How one defines “success” can varies drastically from one person to the next. Michael Sandel and Matthew B. Crawford both tackle the issue of “success” in their individual essays, especially focusing on extrinsic verse intrinsic value and questioning what are the real true joys of life.
Sandel with his writing of “Markets and Morals” tackles the issue of how money plays its role in our society. He purposes the question of where as a society we should draw the line to how we value things in a market system. Sandel provides evidence through facts of all items and services one can buy and sell in our modern times. Many on their own can make one question the morals of our society. Sandel explains that we have moved …show more content…
It factors into our choices such as careers (a topic in which Crawford goes more in depth into), or where we live. We need it to buy the basic supplies to survive such as food and water. It’s no wonder whenever you turn on the news the topic of discussion is most likely money, it’s present everywhere in our lives. Though when we step back and analyze the situation, we have to question, is that a good thing? This is one of the questions Sandel purposes in his essay. Sandel compares what money can and cannot buy in today’s society and the facts are shocking. With money buying everything from admission to prestigious universities to immigration to the United States it is easy to believe that money is the key to success. And that is exactly how mainstream culture defines it. Take a moment to imagine an extremely successful person in our society. Now what was that person like? For most people, that person was rich. This ideology promotes people to follow the extrinsic value of …show more content…
Crawford connects his personal experience of working a white collar job verses a blue collar job to how society see and judges desk work verse a more manual style job. Our mainstream culture tends to define a blue-collar job such as a plumber or mechanic as less intellectual and less prosperous in comparison to a white collar. Society is incline to view blue collar work as a last resort for people who weren’t fit for the more academic world, that a “successful” career in the modern era is your traditional white collar