I am essentially a lazy person. I do not mean that I abhor school assignments or performing my duties and my places of employment. The contrary, I relish in these tasks, often taking time to ensure that they are completed to the very best of my ability, and taking pride in their end form. My laziness is focused more on what I seem incapable of achieving; a truly comprehensive mind set. This is a problem that I have identified with my entire generation, not just me, and I believe that it is a problem that has increased over the past two or three generations.
What got me thinking about this issue was a little book by Buckminster Fuller entitled "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth". It is a slight and narrow tome with thin pages working against large font to produce something that can be read, ultimately, in a day or two. My father gave it to me, which is normally a very bad indicator of literary merit. My father loves older books, especially older books which have not fallen in the limelight of artistic celebration or scholarly study over the years. He loves older books that have been forgotten, their authors long dead, their ideas strange and esoteric. A biography of Wernher von Braun, a second-hand account of the Lewis and Clark adventures, a guide to the geology of Northern New England, and books like this from futurist, poet, and part-time engineer Buckminster Fuller. In the early 20th century, Fuller was an influential character in the American post-industrial movement. This I say, not because it is said in the book or on his jacket, but because it is what I think. You see, Buckminster was most active in the years after World War II, in a time when American industry was flourishing, propelled in large part by a strongly growing population, post-war economic stimulus, and the boom in privatized manufacturing of new technology inspired by the desperate and chaotic advances made during the war. Throughout this period, Buckminster Fuller espoused a view of the world that was set firmly with its eyes facing forward, and in many instances too far forward for his colleagues and coworkers. Many of his ideas, the geodesic dome for instance, were ridiculed at the time. It was only years later that this groundbreaking geometric design would be found as a naturally induced isotope of carbon atoms strung together. I think my father, who has always been socially awkward and distrustful of organized religion, organized politics, and organized education, finds some sort of common ground with this man, and is hungry for a similar time of posthumos vindication.
The main essence of Fuller's argument in this book, spelled out in many long, run-on, unnecessarily verbose sentences is this: man has strayed away from his essential "comprehensive" roots, in favor of extreme specialization. The original essence of man which has inspired most great accomplishments (Fuller argues), is the ability to think about and maintain a wide variety of different skill sets. His oft-used example is that of the ancient sailor. These original mariners were tasked with learning how to predict weather, navigate, maintain a ship, collect food and water etc. And because the proliferation of large sailing ships sparked the first explosion of human growth (both geographically and culturally), there certainly must be some connection between these men who maintained "comprehensive skill sets and understandings", and the very basic essence of human advancement.
Of course there are those who would argue that correlation does not indicate causation, but Fuller disregards these potential naysayers with the same stubborn and spectacular bull-headedness that I expect out of my father. He goes on to argue that over time, our flawed educational process has instilled in our people the idea that increased specialization is a good thing. That instead of learning how to fix things, people have learned how to fix one specific type of thing, cars for instance, and instead of learning how to fix all cars, we now know how to only fix domestic or imported, etc. etc. Its a very convincing argument and Fuller sells it very well. I may be predisposed to agree with him because I have felt myself grate against this idea of specialization during my own college experience. I am not just an Anthropology major, I am an Anthropology major with an archaeology focus. And I do not have a general archaeology focus, but rather a zooarchaeological focus. And not just a general zooarchaeological focus, because my research has been restricted, for the most part, to a certain region and time period. So you see, when I graduate from here next Spring, I will know quite a lot about a few things and very little about most things.
The desire to be a comprehensive human is, I believe, one of the most inherently positive character traits a person can have. I believe I have it. I also believe I am losing it. And this is why I say I am lazy. For me, one of the most "comprehensive" things I can do is learn about an issue, form an opinion about it, articulate my opinion with the written or spoken word, and present my idea to others for analysis and discussion. While my ability to articulate has improved as I have gotten older, the inclination to seek out these initial issues has decreased dramatically. Sure, I read the newspaper and watch TV but my eyes and ears only perk up when a story comes along that I already have personal experience with. I am a Democrat, so I surround myself with stories of awful Republicans because I am comfortable with this opinion-forming route. It is a well worn, and oft-traveled path for my mind, and so it is easier for me to stay in and grate a deeper ravine into my mind. And the same time, it will be harder to climb out later if I ever need to change my opinion about something. This sort of stability is a good thing if you are an older person who needs to make consistent and stable decisions (a public servant for example). I believe this process is a very bad thing if you are like me, a young person who is just now still forming opinions and trying to find out "what kind of person am I?". I dislike this idea very much, and because I can recognize it in myself, I dislike it even more. It is a tumor, but in many ways it is worse, because nobody can do anything about it except for myself.
And as I have said before, I am a lazy person.
