I am not (Amy)Tan

I was listening to this Bloggingheads last night. I've liked Richard Rodriguez ever since I saw him on Bill Moyers. He is fantastically articulate, very reflective, and a little morose. The important insight about him is that he is a conservative (one who wishes the future to look like our ideal vision of the past). This may mean he doesn't catch on to new trends right away (likely he's one of the last). But his skill is in studying humans' pasts. He's very good at looking at us as we are and as we were and identifying a few keys to help us comprehend each other and ourselves.

He and his interlocutor get onto the subject of happiness. In surveying peoples' happiness, he confines himself to cultures present in America. This leads him to think a lot about 'white' people and 'brown' people.

'White' people tend to place a strong emphasis on their job in determining their identity. 'Brown' people tend to place a stronger emphasis on family (anecdotes!) when choosing their identity. I don't really like the overall thrust of his argument. I think it undervalues the transformation he and lots of immigrants go through in America. But there was one point that I found very appealing. He talks about the people whose identity is strongly tied to family and weakly tied to occupation. He says that these people, relieved of the burden of forming their identity at work can throw themselves into their jobs with enthusiasm absent the self-consciousness the conventional American would have.

This got me to thinking about how hard it is to fit such a spirit towards ones occupation in the mainstream workforce. I can imagine telling my boss that this job doesn't really mean much to me, that there is another slightly separated world to which I bring the fruits of my labor. It is important that I bring those fruits, so I will work very hard while I am here, but I won't be here much more than I need to. This is a highly threatening way to think. As soon as you claim to value your job below one or more things (other than emergencies), your value as an American employee drops drastically. I think that this has made America an intensely wealthy and wealth-conscious nation.

I was raised Catholic, so my preference is for my identity being derived more from the people I spend time with than my occupation. This is not a good place for me to be in.

I don't know what this means for me. I think I need more time to reflect on it.