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JobsAsComplicity 10 - 05 Feb 2010 - Main.JeffKao
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| | One reason Eben gave for not working at a firm was that firms do morally undesirable work, and that in working for a firm, one's work would actively be contributing to that overall morally undesirable work product. For example, if one was a big-firm lawyer over the past five years or so, one most likely actively contributed to the financial crisis by providing the legal work for allowing grossly unchecked mortgage-backed securities to be created and flipped for fast profit.
My question: Is it true in every job, you are always morally complicit in the work of the company? Note than an answer of yes would mean that when you work for an organization that actively does good, you are also actively doing good. Is there ever any way to dissociate oneself morally from the work of the company in which one participates? | | | Re: Andrew/Prof M's discussion about temporarily pawning one's license...I just want to say that this was always my plan (in so far as I had one, which isn't saying much). I always figured that I'd work for a few years at a firm and make some money...but more than that, I'd learn how such a firm operates in order to work most effectively against it in the end. This might seem totally convoluted (I think it does now). But I truly had decided that in order to be a successful lawyer, I would have to know how the law firms worked, because either I'd be working with them in a transaction or against them in some capacity. That, and the idea that having worked at a big firm would give me a certain amount of clout in whatever I chose to do next. I looked to lawyers who had "done their time" at a big firm and were out doing what they truly wanted and imagined that I could easily be like them. I guess this view relates to Andrews' taking the firms down from the inside. I'm thinking my money-making, ultimately happiness-bringing fantasy is totally unreasonable now.
-- JessicaCohen - 05 Feb 2010 | |
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Re Moral Complicity:
Having worked for a short while, I think in many work environments you see situations that make you wonder, a little bit, about the 'rightness' of what's going on. Then again, it takes a certain measure of confidence and perspective to be able to fully judge these situations and ascribe a moral value to them, save for the most egregious acts (I think Amanda's anecdote from Morgan Stanley may qualify).
In my opinion it's difficult to be morally right in a Kantian, motive-based sense in these situations, since it often requires knowing more, or asking the right questions. People often do the best they can under the circumstances, and try not to 'rock the boat' too much. After all, there's an entrenched culture in the organization that works.
I don't think most people intend to be morally complicit, and rather they fall into that state through a process of complicity. I guess that's one of the points Professor Moglen is trying to make clear to us. There's a tension between often our vague goals and dreams, and what seems to work for other people. To abandon the well-trodden path I know would put me on another that is potentially filled with even more anxiety. That is, until I figure out exactly what I desire to make of my life.
-- JeffKao - 05 Feb 2010 | | | |
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