GENERAL CAREER INTELLIGENCE by Ray Blasing is a career guide designed to equip its readers with the ability to navigate an increasingly chaotic and unstable job market. Much of what Blasing has to say is worthwhile and cogent, but his optimism regarding the job market of the future seems misplaced.
As befits a project that began as a collection of what Blasing calls “dad notes”—short words of wisdom to his children on topics including personal growth, “emotional and psychological management,” job search strategies, and so on—the book works best when read in chunks. There is no throughline as such; Blasing presents commentaries on everything from lifelong learning to swearing at work. Much of the time, his positions are simply common sense: anyone can see that funding of the arts and humanities has been disastrously hollowed out in recent years in the rush to promote STEM; or that virtues such as respect, integrity, and honesty remain virtuous in spite of the times. Blasing is also alert to the “dangerous undercurrents” (a blanket term for the precarious political and cultural situation in which America finds itself) and guards against the pernicious effects of misinformation while championing the importance of critical thinking. He acknowledges that we as a society are experiencing “a societal shift toward despair, sadness, and even hostility,” lamenting the erosion of what he calls “social trust” and the “choosing [of] hatred and tribalism over character and ethics.”
One does, however, feel that some of Blasing’s conclusions need deeper scrutiny. His feeling that more and more workers “feel adrift in their pursuit of the American dream” puts it very mildly. According to a Pew Research survey of 2024, 47% of Americans either don’t believe that dream is achievable anymore or never believed in it in the first place. Blasing’s optimism at the advent of AI seems similarly ill-founded. While job figures currently look good, AI is quickly making fools of us all—upending whole sectors of the job market from retail to higher education. When we hear of young people using AI chatbots for counseling sessions, and Midjourney and ChatGPT hollowing out the livelihoods of freelance artists and writers, it is hard to agree with Blasing’s blithe view that “the fear of AI replacing jobs is countered by the perspective that it can augment human capabilities and creativity.” AI can and is doing that, but those companies who wield its power will hardly stop there in the pursuit of growth and profit. While the managerial positions Blasing lauds may survive (for a while), millions below that level will not; and, short of the implementation of universal basic income, one shudders at the depredations that will follow. It takes the wind out of the sails of an otherwise sound self-help book.
Ray Blasing’s GENERAL CAREER INTELLIGENCE contains lots of good advice, though its rosy view of AI doesn’t grapple with the societal problems the technology also represents.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader