Specialists and Generalists – A look through the Back Door
[thoughts from ~burning woman~ by Sha’Tara]
"To exist is to stand out, away from the background," The Preacher said.
"You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your
own sanity in the judgment of your existence." [Children of Dune – Frank Herbert]
Machines – and with that I certainly include computers, not just mechanical monsters such as cars, cranes and combines – are extreme examples of “specialism” in relating to life in general. Machines, computers, are specialists, never, ever, generalists. They are designed and programmed to do one particular thing, and even when they appear to reason out answers, they are not reasoning, they are sorting through data. If something considered intelligent, or called intelligent, cannot dream, then it cannot, ever, enter the realm of philosophy or reason. The more specialist a thing – or person – is, the less understanding it must have.
The tendency to argue life from the point of view of the specialist leads to chaos. Specialists can never agree because agreement comes only from taking as broad a view of life as can be possible. Life operates through change and change is possible only through the generalist view. A specialist can never say, (and mean it!): “That is not working, therefore I must find another way to approach a solution to this problem.” The specialist becomes a specialist because he is convinced of the rightness of his tools through study, experimentation and application. A specialist is a believer. If his “solution” to a particular problem doesn’t work, he does not think to question his tools: the problem is caused by something else invading or contradicting his certainty. A medical specialist will never take personal responsibility for the lack of results in a patient's attempted cure. He is convinced that having had success in similar scenarios in other patients, that is proof positive that he is right. An unresponsive patient is at fault in some way. Perhaps his environment; perhaps his lifestyle; perhaps even his beliefs, but the unresponsive condition is never the fault of the specialist failing to see the broader picture. If the specialist ever admitted to himself that his “cure” was inadequate, or faulty in some way, thus leading to a debilitating condition within his patient, that would mean doubt; that his specialty, his tower of power, is assailable. The way out of this impasse is to banish the doubt, blame anything/anyone else and carry on with increased doggedness with the program. Put enough specialists in the “cure queue” and the patient and his problems are soon lost. The patient dies (end of problem) or he wanders off in search of more esoteric/exotic cures and is heard of no more.
While you can get away with this in most industries, including the very lucrative health industry along with the education industry which is totally in cahoots with the medical business by grinding out specialists on demand, there is a massive, if generally unseen, problem applying “specialism” to exploiting or ruling, a planet.
Allow me to quote some more: If you would be man (human) always – always – choose the uncertain over the certain. "Abandon certainty! That's life's deepest command. That's what life's all about. We're a probe into the unknown, into the uncertain.” (Paraphrase) and note this following, longer quote:
Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his universe. He must remain capable of saying: "There's no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we'll correct that when we come to it." The mentat-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: "Now what is this thing doing?" [Children of Dune – Frank Herbert]
The specialist would never dare choose the uncertain. To him, everything must be certain, therefore everything is rendered small, mechanical and boxed. To the generalist, everything must remain open-ended and as uncertain as the time of one’s death and any possible aftermath.
Oh yes, there have long been attempts to render death’s future as certain. Organized Religion was invented by the Matrix to produce the soporific post-death certainty. And for millennia, millions upon millions followed the false leaders of Religion. How much chaos did these specialists bring upon this world? Beyond anyone’s imagination! Do not think only of the historically recorded religious wars or their attendant genocides. Think of the billions of minds brainwashed into serving priests through rules and regulations that ultimately lost all contact with life’s reality.
Ah, but now we are passing that. No more plodding behind priests. or even politicians who, except for the questionable entertainment and gossip value they still provide the mindless TV-watching throng, are becoming obsolete; abandoned to their proclivity to depravity. Recklessly, the race trucks on, races on, gobbling up an entire planet’s reserves of life-sustaining resources; off-roading, i-phoning, street-rodding, x-boxing, bombing and poisoning, sport-watching its way into a drug-induced future; boldly entering the Google Glass New World, blindly, unquestionably following after a self-chosen technocratic predatory elite that determines the special reality of billions of milling muddled minds.
How does one know one has bought into the specialist mindset? Think of that single great sickness of relatively rich societies: hoarding. You have forty-two dresses, most of which you will never wear. You have thirty pairs of shoes when you need maybe three, counting the flip-flops, depending on the weather and whether you ever step outdoors to actually walk some destination farther than the bus stop or your parking spot. You have fifteen “power” suits, all exactly the same cut and practically the same colour. You have an assortment of ties to go with an assortment of shirts that all basically look the same. You have a half-dozen vehicles of various types, shapes, sizes and conditions to match your every special “need.” You have a house full of every available gadget, for cooking, for lounging, for entertainment and for show. And you rent storage space for those things you can’t fit in your personal space. Then you have your special rituals which mean less and less with each passing day. So another way of hoarding becomes getting louder, fatter, more garish and gross in expression; driven to expose a little meaningless life and its equally meaningless events on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever other special processes for self-aggrandizement and self-adulation the Matrix-Internet provides.
Why do you hoard? Because you’re a specialist. Everything in your life demands “special” treatment. And what does all that get you? Boredom, at first, then depression, because no matter how hard you try, how much you accumulate, all that stuff, all your possessions and all the bragging does not magically create the “special” you that it promised. That’s mind-death; personal chaos. There’s another word for chaos: entropy. “Entropy increases as matter and energy in the universe degrade to an ultimate state of inert uniformity." Replace the word “universe” with “individual” and there you have it.
Ah yes, good old inert uniformity: the eventual fulfillment of those seeking absolute completion. I like to think of it as heaven, where everything is complete; where no matter what you do (or think you are doing!) nothing can happen, ever. Why? Because nothing can happen where there is no longer any need and change is not permitted. Just something to think about.
Under specialism:
There can be no vision.
There can be no meaningful dreaming, just annoying bits and pieces of uncorrelated data, quickly and mercifully forgotten.
There can be no creativity, only cloning and copying.
There can be no individualism, only sheeple: mindless herds never understanding the reason for life nor their individual purpose in it.
While it appears to be paradoxical, generalism is the foundation for individualism and creativity whereas specialism creates hives and conformity.
The corporate matrix requires that one specialize in order to enter its hierarchy of control. Once in the hierarchy, one is required to continue to specialize further (renew certifications or get new ones) so that you become an effective, but impotant, member of the hive. Upward movement in the hive requires more and more specialization until those at the top are very narrow and motivated only by money.
We are a social lot and define ourselves by our work and our things in relation to others in our social circle. Work means bowing down to the matrix and collecting things is our only free act, but limited by our narrow perspective of the world through our neighborhood.
I broke free of the matrix when I dared to get college degrees in three different fields, thereby becoming a generalist and sabotaging my career in the matrix as a result. Having left the matrix last year, I am now free to gather ideas and memories and write what I want, regardless whether it makes money or not, to buy me more things that are useless anyway.
Great write, as usual. Looking forward to the book.
Ron
Love ya!
Jane
Love and Light
Lily
Cheers,
Dan
Jasmin Horst