career magic quadrant

i was reading a book the other day, and one of the characters was a lawyer. he was pondering the idea of how moral he was, how he bent the rules, and it got me to think of what that means, and how different professions treat the matter of morality differently. in addition, it got me thinking that there are different levels of belief in the morality of what is done - surely the carpenter doesn't think about the meaning of what he does as much as the policeman might.

so how do we summarize this? in a magic quadrant. i stole the idea from gartner, but it works pretty good here. i wonder if they'll sue me. there is one thing i'd like to add: how the belief of the individual differs from the view of society, but i couldn't keep the graph simple and add that info. alas, it will have to work without it.

in any case, let me explain the axes and the meaning of each.

the horizontal axis describes morality. on the right lie the professions that are truly ethical, with their motivations and rewards being uncontroversial and generally agreed upon. to the left are the consequentialism, whose ends always justify the means. the means are almost always questionable and the ends are narrowly and selfishly beneficial, if that at all. those in the middle carry little or no moral value attached to their profession.

the vertical axis is how deeply the professional believes in his or her morality. to the top are those who strongly believe in the (a)morality of what they're doing, whereas at the bottom are those who cannot decide - or to whom it doesn't really matter. in the middle, of course, are those who, in terms of morality, don't feel much about what they do at all.

enjoy (click to enlarge).


update: there seems to be some confusion on the issue of the axes. my bad. the horizontal axis is the objective overview of the morality. the vertical axis is the subjective belief of the professionals.