A personal conversation with a friend resulted in this reply…I think its relevant.
*History is not only writ large. The “bit players” of human history actually do change the universe. Literally. There are billions of folks throwing rocks of cause-and-effect into the universal pond and where the concentric cirles redound (not to mention how they interact with each other) is often hard to predict. Nevertheless, each person is absolutely unique and has a very specific relationship to the rest of the world. Once one is gone, that specific relationship cannot be replaced or replicated.
So what we do does matter. There is a point. And though in most cases our lives will not become part of recorded history to be passed into remembrance (and honor and glory), they will have accomplished something more vital: for better or worse, each life changes the composition of the world. It’s one of the reasons why Leibniz called this “the best of all possible worlds.”
Choose wisely and perhaps as important, choose with moderation. Think about where you fit into the scheme of things and accept the truth that even if our lives seem small, they are not. Talk about equality! You are just as important as George Washington–it just may not seem like it on the surface. We all have our trials and tribulations. And it all boils down to–"there’s one of you and there’s one of not-you, and we call the “not-you” the rest of the universe.
Tough concept I’ll try to illustrate with some thoughts about the workplace. I’m an elitist and I’m also a proletarian. Nothing wrong about getting some dirt under the fingernails. Nothing wrong with being ambitious, either. Lots of nitty-gritty ways to earn consumption tickets are more honorable than the kinds of lifestyles we see splashed throughout the media. Who’s more useful to society, you or I with our blue-collarish work, or some banker who makes his daily bread fucking over many people and society-at-large? Or some corporate insurance asswipe who denies some kid the cancer treatment he needs on the basis of an actuarial table?
We sell our labor, our sweat and our know-how, not our souls. Our souls require consideration far broader than that which is found in a workplace. Would that more people understood that because if they did, perhaps there would be a lot less evil around us, not only in the workplace but in the totality of life, too.
So, if you get down on yourself amidst the mindless banality and bullshit found in all workplaces, or if someone “more socially respectful” than you looks down on you as though you were a nothing, a peon, remind yourself like this: “It’s a good thing I don’t locate my sense of identity merely in the way I sell my labor. I’m more than that.”*