The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

by David Brooks

This group of emerging adults are pragmatists. They are good at solving problems. The problem for a college junior and senior is anticipated ambiguity. Graduation is approaching, and you don’t know what comes next. The pragmatists solve this problem by flocking to companies and such that can tell them, even as juniors in college, what they will be doing for at least a few years hence. The uncertainty is over. Plus, now they will have a good answer when adults ask them, as they are prone to do, what they are going to do after graduation. In order to keep the existential anxiety about what to do with their life carefully suppressed underneath the waterline of consciousness, they grab the first job that comes along. Unfortunately, this pragmatic route doesn’t spare you from the ditch, either. Never underestimate the power of the environment you work in to gradually transform who you are. When you choose to work at a certain company, you are turning yourself into the sort of person who works in that company. That’s great if the culture of McKinsey or General Mills satisfies your very soul. But if it doesn’t, there will be some little piece of yourself that will go unfed and get hungrier and hungrier.