It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. That’s lesson one in business school and maybe lesson one in life as people our age are starting to think about careers. Networking becomes this all important mode of social interaction. The idea is that the people you know now in college will be the people who can get you a job and get you that foot in the door 10 years down the road (thank you career center!). This is totally true; experts have done studies that confirm networking’s importance. It’s the difference between a job and a polite thanks, but no thanks.
The idea is to get to know as many people as possible, identify talented individuals who can help or be of use to you in the future, and keep in touch so if the opportunity arises, you’ve got someone to call for that job interview. Does a network imply yourself as the center of it? Yes. You, in the egotistical middle of a web of relations maintained by e-mail, Facebook and now Twitter.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Let’s not be introverted hermits who shun meeting new people. What I’m interested in questioning is the why behind meeting people, behind hanging out, behind the words we say and the things we do.
Networking is a good example through which to take a larger view of our generational culture. A friend told me once that our generation has never been told No. The economy’s been great for most our lives and we live in a gated community called the “U S of A.” Consequently, this culture of advertising gimmicks and cheap toys produces a pressure to sustain itself. More investment bankers, more lawyers, more gadgets, more celebrities and more ways to make green.
As we all live weekend to weekend, lamenting how far away Friday night is from Monday, do any of us question how we view each other? We’re not cynics disillusioned with reality. That would imply we were all once idealists.
Maybe we were never idealists. Instead, ever since middle school we’ve morphed into separatists: isolated and alone in front of our laptops and TVs seeing ourselves in the lives of the rich and famous. Instead of getting to know others for their own sakes as interesting people not unlike ourselves, things like networking get in the way. Things like social pressure get in the way. Things get in the way. Money, materialism and all that Marxist ideology gets in the way.
In this process of thinking aloud and in ink, what exactly is mediating our relationships with each other. Is it possible to know someone in his or her totality, without all this backdrop of ulterior motives and intentions?
People are pretty interesting. Too bad, as Emerson observed, life is often “the play of surfaces.” The question is whether or not we can delve beyond that and overcome all the things that separate us.
