Professional Empowerment

Looking to a job for the most foundational or overarching kind of empowerment is invalid from the start because it treats a social construct as more than just that: a means contrived by a community to achieve the end of generating an income, passing time, or (this one is inherently superficial and irrationalistic) clinging to social status in a broader sense.  Money, professional productivity, and this sort of status are meaningless on their own as it is, yet in this world of non-rationalists, so many people talk and act as if they derive a sense of foundational, penetrating empowerment from their jobs.  They want to at least come across as if they love their work and experience existential joy because of it.  Plenty of employers could want this solely because it is easier to overwork and underpay someone who truly delights in their career.

Now, some people might put on a mere facade of relying on their careers for existential stability or feeling genuinely empowered by their work in order to simply not be excluded from job opportunities, of course.  Despite how jobs are social constructs, many of them utterly meaningless in nature other than the way they provide a living for a person, someone is probably not going to admit if they really just want or need money and do not have any deep passion for their work when interviewing a new job, for instance.  Unfortunately, employers have power even if they are the kind that erroneously believes it is immoral for workers to recognize their jobs as (very likely) nothing more than a burdensome and intrusive way to stay alive without breaking away from formal civilization, or without resorting to sins such as theft to stay alive and comfortable.

Reason is true in itself; there is an uncaused cause.  Whatever is morally obligatory, if morality does exist, is what we should do and should care about because that is its very nature.  None of this is what many jobs are meant to be oriented around, the truths and issues of real significance in reality.  The workplace is not structured to generally reflect the intrinsically lower, utilitarian aims of professional labor and to emphasize reason, God, and morality over both profit, at least for those at the top, and emotionalistic empowerment, at least for anyone who loves working due to their natural personality or cultural conditioning.  Is a given job made to glorify rationalism, God, and morality?  Is it a job that possesses a truly critical pragmatic role for society and its individuals, like that of keeping electrical power active or repairing vehicles?

For many jobs, these qualities are absolutely not present, even if there are degrees of default professional proximity to things of great philosophical substance.  Artists who produce quality art, even if they are not rationalists (likely almost all of them), are at least doing something that brushes up against more of reality's depths thanks to the their work's philosophical themes, personal expression, and creativity than the efforts of a CEO who helms a company with greed and social status as his or her motivations.  Doctors who provide quality care, even if they are not rationalists (again, likely almost all of them), at least help people.  Many jobs are not this important or deep on their own, regardless of how many who have the jobs are not deep whatsoever, and there is nothing wrong with working them, as long as they are not immoral in themselves, simply to make a living.

There is also nothing problematic about enjoying professional work or seeking deep fulfillment in it, given that someone does not stoop to fallacious beliefs in order to facilitate positive emotion.  Still, unless it is aimed at honoring some objective truth that is more foundational than subjective empowerment or social constructs, a job is one way or another, past how it is emotionally perceived, just a means of providing you an income or passing your time because you happen to prefer investing yourself into labor over something else.  Pursuing professional empowerment beyond these parameters is otherwise something delusional people with an irrational worldview scramble after as if their preferences and satisfaction make something true or good, and some employers might absolutely try to take advantage of this to enrich themselves by standing on the backs of a passionate but exploited employee.