Choosing a career in this modern world

Last night I was reading in Thomas Cahill’s latest book, The Mysteries of the Middle Ages, and he was talking about the different world of the Middle Ages.  People did not get to choose their profession. It was chosen by their parents, and it usually involved following the family trade or business.  “shoemakers remained shoemakers, and duchesses duchesses and fishwives fishwives, and no one entertained even a whisper of hope for an improvement of status.”

Cahill does, however, point out the possible advantage of this system.  “We fail to acknowledge, on the one hand, how full of anxiety our own society is, how its lack of assigned roles leaves so many individuals woefully isolated, permanently nervous about the random fluctuations of their fortunes. If, on the other hand, one could say, ‘I am the shoemaker of Trier, as was my father before me, as will be my son after me; I am an integral part of my community, even necessary to it; my neighbors respect me and depend on my skill,’ one could own an abiding peace that eludes all but a very few children of twenty-first century.”

I couldn’t help but see my own personal anxieties about what I was going to do with my career. I have often asked questions like these: “What am I going to study in school?  How am I going to make money?  How am I going to be respected for what I do?” et cetera.  I still often ask myself these questions, and I do have considerable anxiety on whether or not I have chosen the right path.  This is a difficulty of our own age.  Certainly, there are many things about our own time that make life easier than those of the twelfth century, but having ones own career given to oneself made other things much easier than today’s open field.  I can’t say that I truly want my career chosen for me, but this passage in this book made me think about my career anxieties, and, for a moment, I wished that our society made it clear our own destinies.

Oldest City of the Americas in Peru

Last night as I was tending bar, I had a customer ask if I had heard of the latest discovery: the oldest city in the world in Peru. I asked him if it was older than Jericho, Jarmo, or ‘Ain Ghazal, but he didn’t know what I was talking about. Obviously he wasn’t schooled in archaeology, but I was flattered by his attempts to connect with my interests. I decided to browse and see what he was talking about. Sure enough, there was a discovery, but it wasn’t as old as the neolithic sites in the Near East.  Last month, German and Peruvian archaeologists discovered a very old Plaza in the ancient city of Casma. Carbon dating puts the ancient site around 5500 BP (Before Present, which is about 2,600-2,500 BC).   If this is true, this part of the city would make it one of the oldest cites in Peru and also in the New World (Caral is proabably slightly older, but is probably contemporary with these new findings).  The findings here and at Caral mean that there were complex societies in South America contemporary with the Old Kingdom of Egypt and the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. These settlements even have their own pyramids.  The Associated Press put out this article on the discovery.