It's a really nice life when you have strict gender roles and expectations. You sound like my father except he made it a point to gather enough capital to not work after 55, and that's given what a disaster the profession was in the 80s.
There is the doom and gloom from mismatched expectations, but there's also quite a bit from the idea that working hard and doing a good job is actually counterproductive in enough environments to make us question the setup. I don't think many of us strictly work for purely materialistic reasons. Sure, we need to get paid, but that's the baseline. There's some need for professional satisfaction as well, which the longer the labor goes this way, the more that numbers matter over people.
Something like this (bolded is mine):
"In and of itself the destiny of this small planet that pursues its course somewhere in infinite space for a short time among the swarms of the ‘eternal’ stars is of no importance. Still less important is what moves for a couple of instants upon its surface. But each and every one of us, in and of ourselves of no importance, is for an unspeakably brief moment — a lifetime — cast into that whirling universe.
Out of satiety of life, men take refuge from civilization in the more primitive parts of the Earth, in vagabondage, in suicide. The flight of the born leader from the Machine is beginning. Soon only second-rate talent, successors of a greater age, will be available. Every big entrepreneur has occasion to observe a falling-off in the intellectual qualities of his recruits. But the grand technical development of the nineteenth century had been possible only because the intellectual level was constantly becoming higher. Even a stationary condition, short of an actual falling-off, is dangerous and points to an ending, however numerous and however well-schooled may be the hands ready for work.
And how is it with them? The tension between work of leadership and work of execution has reached the level of a catastrophe. The importance of the former, the economic value of every real personality in it, has become so great that it is invisible and incomprehensible to the majority of the underlings. In the latter, the work of the hands, the individual is now entirely without significance. Only numbers matter. In the consciousness of this unalterable state of things, aggravated, poisoned, and financially exploited by egoistic orators and journalists, men are so forlorn that it is mere human nature to revolt against the role for which the Machine (not, as they imagine, its owners) earmarks most of them. There is beginning, in numberless forms — from sabotage, by way of strike, to suicide — the mutiny of the Hands against their destiny, against the Machine, against the organized life, ultimately against anything and everything. The organization of work, as it has existed for thousands of years, based on the idea of ‘collective doing’ and the consequent division of labor between leaders and led, heads and hands, is being disintegrated from below. But ‘mass’ is no more than a negation (specifically, a negation of the concept of organization) and not something viable in itself. An army without officers is only a superfluous and forlorn herd of men. A chaos of brickbats and scrap-iron is a building no more. This mutiny, worldwide, threatens to put an end to the possibility of technical economic work. The leaders may take to flight, but the led, become superfluous, are lost. Their numbers are their death."
-Oswald Spengler
---------------------------------------
That's the pharmacy profession in a nutshell right now, no one can actually make a difference in a positive sense.
This late evening, I can't sleep. A private company that is In-Q-Tel funded is going to get everyone's data in the VA, and they are well-known to be completely unaccountable and HIPAA doesn't apply to them. I don't really care about my own data personally, because I already what sort of kompromat issues I have, but the purpose that this company has is for the worst of reasons. I wish I could say that I can't do anything about it, but I can. It just would be career suicidal to do so (and might even get In-Q-Tel's sponsors on my case, which is something that I could do without. So, I'm going to have to hold my nose and not only be complicit in knowing the wrong thing is happening, but I'll be actually participating in it.
I don't care what kind of money is involved, the psychological labor involved in these jobs is much more burdensome. I wish I could make it a purely materialistic pursuit, but once you meet your material needs, is there nothing else you're concerned about? If there is nothing else for you, I'm happy for you, but I want more. There was a point in my career that I did, and I still think to some extent I do from the academic side, but those days are increasingly frustrated by the sort of people who are in it just for the material outcomes.
