Why MBAs buy SLRs
Every MBA I know owns a digital SLR camera. And here is my theory that probably explains why.
So this is the story…
MBAs are a privileged lot. Even before you make it to an MBA college, you’re priveleged because you obviously got to study in good schools, got admitted into decent graduation colleges. In a country where most children don’t even make it to class 10, this is an extreme privilege. Getting into an MBA course was neither about the hard work you did during college nor was it about the awesome team player you were in that college festival you organized that nobody outside of nagpur cares about. Your being an MBA had to do with the hard work, the painful savings and the big sacrifices that your parents made. To a cut a long story short, you didn’t do anything great. But yes you’re an MBA and that means you’ve had a life far more privileged than others.
Unlike our parents, we MBAs didn’t get into professions where we had a specialization or a specific line of work.
In a country where the most privileged middle class workers aren’t really working on anything specific, or have no special nation/business building skills, it’s worrisome. And the MBAs are acutely aware of the sham that their jobs are and the uselessness of their existence in the system.
Where our parents were engineers who built things, we are an educated generation of engineers who decided to not build. Psychology grads who decided to sell soap.
Our generation’s desire to create, to express, to build isn’t dead. But the 60 hours that we work a week does not allow us to build and create. We only ‘manage’ what others create. And if a majority of the educated, well-fed, well-shod, articulate workforce can only be managers, who will build our nation? The millions who are being taught in dingy school classrooms with under-qualified teachers. Our creators are there. We are just managers. What a waste of an entire generation of possible creators.
So this is my theory… since our MBA education has not allowed us to be good at doing anything specific really, we have become a generation of people looking to be good at *something* at least. And this is when we pick our hobbies and ‘passions’. We want to write. We want to be photographers. Columnists. Editors. Directors. Actors. We want to be something.
Our DSLRs are not symbolic of the over-achievers that we are, as we’d have you believe.
Our DSLRs are a symbol of our crisis that we are not anything. That we don’t create. That we don’t do. And the worthlessness of our existence terrifies us. That’s why we buy our SLRs.
