Would you rather be the rat or the scientist?

-- By DesireeMoshayedi - 09 Apr 2021

Rat and Scientist

A rat lives in a maze with several other rats. She watches the other rats run around the maze, completing various useless tasks for a small reward, a treat just big enough to hold over their hunger until they complete their next task. She wonders whether they can see the scientists above them. Whenever she can, she watches the scientists, envious of their freedom. She prays of a day she can become a scientist and free all the other rats from their life of imprisonment and perpetual labor.

By a stroke of luck, her wish is granted. She stands above the maze in a white coat and discovers the difficulty of her stated mission. The maze contains a transparent padlocked lid and only the senior scientist contains the passcode. Opening up the cage would get her fired. With her binary understanding of the world, she knows only of rat and scientist and fears that the word "fired" means putting her back in the maze. On top of it, she is beginning to like her coworkers, the pay is good, and the project is interesting. She understands her life to destined to either being oppressed or being the oppressor, and the possibility that she can risk it all for nothing leads her to reluctantly choose to imprison rats for a living.

Public Interest and Big Law

Law students have all of these passionate social reasons about why they want to go to law school and when they get there, things change. They realize that public interest jobs do not pay as well as they expect, subjects that relate to the social causes they care about end up not being as interesting to them doctrinally, and that valuable social change is incredibly difficult to make happen.

I came to law school with the intention to do something about the income inequality plaguing the United States – my intention was to become a civil rights lawyer and eventually a judge. When I came to law school, however, I was immediately overwhelmed by the salary disparity between public interest and big law jobs. Over the course of the year, I realized that constitutional law is much less interesting to me than classes like contracts or property. Additionally, the political climate of the past year has left me disappointed in governmental institutions and brought me to a clearer understanding of how difficult it is to enact huge societal change, even for people in positions of power. Big law, on the other hand, is a system that contributes to wealth inequality.

Existing in an Unjust Society

When I first became truly aware of my mortality, I think I was about 10 years old. I had this panic to make sure my existence on earth would last longer than the memory of my family, friends, and acquaintances. I believe that there is a part of everyone at elite institutions, especially younger students, that felt at one point that their life is meaningless unless they truly make an impact on the world around them. This comes from a combination of narcissism and the guilt of being afforded privilege and opportunity in an unjust society.

It is okay not to change the world substantially. At a certain point – and it usually happens when they realize that their capabilities and chances of enacting great change – they realize that it is okay just to be happy and have a good life. This means meeting your material needs and your passion/self-actualization needs. You don’t have to necessarily make an impact or change the world; it is not about result. It is about doing your best to be happy and sane during your short time on earth.

Binary Fallacy

There aren’t two choices, if the scientist leaves the facility, she will realize that there are a number of other jobs that would interest her and different ways of benefitting rats than freeing the particular ones in cages. Similarly, my choices are not between representing big oil/big banks and working in public interest. There are a range of legal fields in between.

The idea of each person having a certain path is a reductionist vision of life. Each person has a variety of interests and different choices that make up the person that they are. For example, when I was younger, I always wanted to work in the entertainment industry. My passion for income equality came much later. Though the entertainment industry has its own unethical practices, I would feel excited to go to work every day knowing that my work helps the creation of art.

Additionally, this binary fallacy leads to the presumption that a person can only be one thing. As a lawyer, you can shape your practice in a way that forwards the goals you want to achieve. Even if working at a firm, I can be an entertainment lawyer and take pro-bono cases that further my social justice objective.

At the end of the day, there are more than just these two separations. I can create a practice that meets my material needs, my need for excitement and something intellectually stimulating, and though the main part of my work may not directly address the issue I had planned to solve when I started law school, it does not oppress either. The goal is to find something that makes you the happiest and will let you sleep well at night.

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