Between Work and Family: A Faustian Bargain?

I recently heard from a friend that someone I know is going through a rough family crisis. He is one of the most curious, driven, insightful, and intense architect and thinker that I know in person, and I have always wondered at what personal cost he does these with.

Coincidentally, I am reading Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom” (1994) , and reaching the part where he went through a very rough time in his life, and was about to divorce his first wife. This is what he wrote:

“I wondered – not for the first time – whether one was ever justified in neglecting the welfare of one’s own family in order to fight for the welfare of others. Can there be anything more important than looking after one’s ageing mother? Is politics merely a pretext for shirking one’s responsibilities, an excuse for not being able to provide in the way one wanted?” (Mandela, 1994: 212).

In “Creating Minds” (1993), Howard Gardner studied seven highly creative people: Gandhi, Einstein, Freud, Stravinsky, (Martha) Graham, (T.S.) Eliot, and Picasso and revealed that in their personal lives and relationships, these otherwise geniuses were treating their families and friends from “disregard to simply sadistic”. Einstein just wanted to be left alone to do his work, whereas Picasso was driving several people into psychological trauma and suicides. (!) According to Gardner, these highly talented, top of the crops human seemed to think that they might not be able to achieve what they had in their lives without the luxury of time and unnecessary ‘distractions’ of normal family and social lives.

But I’m wondering whether certain disciplines are also more prone to what Gardner terms as Faustian bargain than other disciplines of knowledge. For example, people in the business- and economic-related fields seem to have more normal family and social lives in comparison with the disciplines of knowledge covered above (politics, science, arts, language). Or maybe I just haven't heard of it.

Do you think there is such a thing as a Faustian bargain between work and family (or social) lives? If so, do you think this spreads across the disciplinary board? Or, are certain disciplines more prone to it than others? And, to bring up and rephrase Mandela’s question: Is it ever justifiable? Or is work merely a pretext?

The Fittest of Human

When you hear about Darwin’s survival of the fittest, and look at your own circle of friends and acquaintances, who do you think would survive in the long run?

I used to think that Darwin’s survival of the fittest means the survival of the strongest, healthiest, and smartest. Among my own circle of friends and acquaintances, I think of those sensible people who are smart and open minded, culturally diverse, environmentally conscious, physically healthy, and financially stable – those who I think would naturally be at the top of our human pyramid.

But more recently, as much as I think those at the top of our human pyramid should survive, the reality of it is that most people in this category are also the least likely to have or want to have many children of their own.

So it suddenly dawn on me that the fittest of human may actually mean those who are fittest in their adaptations to our human social cultural environment; in other words, those who are most in line with the majority of human chain: the middle part of our human pyramid.

Care to share your own thoughts about this?

Indonesian Unemployed Youth: Culture or Laziness?

In discussing the state of Indonesian education with a colleague recently, I was reminded by this statistics in Naomi Klein’s “No Logo”: “Youth (age 15-24) unemployment as a percentage of total unemployment in Indonesia was 72.5% in 1996”. I was shocked by such a high figure, the highest in the list as a matter of fact. As a comparison, in 1997 the percentage was 45.4% in the Philippines, 35.9% in The United States, 29.9% in The United Kingdom, and (the lowest was) 12.2% in Germany (Yearbook of Labour Statistics, from 1980 to 1997, International Labour Office, in Klein, N. 2000: 532).

My hope is that the social safety net in Indonesia is really good, so much so that it allows most teenagers to be dependent upon adults financially. Or is it our culture? Only recently it has become socially OK for Indonesian high school and university students to be employed while going to school. Or maybe the statistics couldn’t get into account the thousands (millions?) of Indonesian youths who work in the informal sectors. Or, to take on the opposite stand: Are Indonesian youths lazier than those in the rest of the world? Or they simply lack the opportunities, education, skills, and systems that could help boost their employability? What’s your take on this?

If you’re wondering if the statistic is still the case in Indonesia, this is what I found: 70% of total unemployment in Indonesia is (still) represented by the youth generation, according to SMERU’s report on “Reducing Unemployment in Indonesia (2007) as quoted in this Media Indonesia article (in Bahasa).