| HN Mirror

Investment banking is certainly metasyntactic here. You could just replace it with chemical engineering or B2B marketing or construction management or something else sufficiently dry and lucrative.

Ultimately the reason that we view some jobs as more fun than others derives to some extent from the natural human tendency to build a sense of identity by pretending our work is more interesting than everyone else's; the caricature of the soulless office worker is intentionally, not unintentionally, dehumanizing, because it's necessary to reinforce the narrator's pride in their own work. People in visible professions inevitably present their professions as being admirable while trying to present themselves as admirable. The age of mass media creates the illusion that whatever is being talked about is in fact more interesting than what isn't being talked about. Which actually makes the world a better place, Fallout or Tide? Which generates more fame for its creators? The only complete solution requires the nomenklatura to relinquish--or be deprived of--their privileged position in the collective unconscious. (Woe on the invisible.)

Not that that's particularly easy. The kids aren't stupid. Everyone knows that being, say, an artist, doesn't just pay off in terms of money, but in the way people interact with you. The people chasing these rewards aren't unpaid; in fact, they go to great lengths to ensure they do get paid, in precisely the way they seek to be. The lionization of indolents makes people seek indolence--and why shouldn't they?

Years ago, I had the occasion to drive across the country with a traveler in my passenger seat. We spent dozens of hours discussing philosophy, law, farm work, and how to determine which cigarettes in an ashtray are still safe to smoke. When we passed through Denver, hundreds of miles from either our origin or destination, he recognized some of his friends walking on the sidewalk of an overpass; we met up and enjoyed chips and soft drugs by a creek under the bridge. My erstwhile friend is still hopping trains and sleeping outside to this day. As they say, "be careful what you wish for--you might just get it".