The Future of Work has Changed... Ep. 14 - This is the Legend Of Post-Professionalism, with Dr. Ka Tat Tsang

Gone are the days when people had one job.

            Gone are the days when professions such as lawyers and doctors enjoyed a high level of respect and recognition.

            Gone are the days when it was believed that a person could only be an expert in one area.

            Today, it is becoming increasingly important to have expertise in not just one profession, but MANY professions.  Ironically, this is a return to the Renaissance’s idea of multifaceted expertise.

All of this is thanks to post-professionalism, which is the largestsocial shift since industrialization and arguably since the Western world’s Enlightenment.

            Dr. Ka Tat Tsang, psychotherapist, social work expert, and inventor of the iconic Strategies and Skills and Learning Development (SSLD) system, returns to This is the Legend Of… to discuss the legend of post-professionalism and the ways in which it has affected the world.  In this episode, Dr. Tsang and Amos Vang discuss the following topics:

0:00 – Introduction

0:42 – What is post-professionalism?

2:00 – How did we get to post-professionalism?

3:27 – 1945 vs. 1960 vs. 2024 in post-secondary education levels

5:22 – Post-professionalism was sorta inevitable, because of the mass professionalization of everyone

6:05 – Today, lawyers and doctors no longer enjoy the same degree of respect compared to decades ago

7:55 – Attitudes towards the legal profession have substantially changed

9:55 – Certain parts of the legal practice have lost some of its meaningful/fulfilling aspects

12:55 – Mental illnesses resulting from professional life, including the legal and medical professions

13:55 – Institutional control and surveillance

14:21 – Dunbar’s Number and the erosion of trust between people

17:55 – Today, people struggle to build meaningful connections with each other, unlike 150 years ago

19:05 – Chinese cultural concept of “guan xi” (關係)

19:54 – The relationship between therapist and client is MORE IMPORTANT than the method!

20:10 – Why therapy FAILS Asian-Americans and Asians

22:10 – Strong relationships are important in ANY profession

22:37 – Cheap oil and cheap energy may have significantly harmed human relationships

26:00 – The future may be a return to the small rural communities, NOT technology: Amos’s argument at Stanford University’s MAHB

27:00 – The individual vs. the tribe

30:25 – The professional paradigm is NOT SUSTAINABLE ANYMORE!

31:15 – All high-income countries in the West and in Asia have extremely low fertility rates that are below the replacement rate

32:00 – University professorship opportunities are decreasing, too

32:30 – The market must be reformulated into a post-professional model

33:56 – Sustainability vs. growth

40:30 – How can you adapt to the post-professional world?

43:05 – Humans face challenges that require expertise in more than one profession

44:00 – The labour market has shifted towards a post-professional, multidisciplinary world

45:05 – AI and the post-professional world

49:00 – Amos’s post-professional career – music and sports have A LOT in common

50:03 – Amos’s post-professional project – can string theory, metaphysics, and epistemology answer the Questions of Infinity and Impossibility?

54:50 – Professionals such as lawyers and doctors were expected to follow certain social scripts.  Not anymore today.

55:25 – People are freer to move around in the post-professional world

1:02:04 – What does it mean to be human?

1:05:12 – Concluding Remarks

You can subscribe to Dr. Tsang’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@tsangkatat

 

Music by: Amos Vang

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