anti-professionalism
often in musicland we see or hear of someone trashed for what is usually described as a lack of professionalism. this happens also in administration or business enterprises, and indeed i have been both victim and victimizer. we are made to think that professionalism--the quality of being a professional--is a byword for equanimity, comity, mutually earned respect, and the desire to make whatever you're making better or more stable than it would have been without the professionalism; a working-world version of the social safety-net that is basic manners. most of you understand this is not how it plays out. vastly more frequently than the ideal, 'professionalism' consists of someone treating you verbally, physically, or monetarily in a way they would not tolerate being treated, and expecting you to remain silent amid or even be thankful for their bluster.
as is my habit in situations where actions don't seem to match language, i want to look into the word itself; like Carlin said, 'always look to the language. the language gives you away.' let's eliminate the suffixes, which are unhelpful here: -ism, -al, -ion. (incidentally, if you play that game with 'recidivism' you are left with nothing at all.) the word profess remains. the root 'fess' is non-existant in this context, but comes from the latin 'fari' meaning 'to speak.' from here we get 'confess'--to speak with--but somewhat disappointingly we do not get 'anti-fess' or 'aqua-fess'. to profess something is to speak forth about it. a professional is therefore one who has knowledge and/or wisdom enough in his or her field to speak forth on it, and one who exhibits professionalism has the state or quality of speaking forth on their field of knowledge.
this opens an interesting field of inquiry of whether i am a professional musician at all times or just when i am engaged in some facet of musicking. it also means that if we take socrates at his word that 'the only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing,' there should be fewer and fewer professionals in our age range as we get older. further, there are situations which can arise where the person filling the role of 'boss' is not so much a professional in the field they manage, but rather are a professional at managing, or bossing, or jargon-ing, or as is so prevalent today, the 'curating' of talent or content. thankfully in music these will tend not to be long-term bosses...a gig here, a gig there....
the other chief meaning of the word is of course that if you are a professional at a thing, it is your main source of income. by this rationale i am considerably more of a professional educator than musician, but that isn't at all how i see myself (not that anyones self-definitions are to be trusted). this discrepancy is a daily truth for many craftspeople and artists, and it seems likely to continue.
with the great disparity between meanings and executions of the word, and the increasing blurriness between vocation, hobby, job, and career, i've decided to try and eliminate it from my discourse entirely because it seems at worst to be an excuse for bad behavior, and at best to mean nothing at all. in it's place, i will do nothing different: i will continue to show up on time, do my job as well as i'm able, treat those around me with compassion as often as possible, and go home.
i hope you're doing well. i have a thing brewing which will hopefully be awesome and enjoyable. please stay tuned.