A former frat roommate — broish Italian American, fluent in 4 languages, graduated summa cum laude in Economics and now does sales for a mid-range wine label — condescends to an Anthropology PhD candidate for “doing useless shit that contributes nothing in society” + participating…
I think there’s got to be a lot of grasping, desperate rationalizing that goes into the sales dude’s attempt to chide others for not being in his line of work. He knows deep down that while his work may have brought him a decent salary (compared to a doctoral candidate in the humanities, yikes) and some perks, it’s fundamentally a betrayal of everything a broad liberal arts education is supposed to lead to. So it’s natural to want to take a knock at someone else’s dreams when you’ve drastically reduced the scope of yours.
I expect it’ll be something we see a lot of in this generation. People hollowed-out by jobs with no intrinsic value looking down on people with modest, flourishing dreams.
