The question is now "how", but "should you". Doing something meaningful, in the way you described it, looks a lot to me like guilt over a perceived unfairness of life. Yes people are dying in remote places, yes people need healthcare in the US, and yes not everyone has a job. You want to try and fix the situation, but many others also have tried, and failed. Maybe you want to do that to be relieve of your guilt, to t…
I've been struggling with a similar question to the author lately. For me, what it boils down to is this: I have to spend 8 hours a day working on something. It seems like better value to be working on something beneficial to humanity than something meaningless, or even detrimental. I would answer the question of "should you?" with a resounding yes. I've been finding it difficult to match up my skills as a software e…
I have always thought very disturbing in the occidental culture the notion that there are "unworthy" occupations, and some people "waste their life" doing something different that they could in someone else's opinion.
But that's just applying peer pressure to make such people comply to our (skewed?) visions of how life should be, and when failing, using guilt to try to destroy the joy they find in doing what they do the way they do.
Maybe because I grew up watching too much anime and reading too many mangas I admire whatever people are, in any field, trying to remove my own bias.
Like - you don't have to be a Nazi to admire what Roemmel (sp?) did in north-africa. A true military genius of the time. Or how a handfull of guys armed with box cutters social-engineered they way to massive destruction and terror. And also it's hard not to admire the beautiful job of some people in charity work - eradicting polio, wow. Using cellphones to develop microcredit and banking in countries with little infrastructure - that's beautiful!
But unlike you, I would but the fun part above the "important" part, because what's important is a personal opinion. If someone find something important, it's important.
If designing and testing landmines aimed at killing and maiming people is fun because, I don't know, the mathematical challenge behind it, the noise of explosions, whatever - it's a worthy endeavour. If you make good money because you're good at the job you love, even better.
BTW the knife cut both ways - my training has been mostly on the medical field, but someday I realised the humanitarian field no longer meant anything to me. I'm not feeling any greater purpose or anything, and I don't believe I ever did. Maybe I tried to fool myself thinking I did. Maybe I resent the fact that's it's difficult to match up my skills to what's usefull in the industry, but I doub thatt and I don't think it's clouding my judgement too much. Anyway it is just no longer fun and that's what matters.
I don't feel bad about that. It's not good or bad - just an indication that's it's time to do something else now, and that as usual change is hard. If I listened to what people would think about my move, I'd up for one another good guilt trip :-) Like why don't I go to some poor country to save people? Because I don't care, don't see the point, and while the visiting part might be fun initially, it would be boring and I may not like the food and the culture :-)
What I fear is many people are doing this for a time in their life - sometimes their whole life - without realizing how empty it is, until it bites them back, a la Lars Von Triers' "Dogville".
Maybe I grew out of the guilt trip that's forcing of lot of people into such training and studies. I'm just sad to see such post and comment, including people downvoting the not politically correct things to say.
Do what you like, and figure out justifications later.
PS: You don't have to spend 8 hours a day working on something BTW - slavery is gone is most part of the world. Economic slavery however remains, and if you want more things than you can affort, yes, you will have to spend your time this way, and might resent it.
Some people, mostly in europe, figure out how to strech their money and benefits to live without doing any purposeful work. I would find that sad - unless they enjoy the "game" part of gaming and abusing the system. In that case maybe a worthy endeavour to them, rest of mankind be damned.