I do not think I have the moral fortitude to be a good person if I were a doctor, a cop, a teacher, a judge, or a prison guard. These all fall under a category I think of as “jobs that make you evil”, and the commonality of these jobs is that
- You have power over others
- You are enforcing some sort of public good – the purpose of the job is not just to serve individuals but to make society safer and healthier
- You see people at their worst, because the people who most often interact with you when you are on the job is when they are having some sort of problem
From a long thoughtful post by a nurse (that is mostly about something else):
What if a customer service job was high-stakes? That’s nursing. It’s not the only part of nursing, but cmon, anyone who has worked a public-facing job knows how some people can be. Hospitals are full of people having the worst days of their lives while also being tired, hungry, lonely, and bored.
Plus, it’s not just the general population you’re dealing with. Hospitals have a disproportionate amount of very difficult people. To draw some examples from my own direct experience: the dementia patient had become too violent to stay at home (unfortunately common), infected chronic wound guy who is so racist that his facility will not take him back, confused patient who screams unceasingly 24 hours a day until she passes out, sexually inappropriate guy who needs two caregivers at all time, another racist patient but this time they’re also sexist, banned from multiple shelters for assaulting the staff, etc. Or what might be the most common: person who is too sick to go home alone but no one they know will agree to take care of them. Like, have any of you cut off horrible relatives or abusive partners? People who were in whatever way unacceptable to be around? Would you like to take care of them? And you KNOW they’re also not doing any of the stuff that would help them heal so it seems like they will never leave.
The writer seemed like a nice, thoughtful person who has not been turned evil, which is great. I’m so grateful people like that exist. I can feel myself becoming more evil when I see sexist comments on twitter, so I have no chance of standing up to the industrial grade malice and bitterness that would pump through my veins if I had to deal with the sexually inappropriate guy who needs two caregivers at all times in the hospital.
Of course, it’s not just that these jobs turn you evil. It’s that some of them attract bullies.
This fact in itself isn’t that interesting to me. What is interesting is the question of, in an ideal society’s job market, where would bullies go? What job do we want the 1% of people who most love bullying to do?
This question has haunted me for years.