Or is repopulation outsourced to the developing world?

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Clarissa

April 7, 2015

Exactly, on every count. 🙂 Multiple, disposable relationships substitute for a profound and complex life-long bond to accommodate the changing market.

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1. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
  
  April 7, 2015
  
  From what I see, long-distance relationships also happen a lot more. I also wonder if the increased popularity of polyamory (in fluid networks rather than tight more-than-two family units) might not be influenced by this.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    April 7, 2015
    
    ” I also wonder if the increased popularity of polyamory (in fluid networks”
    
    Really good point. I’ve never gotten the point of polyamory (one person is hard enough, a whole network just seems to be asking fo rtrouble). But for people who don’t assume they’ll ever settle down it might sort of work ….. or not, most of the profiles I’ve seen look more like a central user and several hangers on rather than a genuine non-linear coupling.
    
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April 7, 2015

// And I just erased the conclusion to this post because I don’t want to be an ancient spoil sport.

A pity. Your conclusions are why some read the blog for. 🙂

// Success is uncoupled from professional fulfillment and the satisfaction of building a career

If it’s uncoupled both from this and from raising a family, what substantial is left? I doubt this character reached heights in art / science / even understanding the world deeply.

I think “new experiences” sounds shallow, if it simply means “moving among countries.” Ironically, in the new fluid world, which your describtions create in my mind, if everything, everybody and everywhere is fluid, then nothing can be new, truly unique.

If “lived in several different countries” equals success, I am already successful. 🙂

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Clarissa

April 7, 2015

And welcome to the club of grumpy old farts, my friend. I also believe that accumulating “experiences” is a very infantile goal. But here you have it.

It used to be that wandering around the world in search of the experiences was the lifestyle of the few very rich. And now the few rich folks will be the ones who somehow wrestle out of life a permanent career. Which obviously doesn’t mean staying to live in a single place. This part will be reserved for the piss poor underclass.

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1. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
  
  April 7, 2015
  
  Would you mind elaborating on why you consider accumulating experiences a very infantile goal?
  
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  1. el
    
    April 7, 2015
    
    \ Would you mind elaborating on why you consider accumulating experiences a very infantile goal?
    
    I have also been thinking about it, so want to join the discussion.
    
    Imo, first, we need to clarify what is meant by “experiences.” If I go to Spain and Clarissa goes there and we visit exactly the same places, her experience will be completely different and 1000% richer than mine because she invested into learning Spain’s culture, literature, architecture, etc., while I know nothing about the country.
    
    It seems to me that one needs to invest significant time and effort to raise / educate oneself to the level enabling one to have a deap experience of something. There are some exceptions, like feeling the beauty of nature. But most things – countries, cultures, art, architecture, classical music, etc. – require one to make this effort.
    
    I think most people, who talk about “accumulating experiences”, don’t intend to invest this effort and don’t want to. A bit like Israelis, who after IDF service travel to India or some other poor Eastern countries for a while.
    
    Thought about Emerson’s words:
    
    “Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference
    of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be
    intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my
    friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside
    me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I
    seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and
    suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”
    
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    1. el
      
      April 7, 2015
      
      Sorry. DEEP, not deap.
      
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    2. Clarissa
      
      April 7, 2015
      
      “It seems to me that one needs to invest significant time and effort to raise / educate oneself to the level enabling one to have a deap experience of something. There are some exceptions, like feeling the beauty of nature. But most things – countries, cultures, art, architecture, classical music, etc. – require one to make this effort.”
      
      The biggest and the most productive effort in this direction would entail doing the unthinkable, i.e. ditching the camera. People are so busy snapping photos on their trips that it’s like the protagonist of the entire journey is not the traveler but his Instagram account. People literally deprive themselves of enjoyment to enrich the owners of Instagram and Facebook. The bizarredom of that approach never stops freaking me out.
      
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    3. DWeird
      
      April 7, 2015
      
      “It seems to me that one needs to invest significant time and effort to raise / educate oneself to the level enabling one to have a deep experience of something. There are some exceptions, like feeling the beauty of nature.”
      
      It seems like today is a day of minor disagreements for me. Regarding the exceptional beauty of nature – that too works better with education. I have a geologist friend who can see beauty in a muddy field, wrist-deep in gravel.
      
      I am not fully sure what that means in regards to your more general point, aside from the suspicion that lack of depth in a particular field does not necessarily lead to an overall lack of depth. Otherwise, we’d all care far deeper about not being geologists than we currently do.
      
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  2. Clarissa
    
    April 7, 2015
    
    “Would you mind elaborating on why you consider accumulating experiences a very infantile goal?”
    
    I studied the Bildungsroman genre (the novel of human development) for many years, and these novels portray this process very well. As we mature, we first accumulate experiences, as many as possible (this process was thwarted for women for a very long time, so their development was stunted from the get-go).
    
    And then there are two scenarios:
    
    We accumulate experiences, then stop and do something of our own with them. This is a successful Bildung (development).
    
    We accumulate experiences, and then accumulate more experiences. And then accumulate some more, etc. This is a failed development because it’s stuck in the stage of “boy learns about world” without progressing to the stage of “a grown man makes something of the world.”
    
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2. el
  
  April 7, 2015
  
  \ Multiple, disposable relationships substitute for a profound and complex life-long bond to accommodate the changing market.
  AND
  // polyamory (in fluid networks rather than tight more-than-two family units)
  
  Human sexuality and the way we build families are quite flexible, but not so much. Most people won’t be truly satisfied with “multiple, disposable relationships” long-term.
  
  Clarissa, from your words, I got the impression that relationships like yours with N are becoming the thing of the past in the new world. Instead, many (most?) of the new generation are into quasi-relationships that aren’t worth much. I simply can’t believe it. Some people may be happy with polyamory, but many others – not. Have I misunderstood you?
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    April 7, 2015
    
    There are two basic models at play.
    
    Consumerist model where one’s partner is expected to be a source of pleasure, enjoyment, and new, wonderful experiences. When the partner stops delivering enjoyment and experiences, there is always a chance to exchange him for a better, more promising model.
    
    Pre-consumerist model. You stick with your partner irrespective of whether he provides pleasurable experiences. Of course, there is got to be some motivation to choose this model in the world where there are no longer any legal, religious or any other constraints and the consumerist model is dictated by the logic of everything that exists around you.
    
    And just a small quote from Zygmunt Bauman: “Human attention tends nowadays to be focused on the satisfactions that relationships are hoped to bring precisely because somehow they have not been found fully satisfactory; and if they do satisfy, the price of the satisfaction they bring has often been found to be excessive and unacceptable.”
    
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bwcarey

April 7, 2015

you can’t put a wise head on young shoulders, then again, your ears are sharper when you are younger, amen

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Clarissa

April 7, 2015

Yes, true. The young are simply adapting to the reality. And in doing so, they mold reality.

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1. bwcarey
  
  April 7, 2015
  
  we need inspiration daily, even as we get older and wiser,
  
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Pen

April 7, 2015

Hm. Most of the people I know are the exact opposite. With the possible exception of one friend, everybody I know is perpetually seeking permanent employment in the field of their choosing. Everybody wants to travel, but for leisure rather than because we’re forced to move for one reason or another. I’d like to live somewhere new, but I definitely wouldn’t call myself a success just because I did so.

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Clarissa

April 7, 2015

The saddest part are the employers past the age of thirty who are sincerely trying to do something good for the employees by offering them careers. “Nah,” I just think it might be better for me to leave the job, think about what I want to do, maybe pick up a part-time gig or two, travel to Australia to check out the beaches”, the young employee says, leaving the “old” employer stunned.

“But career! Promotion! Educational opportunities! Paid for by the company! Your own business later on!” the employer begs.

“Nah,” the employee says. “I kinda don’t feel like it right now.”

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1. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
  
  April 7, 2015
  
  This is a generation that has watched their parents utterly lose it, on a personal level, when the economic crisis lost’em a lot of jobs. Of course we reacted by entirely decoupling our sense of personal success and meaning in life from our professional success.
  
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2. Pen
  
  April 7, 2015
  
  In a similar vein, I once knew a person who was offered an job at the end of an internship that she could take once she graduated college. She declined because “it wasn’t what she wanted to do in the long run.” The point was only that she’d have a job offer right after graduating in a super competitive field! There was no commitment! And she turned it down because she “kinda didn’t feel like it.”
  
  I’d love to travel to Australia. But if someone offered me a career in the field I chose, I’d practically die from happiness. And maybe negotiate about my vacation to Australia.
  
  I wonder if this urge to travel is caused in part because there really aren’t a lot of people who do travel very far from their hometowns. Only two people I know have ever been to Europe. There are a lot of people where I live who haven’t even been out of state, let alone left the country. When you’re young, standing still is so boring that you need to go somewhere that’s not where you grew up–often that’s an out-of-state school, but sometimes it’s something as drastic as dropping out of college to join the circus (true story) or taking on a bunch of temp jobs and moving around Europe, or Australia, or elsewhere. A lot of the time other countries are romanticized, and everybody’s jealous of that one person who grew up somewhere else, or even just visited. I wonder if a lot of people feel they need to do something drastic in order to turn their (perpetually boring) life around.
  
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cliff arroyo

April 7, 2015

While I’m here, I’ve never understood people’s compulsion to judge other people’s “success”. For me success is an almost entirely purely subjective matter.

If you think you’re a success (in terms of being happy with your life choices and the results thereof) then you are. If you aren’t happy about that then you’re not (with the usual caveats about infringing on the lives of others of course)

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Clarissa

April 7, 2015

I know, I should stop entertaining the idiotic old-fashioned fantasy that we can all get together and resist the erosion of the nation-state, or at least cushion its fall a little bit. This is my own rigidity at play. I’ve got to be getting more fluid.

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1. cliff arroyo
  
  April 7, 2015
  
  I think that resisting the erosion and/or mitigating the effects are worthwhile goals. I was just resisting the idea of other people deciding how successful a person (real or imaginary) was based on anything but the values and perspective of that person…
  
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  1. DWeird
    
    April 7, 2015
    
    But the nation-state is about having collective measures of success or even morality, and then deploying and sustaining institutions to help achieve these. So you are effectively resisting the idea that this mode of operation is possible/necessary/good. Which is all well and good, but given the context, there’s no ‘just’ about it. Right?
    
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    1. cliff arroyo
      
      April 8, 2015
      
      It’s like gender socialization. There’s no escaping it, but it’s best to have a little … detachment about culturally imposed schemas.
      
      And the more advanced nation states tended to leave room for those who march to their own drummer. It was traditional strong-patriarchal societies that left (and still leave) no room for individualized life goals.
      
      And in the analysis of literature (presumably what started this conversation) it doesn’t make much sense to talk about a character being successful except for the internal motivations of the character.
      
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    2. Clarissa
      
      April 8, 2015
      
      “But the nation-state is about having collective measures of success or even morality, and then deploying and sustaining institutions to help achieve these.”
      
      Yes, absolutely. The nation-state does aim to impose a shared morality. This is a state form that doesn’t exist without a strong sense of communion among the people who have the citizenship. And that sense of belonging is fostered through, among many things, imposing a shared value system. Of course, as Cliff says, there is always room for maneuver within that value system but it is undeniable that a nation-state is profoundly invested into imposing such a system.
      
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April 7, 2015

Things aren’t what they used to be for nomadic workers. For those of you who dream of working in the south of France (one of my favorite spots to visit).

“As co-Ambassador of the Montpellier branch of InterNations, I often get messages from people wanting information about finding a job in Montpellier. They may have a French boyfriend, or have just finished their studies, or are seeking a new life in the sun.

I’m reticent about giving out this sort of information as

1) I’m not sure people want to hear the truth
2) The truth goes against the rose-tinted glasses outlook
3) I don’t want to lull anyone into a false sense of security.

The truth is, and this the case for the whole of France, unemployment has reached epic proportions. Over 6 million people are unemployed in all categories. Six million! It’s a national scandal, but one we don’t hear about on the news because the media only ever talk about the unemployed of category A (those with no paid activity) who number ‘just’ 3.5 million.”

http://www.sarahhague.com/2015/01/finding-job-in-montpellier.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FabhTR+%28St+Bloggie+de+Riviere%29

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Stille (@aperfectbalance)

April 7, 2015

And once again, education makes a difference. Unemployment rates are high but, as in most of Western Europe, they’re importing nurses.

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April 7, 2015

// The saddest part are the employers past the age of thirty who are sincerely trying to do something good for the employees by offering them careers.

I guess those employers wish to (employ) / (help this way) young employees, not people of 30+, who would be glad to get such a chance. If I am right, I predict a rude awakening to those currently young employees, once they approach their 30ies. Picking up part-time gigs and checking out the beaches can be fun … till a certain age / point.

I think you are right about many issues here, but may be attaching too much importance to some private cases (this student and employees) because they suit your theory. I guess most students haven’t expressed a similar opinion and most people do dream of finding (and sometimes find) a stable career. Among people I’ve seen, the latter seem to be the rule, not “a gig in Australia” ones.

May be, Israel is a bit later than USA in that. We have high birth rate even among secular Jews, press writes a lot about young families being unable to buy a flat because prices have risen several years ago, etc.

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Clarissa

April 7, 2015

First of all, this is not my theory. I’m very honored that people think I’m capable of theorizing at this level. Maybe one day I will but that’s not going to happen for at least 15 more years if ever.

The fluid society and the decline of the nation-state are now a consensus among philosophers on both sides of the political spectrum. Terminology differs but the ideas are the same because they speak to our shared reality.

People are shedding the concept of a career not because they are evil or anything but because there is no demand for it in the changing world. They are reacting to the changes but their swift reaction makes the changes more inexorable. This is a system that is like a snake biting its own tail. Reality molds us and we mold it and then it molds us, etc.

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