The author wants Smart graduates to avoid jobs in financial and advice,

“It is an extraordinary waste of talents.” This is what Rutger Bregman has to say about intelligent graduates of top universities who go to careers in advice and finances.

“In a rational society, you would expect that if you go to a job fair at these elite institutions, the best and smartest one would go to have a stand to prevent the next pandemic, a point of view about the healing of Malaria once and for all to abolish extreme poverty,” he told Business Insider.

“But instead we have Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Kirkland & Ellis. What the hell is going on here?”

Bregman, a historian from the Netherlands, is the author of “Morality ambition: stop wasting your talent and making a difference”. In the new book, he argues that too many people enter into “socially useless” professions and believe that their chosen careers are pointless.

Many even recognize this before making their decision, but do not know what else to do, he said.

“Most of them are meant very well and take care of the state of the world. They want to do it better, but somehow they are somehow sucked into this Bermuda triangle of the talent.”

Many graduates are lost spiritually

Bregman’s earlier books “Humankind” in 2020 and “Utopia for realists” were both previously published New York Times bestseller. His works have sold more than 2 million copies.

Throughout Bregman’s entire career, he talked about it and wrote about how the most harmful jobs for society – for example Big Tobacco – are the best paid trend. Not all consultants and bankers necessarily fall into this category, but so many of them are a problem.

“It is not all completely destructive or the like,” he said. “But compared to what these people could do, opportunities are massive if they accept some of the greatest challenges.”

Some people are “just a bit flat and boring” and “take care of owning a lot of cars or owning a large house or having the corner office,” said Bregman. “You probably can’t help these people.”

But for many money is not the most important goal of choosing the consulting and financial route. An enormous motivation is “to maintain their optionality,” said Bregman, because “many of these people are only afraid of the future”.

“Many of these children are lost a bit spiritually,” said Bregman. “You don’t really know what to do with your life. McKinsey is very good at using it.”

He said large companies offer them a continuation of what they were already doing, which is the “logical next step”.

“They went from the best primary school to the best high school and then always did the Honor’s courses at the university to get the best grades,” said Bregman. “It is a way to move the real decisions and postpone an adult, and this is very attractive if you are an insecure high -flyer who has no idea what has to do with your life.”

Champions League for Do-Gooter

Working in finance can also be intellectually challenging, which attracts people who like to solve puzzles. Bregman said there had to be more options in morally ambitious areas.

“Many of these children, they only want to play in the Champions League,” he said in relation to the European top flow football competition. “I think we have to do the Champions League and the Olympic Games for Do-Gooters.”

Some options for morally ambitious people are entry into large-scale research and innovation fields and the concentration on the solution of some of the biggest problems of humanity such as hunger and the climate crisis. Bregman said it is not about following her passion, but finding out where its effect can be greatest.

“The right way depends on the challenge you tackle. Some problems require state -of -the -art research and innovation, others demand activism, lobbying or brave entrepreneurship,” he said. “Regardless of whether you are working on ending hunger, fighting the climate slump, reducing the factory breeding or stopping tax avoidance by the Superrich – which counts that you go where you are most urgently needed.”

Bregman hopes to inspire people who feel prevented from breaking the movements with the school for moral ambition that he has searched.

“We want to help as many people as possible to devote their career in their lives to some of the most urgent problems with whom we are faced as species,” said Bregman.

“If you study these moral pioneers in the past, you are not that you were good people and then began to do good things,” he added. “It is really the other way around. They have often started doing good things because they were asked, and then they became good people, which is a very important difference.”

Bregman compares it with Gandalf to knock Frodos door in “the Lord of the Rings”. Frodo was not passionate about taking a long journey and risking his life, said Bregman. But Gandalf’s perspective changed him as a person.

“Frodo was very passionate about gardening and a really relaxed life full of breakfast,” he said. “But when the old Wise Wizard explained everything, he was like, yes, that’s probably pretty important.”

Bregman jokingly advises those who have the feeling of doing a little more to start their own “cult”.

“If you want to be a really ambitious idealist, it is quite difficult these days because you often swim in a sea of ​​cynicism,” said Bregman. “What you need is to surround yourself by other ambitious idealists, because then you will be like, hey, I’m not alone.”

Review, he said, is energy and what really matters is “how it is used and how it is channeled”.

“Find a wise old magician, a Gandalf who has a really good idea of ​​what you should do with your life,” said Bregman. “Then listen and do it.”