Hi,
What do you think is the main difference between what Objectivism says about career, and the typical new-age notion of “doing whatever whatever your heart desires”?
Objectivism gives one a wider moral context within which to make decisions about one’s career. For Objectivists, the goal in deciding on a career should be to further one’s life and happiness, which is very similar to the New-Age notion that you’re describing. However, Objectivist moral principles also give limitations on what types of careers are objectively rational and life-furthering, and which are not. For example, if someone decided that what would make them happiest would be a career as a con-man, the general sentiment of “do what makes you happy” would have nothing negative to say about that choice. However, Objectivist principles (e.g. the trader principle in this case) demonstrate that such a career is not compatible with one’s pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. In general, happiness should be the guiding purpose of one’s actions for an Objectivist, but there are more specific principles governing how to go about attaining it than are provided by the hedonistic, New-Age ‘follow your heart’ sentiment.
Ayn Rand talks about a career about something more than only being an honest career.
The difference between a career-man and a job-holder is as follows: a career-man regards his work as constant progress, as a constant upward motion from one achievement to another, higher one, driven by the constant expansion of his mind, his knowledge, his ability, his creative ingenuity, never stopping to stagnate on any level. A job-holder regards his work as a punishment imposed on him by the incomprehensible malevolence of reality or of society, which, somehow, does not let him exist without effort; so his policy is to go through the least amount of motions demanded of him by somebody and to stay put in any job or drift off to another, wherever chance, circumstances or relatives might happen to push him.
What do you think is the difference between this and new-age emotionalism?
It’s passion vs. whim.