Moral Theatre
There are professions in which you are asked what you can do.
And there are professions in which you are asked who you are.
Social work belongs unmistakably to the second category.
Anyone applying for a position as a social worker will sooner or later be asked:
“Why did you become a social worker?”
The question sounds harmless. Yet it often asks for more than professional motivation. The applicant is not merely expected to explain a career choice, but to account for his moral origins.
An engineer is rarely asked why engineering became his calling. An accountant does not need to reveal her life story to justify working with numbers. A pilot can say, “I simply love flying,” without anyone doubting his ability to land an aircraft safely.
In social work, a different logic seems to apply.
It is often not enough to say:
“I work well with people. I am good at this profession. And it allows me to earn a living.”
That sounds too sober. Too professional.
There should be a wound, a calling, a moment of revelation. Perhaps a difficult childhood, an addiction overcome, or an encounter that changed a life.
Such stories exist. They may be true and important.
But they are not the only truth.
I could tell such a story myself. I was adopted. My father was homeless and addicted to alcohol. I have had experiences that shaped me deeply.
But I choose not to present them as evidence of my professional value.
Not because I am ashamed of them.
Because I do not believe that biographical injury should function as an entry ticket into a caring profession.
I do not want to be employed because of my wounds.
I want to be employed because of my work.
The philosopher Alan Watts was once asked why he gave lectures. His answer was disarmingly simple:
“I enjoy hearing myself talk, and I want to make money from it.”
Many found the answer provocative. I found it liberating.
Not because it contained the whole truth, but because it refused moral theatre. He could have claimed that he wanted to awaken humanity. Instead, he said something almost indecently honest.
And precisely because it was not flattering, it sounded credible.
The social professions often confuse empathy with moral self-presentation. But the two are not the same.
A person may care deeply about others while speaking soberly about his work. Another may have mastered the language of compassion and show remarkably little of it when compassion becomes inconvenient.
I have known people who spoke constantly about dignity, solidarity and humanity, yet offered little of any of them when a colleague needed help or a client became difficult.
And I have known people who used no grand language at all, but showed extraordinary patience, loyalty and decency when it mattered.
Perhaps we place too much faith in the stories people tell about themselves.
A job interview is a peculiar ritual. We imagine that we are discovering someone’s character by asking about motivation. Often we are merely discovering how well that person has learned to produce a socially approved narrative.
Perhaps a more honest question would be:
Not, “Why did you become a social worker?”
But, “Why are you still doing this work after ten or fifteen years?”
That question is not interested in the mythology of beginnings. It is interested in the reality of endurance.
Beginnings are easy to romanticise. Staying means having endured difficult clients, failed interventions, institutional absurdity, emotional fatigue and repeated disappointment.
In the end, the quality of a social worker is not determined by the beauty of his origin story.
It is determined by how he listens, how he sets limits, how he accepts responsibility and how he acts in a crisis.
Perhaps the social sector should stop searching so obsessively for callings and begin taking professionalism more seriously.
Professionalism is not the opposite of care. It may be one of its most reliable forms. It means doing the work properly even when there is no emotional reward, no applause and no flattering story to tell about oneself.
There is a difference between empathy and moral theatre.
And sometimes the person who tells no heroic story is the one most likely to help when help is actually needed.