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Joe Carstairs
2025-09-18 19:31:43 +01:00
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website/src/content/blog/2025/06/23/work.md
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# Figuring things out
'You could always do a Panic Masters.' In my last year of undergraduate studies,
that was often the sort of advice we liked to console one another with. A lucky
few people in my year had a clear sense of vocation, but most of us felt

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title: Changing my ambitions
description: >-
When I started my first degree, I had unrealistic and unhelpful ambitions. For
my second degree, I'm setting my sights on different targets.
pubDate: 2025-09-18
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Is 'virtue' a terribly old-fashioned word? I don't mind either way. If I've run
into you for more than three seconds in the last couple of weeks, you'll know
that I've just started my second degree, and I'm very happy about it. I'm having
a great deal of fun, and expect my studies to continue to be fun. But fun is not
my goal. My goal is virtue.
In particular, the virtues I'm striving after in my degree are a greater ability
to ask questions well, and to answer them well; to write well, and to dispute --
that is, speak with, listen, reason, discuss -- well. Insightfully, sensitively,
humanely, intelligently, informedly, fluently: well.
But what about all the starving children! I hear you cry. I've got myself stuck
in the past fearing that doing another degree would be ignoring some more
immediate duty to do something about all the evil in the world. So, is my degree
selfish? Or how can it not be? How can this be good?
I believe it's precisely by abandoning that restrictive sense of public duty
which has freed me at last to do something good. Let me explain.
During my first degree, I had a great deal of ambition. I was genuinely
convinced that I could find robust answers to big questions if I thought about
them hard enough. I thought I was clever enough to make progress, or at least
contribute. I thought I could, if I wanted to, get into a PhD programme and end
up employed as Dean of Philosophy of Oxford, paid to smoke from a pipe all day
in a tweed jacket with leather patches while quietly resolving all the world's
burning intellectual issues.
What's changed? If I were a pessimist, I might mention my encounter with that
devil, reality. It turns out that I'm not actually the cleverest person in the
room, that the biggest philosophical problems are pretty intractable, and that I
can't get into Oxford -- and even if I could, it wouldn't necessarily be right
to uproot myself from my friends, family and church community to pursue my dream
career.
All this did matter a great deal. It's what slowly convinced me to finally drop
those unrealistic philosophical ambitions. It's why, a year and a half ago, I
turned down the offer of a Master's in Philosophy at a excellent university (not
Oxford).
But that's not the whole story. I'm not sat here with a sob story of broken
dreams. After I turned down that PhD, I didn't feel deflated, I felt liberated.
I haven't just dropped those ambitions, I've found new ones.
My friends, family and church community ought to matter far more to me, I
realised, than my career. So, turning away from academia, I turned towards love.
This is what the gospel does. It's the most good story, beautifully true, which
says to the human heart: since God so loved us, so also we ought to love one
another.
When I'm targeting virtue, I find it helpful to imagine a character who displays
the virtues I'm after. So picture Helpful John. He's an encouragement. Whenever
you talk to Helpful John, you come away feeling emotionally mature and
intellectually confident, because his overwhelming respect wipes away your
anxiety. He listens to you carefully, and insists on understanding you at more
than a superficial level. When it's appropriate to do so, he can ask the most
devious questions which unlock new ways for you to think. He knows lots of
relevant and often surprising facts which he can bring to bear. He can compare
your perspective with that of strange and subversive alternative perspectives.
He doesn't like to tell people what to think, but when he speaks or when he
writes, you pay attention, because you know he is capable of profound insight.
Helpful John sounds great. A model to replicate, right? Not in every respect,
necessarily. Helpful John might not be the life and soul of the party. He might
not be the first person you go to for comfort in times of trouble. He might not
be the most reliable person in the world, or the best with children, or the best
with hand tools. Helpful John is a character, but he's good at what he's good
at.
Helpful John is roughly my north star. I don't expect to become Helpful John.
But with the Spirit's help, with me continuing to lean in to the process, I do
expect to become more like him in his most enviable respects.
Is this selfish? Is this a shortage of ambition? Wouldn't you love to have a
Helpful John as a friend? A brother? Across the table at small group at church?
In your workplace?
So forgive me if I'm old-fashioned: I believe virtue is a virtue. A better
world is one full of better people.