Happy New Year! Different year, same questions!
In a couple of weeks, I’ll be sitting on a career showcase panel for a bunch of undergraduates in STEM fields. I think I’m occupying the ‘Beyond’ seat for the STEM and Beyond event. Yet, I’m not sure I would 10/10 recommend becoming a bioethicist.
I’ll be asked classic questions such as, “What do you like about your job?” and “Do you have any advice for undergraduates looking to pursue bioethics?”
What should I say?
Don’t get me wrong, I love bioethics. I mean, I run Café Bioethics so of course I love bioethics. But do I love being a bioethicist? Also, yes - but only after all the non-bioethics stuff is removed. Which leaves me with what exactly?
…
When I give lectures to students, there’s always a moment early on in the semester when I can see the glint in a student’s eye - a spark that indicates they finally understand the issue we are discussing. They feel capable of engaging in the discussion, and make their case. The spark indicates that there are still so many questions left unanswered. They will present the case at the dinner table when they get home and excitedly ask for perspectives from their family members.
Our students approach us after class and ask, “So do you really see these issues in your clinical work? Do you get to solve these problems for the doctors and the nurses and the patients?”
We chuckle and say, “Well, not necessarily solve…”
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I’ve been reading ‘How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy’ by Jenny Odell, and I haven’t finished it, but the central thesis reminds us that there is still value in things that don’t produce any direct monetary gain. Public parks and libraries, human connection, the elderly, people with disabilities unable to work etc. The book is very eloquent and honest, and I appreciate it so much. Sometimes when there are so many things to do, I have the urge to do nothing.
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Sometimes as I’m driving or cooking or in some flow state, I still ask myself, “What is the value of a bioethicist in a capitalist system… if we don’t explicitly solve ethical problems? How valued are Questioners in a world that seeks simple answers?”
Perhaps I shouldn’t ask that question so loudly, for the sake of job security, but it has helped me understand for myself what I actually value about bioethics. It’s the nothingness of it. I value the lack of utility. The exploration of ideas and avenues that lead you to an always unsatisfying conclusion. In a world full of zeros and ones, I’m interested in the decimals.
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Years ago when I would come home and present theoretical bioethics cases from class excitedly to my older brother, he would laugh and say, “I don’t know how you can go around in circles about the same thing forever.”
“I don’t know, isn’t it just so interesting?” I would say.
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If you’re anything like me, you know that the spark of interest is priceless. When an issue scratches your brain in just the right way - it makes you think deeply about something important and profound, and when the rope pulling you in splays, there are so many threads to pull on.
As we start the year, I want to infuse more of that spark into Café Bioethics. It should be a place that invites you (and me!) to connect back with what made bioethics so interesting in the first place. A café where you meet up with fellow curious friends, and discuss interesting issues that force you to learn more about others, as well as yourself.
-Nipa
P.S.
I leave you with this fantastic essay by well-known Canadian philosopher Daniel Weinstock. The piece is so well-written and so much of my thinking in this newsletter was enriched by his writing. Thank you to my dear friend Kayla Wiebe for thinking of me as she read it. She is that friend that I would drag to Café Bioethics if it was a real coffee house!
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