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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Narrow focus causes one to see a specific tree and miss the sunset

By David McElroy · July 1, 2019

I’m a generalist in a world which loves specialists. I’m interested in the entire forest, not just knowing everything about one or two random trees.

When I look up into the sky — such as in this photo I took in Trussville, Ala., six years ago — I see an integrated whole. I don’t focus on one or two trees. I don’t choose a specific cloud and want to study that cloud to the exclusion of the rest. I see beauty in the whole which wouldn’t exist in any particular part by itself.

But our world is set up today for specialists. We’re told that specialists are worth more money and that they have deeper knowledge. We have all benefited from the knowledge and training of specialists in many ways, but we’ve reached the point at which society doesn’t much understand the value of seeing how the many pieces of the whole fit together.

I’ve always been envious of people who could describe what they “are” in one word — a teacher, an accountant, a reporter, a mechanic, a plumber and so forth. No one word fits me. It never has. But I’ve recently realized that I’ve been looking at this the wrong way. The world has a serious need for specialists, but the people who understand what’s going on — who can help us find meaning and help dig us out of the hole in which we find ourselves — are the generalists. Like me.

It’s funny how we typically define ourselves in terms of what other people are willing to pay us to do, rather than in terms of what we intrinsically feel like on the inside. Do we do that because it’s just the social norm? Or do we do it because most of us have never taken the trouble to figure out what we really are? I’m not sure. I do know, though, that it’s impossible to come up with one word to say what I am.

An an ex-girlfriend used to be fond of telling me, “You’re a hexagonal peg in a world where you’re expected to be either a round peg or a square peg. You’re more complex than what most people are prepared to understand.”

About a month ago, I read David Epstein’s new book, “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.” He acknowledges the value of specialists in narrow fields, but he shows example after example of how real understanding and real breakthroughs — even in hard sciences — come from people who have a wide range of experience. People who understand multiple things often find ways of finding solutions in one field by taking analogies from another. I have a few quibbles with him, but the overall thrust of the book is excellent. (Here’s an article about the book if you’d like to decide whether to read it.)

Our world is becoming more specialized, both in the career sense and in the cultural sense. People are so specialized that even those in closely related jobs or subcultures misunderstand each other. That’s very true in work situations — which can make it more difficult to find solutions to hard problems — but it might be even more dangerous that we’re dividing into narrower and narrower subcultures, each of which believes its way should be the only way.

The people of almost every little subculture adopt the peculiar views and assumptions of their subculture. They become specialists in that tiny range of human knowledge, but they know almost nothing outside of that very limited range — even though they feel positively brilliant and have no idea how ignorant they are about the broader world.

As a generalist who’s trapped in a specialist world, I’m biased, but I think we’re all better off when we see far more of the forest — and understand how the trees all interact and form an ecosystem — than when we fixate on any one tree.

Social media seems to pigeonhole people by narrow interests. These are the Trump lovers over here and the Trump haters over there. Those are the dog people over there. And the car enthusiasts hang out right here. The fundamentalist Christians talk to each other — and nobody else — in this narrow place. And don’t go over there, because it’s for the fitness nuts.

The system somehow tries to force people to choose some specialist identity to take on, even as a cultural label.

A lot of things interest me but I don’t want to be defined by any one of them. The ability to segment by interests sounded good in theory when I heard the promise of the Internet years ago, but I think a lot of people are getting such tunnel vision that they’re no longer well-rounded.

The great science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein — who wrote some of my favorite books of youth — said something which I love on this subject.

“A human being,” Heinlein wrote, “should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, co-operate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

I’m not as broadly capable as what Heinlein suggests. I suspect people of a few generations ago were far closer to what he describes. But even though my interests and experience aren’t as broad as what Heinlein says they should be, most people’s are even more narrow.

We live in a world in which people become very proficient in one narrow thing. This gives them confidence in themselves and makes them feel like experts. But they become so myopic that they don’t see how little they know — and this is dangerous.

In the years to come — which I believe will bring about terrible social and economic conditions — your specialist knowledge is going to be essentially worthless. We need more people who understand the broader world and how more things interconnect.

In the terms of my ex-girlfriend, we need more hexagonal pegs. While the square pegs and the round pegs fight it out, the hexagonal pegs might just find the way to survive and thrive in a more civilized way.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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