The Case for Renaissance (Wo)Men in a Sea of Specialists
I am a Renaissance Woman.
I have been since I can remember. Curiosities running wild. Interests abounding. One day, I believe I can be a dancer. Another day, I play sports at an elite level. Today I want to write philosophy, tomorrow fiction, the next day music. And while many of us dream big dreams, that’s not what drives me. What drives me is an insatiable need to understand how things work. If it’s a relationship, I want to know what drives people. If it’s a timing belt on my car, I want to know how the engine itself runs. If I’m cooking at home and a recipe calls for baking soda and not baking powder, I want to know why and to what end. If I have a rash, I want to understand the biology of it and, ultimately, diagnose myself.
I simply need to know. Not want to know; I need to know.
And I see beauty in the knowing. In and of itself, I believe wisdom is a beautiful gift. Drawing together the patterns of nature (like honeycombs being fractals being art at La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona) and people makes my life worth living. Understanding the nuance of time and place as it manifests itself in our daily world makes my own little world go around. It has taken me a long time to realize that not all people think or live this way. In fact, most do not. In fact, most cannot.
The pressure of expertise prevents us from seeking well-rounded knowledge.
We can and should argue about why this is but, like eras that saw the rise of civilization, the rise of mechanization, the rise of axes of power, we are in an age witnessing the rise of the expert as a social force force unto itself. Perhaps because of technological development both in terms of consumption and in terms of maintenance or because people selling things have to justify their unique existence somehow, the world seems enamored with the idea of expertise. When even just twenty years ago, having a college degree in arts and sciences or education was proof enough of skill, now to get a job writing press releases for a non-profit, showing proof of a marketing degree (masters preferred) in some bogus sub-category like print-centered communication with a minor in business writing for public audiences doesn’t really guarantee you’ll even get an interview. Whereas once it was enough to have apprenticed with a gifted musician or singer to learn the trade, now we have massive numbers of students graduating with masters degrees in ethno-musical vocal performance. Of course, this is function of growing pressure for expertise and of schools desperate to attract more students to its fine hallows to pay exorbitant tuitions for a paper that says they can sing…or write a functional sentence.
I can talk all day long about corrupt systems designed to increase capital but that misses this point here which is: in a world that so deeply values technical expertise and churns out seas of “highly trained” niche experts in such narrowly defined and restrictive spaces, the concept of the Renaissance man or women is lost. That life of curiosity and interests, trial and error, wandering lost and then finding a new trail, is no longer an option unless it is a hobby. Unless it becomes something you do in your free time or on weekends, it is all but gone. If you think that’s false, send your resume to a professional resume writer. You might have excellent, home-grown coding skills and excel at calligraphy and poetry but you’re going to have to pick what’s important to you for that next job. And if it doesn’t involve management potential and team-oriented work style, forget it. And, for god’s sake, don’t ever suggest you do interesting things outside of work. That may be mistaken for lack of professional focus.
This attitude is not what convinced Leonardo to invent the helicopter and paint the Mona Lisa.
No, he was able and, in fact, lauded [gasp], for what we would consider frivolity today. Our rationale always falls along the lines of, “His helicopter would’ve been better if he had just picked engineering and gone with it.” I weep at the notion that kids in middle school are now often required to identify a career path so they can be prepared to excel at all levels of schooling. What are we doing?
The fact is we need Renaissance men and women. The better fact is that all men and women should be encouraged to be Renaissance men and women but if that can’t be then I’ll argue for at least needing them to live alongside the experts. We need explorers. This doesn’t mean people who can land something on Mars (although that’s nice we have those). We need people to push the limits in on themselves, break through barriers that somehow artificially separate things, or ideas, or people that need not be separated. We need those who delight in knowing a little bit (or a medium bit) about lots of things. We need the broad and far knowledge as much as we need the narrow and deep knowledge. We need painters who understand why math is important. We need athletes to think about physics. We need all people to understand the human connection better and why that breaks so often and how best to fix it.
We need the dreamers of dreams. We need thinkers of thoughts. We need less emojis. We need less experts.
If you can kick ass at Trivial Pursuit, you know you’re on the right track.
It won’t get you a job and probably won’t get you elected for office. But the world will never out-pace you.
