The Life Pursuit(s)
I’ve been thinking of the divide between generalists and specialists a lot lately, and to me there are two competing forces at work.
Where the poptimists get it wrong is the assumption that we want to basically live lives of divine frivolity, that effectively we are consumers first and foremost who want an endless array of semi-novel, heavily mediated, “experiences”, a dizzy, multicoloured kaleidoscope as opposed to some kind of a life project/investment of all our faculties/emotions in something “meaningful”, by which I mean something that subordinates bright, eclectic, clued up knowingness to just actually knowing something, which subordinates range to depth. I know a little of everything (and will therefore never be completely caught off guard/have my lack of clued-upness exposed) for, I know a few, or one thing, deeply. (pulled from here)
The interesting leaping-off-point, here, is what that “one thing” is. I think a lot of writers would admit that they’re only great at one thing and suck at nearly all else? Well, “suck” is probably too strong a word. I’ll admit that writing is the only thing I’m worth any salt at. There are very few Ted Williamses in the world (best hitter ever/kick-ass fighter pilot) and Jim Browns (best running back ever/the best lacrosse players ever) and Cordwainer Smiths (Rediscovery of Man/Psychological Warfare) in the world, though maybe I’m wrong.
Here’s the paradox though–the more single-minded I’ve been about my writing, the more I’ve been interested in its connections to other disciplines. Not quite “common threads” but rather underground wiring from one project to another. An exchange of pulses and currents takes place. For a long time I’d sequestered my brain from fiction-parts and poetry-parts. “Wiring” those two parts together, finding the common speculative elements in both, has been some of the most humbling and right-feeling writing I’ve done in all my life (not that much of it is for public consumption yet. BTW, my wife will probably find this “wiring” metaphor amusing, considering I’m about as non-handyperson as you can get, and she’s really good at wiring-type stuff). Then throw two more recent passions into the mix–speculative philosophy and gaming. (Although, again, gaming is an old passion, perhaps rearticulated and rewired in my head as yet another form of speculative process.)
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There is a speculative intent here, a way of writing and looking at the world–or at least a way at looking at content and source materials. Is one being a generalist or specialist in finding these connections?
It’s getting mighty crowded in here, and this is one of those years where I want hole up in a little shack for, basically, a month or more and just catch up with my reading. Holes in my knowledge large enough to drive trucks through.
The 64,000 dollar question–one of them, at least: More than just “what is a philosophy of a game”–how can a game be philosophy?
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To use another metaphor, it’s like a reverse continental drift. This is especially daunting when it comes to speculative philosophy–continents that I didn’t know existed are coming fast on the starboard-side. Pangaea or bust! (”COLLAPSE operates its war against good sense not through romantic flight but through the formal insanity secreted in the depths of the rational”–the latter half of that might be as good of a definition of SF as I can think of…ok, with maybe a little romantic flight thrown in.)
These continents aren’t necessarily going to meld together easily.
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What I’d like to counterbalance with the first quote I pulled is a definite suspicion of overspecialization that I have. In today’s workplace, the decay of critical thinking skills (really bearing the fruit, now, of when this article was published in 1995), the increasing corporate suspicion of vacation (which brings about a valorization of exhaustion and overproductivity), the rewarding of incuriosity…all of these different factors contribute to a commoditization of experience and an experiential life. With this kind of tunnel vision, maybe one doesn’t have to see that there are other ways to live and organize one’s life.
Overspecialization sold as a kind of survival tactic.
These factors drain the marshland in which writing, amphibious and rather mucky, resides. (Speculative writing for me, but for you…whatever floats your boat upon these waters. Just be sure to bring a steering pole; the rudder doesn’t work readily.)
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“Overspecialization…has been described as the evolution of highly complex and ecologically constraining habits that convey a selective advantage to individuals, but lead to a higher probability of the extinction of the species by restricting the ability of the species to withstand environmental change.” (link here)
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So: how to throw oneself into a life pursuit without fossilizing the parameters of what one experiences.
To have a generalist’s heart and a specialist’s tooth-and-claw.
I think I’ve rambled in my own space about some of these things enough that I won’t waste more space on them here…
But I think I prefer to think in terms of depth and breadth, rather than in terms of generalist and specialist. Because the latter seems limiting: you have to choose.
And it’s entirely possible that part of my resistance to that is that when I choose, I come down way hard on the generalist side of things. I am not great at _anything._ I am capable-to-good at all sorts of things.
But I don’t think that being a generalist has to mean spreading yourself too thin. Depth and breadth. Because I would take this:
“Here’s the paradox though–the more single-minded I’ve been about my writing, the more I’ve been interested in its connections to other disciplines.”
a step further, and say that intense pursuit of any one thing can, if you go about it in the right way, become the pursuit of everything.
Your entry on specialization has hit me home in a huge way. Great article. I think about this constantly. Everywhere I turn it seems that there is a big disincentive to learn more than one thing. That is, there is a huge monetary and social rewards to overspecialization. This is because as humans, we can only think of one thing at a time, and when we are switching between two different things, there is someone out there who is working on that one thing. Therefore, they are now twice as far ahead of us. If you do more than two things then forget it.
Part of the problem is that each field is getting deeper and deeper so there’s more to learn.
I wonder why anyone would want to do more than one thing seeing the pain it is. Also, you must realize that since you can only think of one thing at a time, it makes no real difference how many things you know how to do because you are only doing that one thing right now. Make a lot of money doing that one thing and pay specialists in other areas to do all the other things for you such as cook and raise your children.
I have not lived up to this by any stretch of the imagination. I know lots of things about lots of things, but not enough to be really good at anything. Knowing only one thing is boring. Also, specialization can be taken to a silly extreme. Many of us want to spend time with children, to cook, to make art, and to learn about history. For each task there is a good reason to be good at it, and other tasks don’t really substitute well. We can’t all afford live-in cooks. We like to cook, but only for part of the day.
We’ll never make a living learning about the history of Syria because we are not that interested to go to history school, but damned it sure is interesting to read before we go to sleep. And some fields such as nursing mean you have to be good at more than one thing just to do one job.
The best part, of course is where the fields we like overlap. I write software to keep track of my story submissions, for example. I think it can be really neurotic to suppress curiosity for the whole world just to be an expert in such a tiny part of a field that nobody ever heard of. Most creative people I know—and these are in science as well as the arts—are interested in more than one field. Finally, we have to ask ourselves why do we live, I think in part it is to be free and happy. What kind of freedom is found in chaining ourselves to a field that was picked for us when we were in high school?
Ah, shucks, I’m just a dilettante.