I learned this fancy term recently: unreflective instrumentalism.1 It’s a belief that the pursuit of knowledge is worthless unless it leads to material gain (e.g. profit).
There’s an entire content-creation industry around telling people what they need to know.
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It’s a culture that I’m familiar with. Growing up, I soaked up life hacks and devoured Tim Ferriss books.
This bias towards practical knowledge came partially from my immigrant upbringing. I had clear academic milestones I was driven to accomplish without question.
One day in junior high, some people came into my first-period class to promote a magnet program in the arts. Although I was interested in art, I didn’t see how attending this program would help me get into a “good” college. Once in college, topics like philosophy seemed pointless since they wouldn’t directly lead to jobs like computer science would. When alumni assured me that GPA didn’t matter and to focus on enjoying my brief time in college, I didn’t believe them.
I’m not the only one with this experience:
I automatically sorted everything into “useful” and “not useful.” “Useful” are grades, salary, and promotions — all highly visible metrics that can be gamed. “Not useful” are curiosities, hobbies, and adventures — fun, but not to be pursued seriously.
In school, I optimized for grades. Instead of pursuing my intellectual curiosity, I took basic courses to get better grades, in order to get a better job, only to find myself stuck in a finance job where I had no intrinsic motivation.2
From a psychological lens, I think unreflective instrumentalism can be explained by taking a look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For immigrant families, the bias toward utility comes from a focus on satisfying the “basic needs”: there’s no time to think about self-actualization when your security is uncertain.3
My focus on “safety needs” also diverted attention away from “belongingness and love needs”. I would try to meet those needs through practical knowledge as well. For example, I’d read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie… and then proceed to not actually make friends.
Once I actually began to feel okay with my “basic needs” though, I looked up and realized I didn’t know what to do next.
When you’re afraid you can’t earn a sufficient living from the thing you want to do, you find something else to earn that money for you. But then it’s hard to balance the two, especially if the money is really good. Success can be its own failure. You start a lifestyle business to fund your passion, then the business takes off and now you’re stuck managing employees and a Shopify store.4
I’m not saying that everyone has to major in philosophy. The “basic needs” are the basic ones for a reason – you wouldn’t ask a drowning person why they aren’t reading more Shakespeare.
But I’m beginning to recognize the limits to what unreflective instrumentalism can accomplish. Despite its prevalence in social media, finding financial security is not the same as finding purpose in life. As I get older, I’m realizing that no YouTube video or Twitter thread will tell me what it means to be a good father or how to live a life worth living.
Immigrant parents projecting their beliefs about prestige (become a doctor, lawyer, etc) might feel like an “esteem need”. But why do parents like those jobs? In my experience, immigrant parents will speak just as highly of people who pull in crazy money as a software engineer for a tax company or a salesperson for a multinational conglomerate. The duty to help others or save lives is secondary to money and stability – we’re right back down to safety and physiological needs.