something special

A human being 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, cooperate, 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.

--Science fiction pioneer Robert A. Heinlein, in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long


In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

--Karl Marx

AS AN ECONOMIST, trained in the soup of Neo-Classical theory, I'm obligated to turn up my nose at this brand of jack-of-all-trades-ism. Specialization allows workers to focus on a task, and by practise and training, to shave precious resources from the total production cost of the finished whatzit. In so doing, man can turn his finite resources into ever more whatzits, and thus he creates wealth. By contrast, since every human is not equally predisposed toward efficiency in butchering hogs as in programming computers, when Heinlein's aesthetics demand that everyone be capable of doing both, what they really require is that a man suited to be a butcher is only sometimes a butcher and other times a programmer--which means, economically speaking, that while he is programming, he is wasting productive capacity and ought to be butchering instead. (There is, of course, a conceivable if hard-to-measure cost to the repetitive stress injuries, boredom, errors, and alienation the worker experiences. But the system seems to work, especially when you factor in clever systems designed to minimize these costs.) Besides that, the resources required to train an individual in dozens of careers would be effectively sunk. Economically speaking, I have few doubts.

But as a romantic, Heinlein's vision appeals to me. On a deceptively fundamental level, it's simply cooler to know how to do things than to be helpless. Multiskilledness, in the way Heinlein describes, means being prepared--and anyone who's read a few of his novels knows that his characters are appealing because they know everything and know how to do everything. We might call this the MacGyver Relation, or, if you prefer, the Renaissance Factor: the more situations you are equipped to handle, the more impressive you are. More importantly, I think it seems more human. We like to imagine that the power of man's mind is infinitely malleable; the same spirit we bring to painting should function, with training, as well in politics or poetry. Man is not a tuned component in an efficient system, our souls cry: he is a creature of the infinite, and his works must be as prismatic and many-splendoured as the divine cloth from which he was cut. The geniuses of the past have been philosophers in the morning, mathematicians in the afternoon, artists at sunset and astronomers at night--and we can only shake our heads and wonder where that kind of man has gone.

This is not to say that a person with exceptional skill in one field is not impressive or to be admired. Perhaps both may serve the tribe. Da Vinci was great, of course, but I suspect Michael Phelps would not be greater if he were a poorer swimmer who also dabbled in mathematics. Still, there is a secret scorn reserved for those geniuses whose gifts act only in one direction. They may be admitted into legend, and stand as testaments to the upper reaches of human achievement, but by the unidirectionality of their genius, they are also freakish, disproportionate, grotesque. We can all look at Phelps and say--"sure, but can he play the guitar? or pick a lock, or beat my high score in Tetris?" Those one-trick geniuses are easily trumped; their myriad humanities make them small. And even this applies only if one is lucky enough to be a genius, at least. For most of us, the real choice is between mediocrity in one field and mediocrity in many. The world could at least grant us the freedom to bumble in more flexible circumstances.

It will already be apparent to the reader that our society's education process, beginning in earnest at the undergraduate level, is a way to sharpen the student into the finest possible edge; to prepare him as well as possible for work in this field or that but never both, according to the law laid down by Adam Smith more than two centuries ago. To be sure, niceties like interdisciplinary programs and interfaculty degrees are available, with the aim to develop more than one side of the mind--but they are, at best, limited in scope. Certainly a "Bachelor of Everything", of the sort Heinlein and Marx might have imagined, is not possible in this system and age.

The specialized human is a precisely tuned creature of an efficient system: he cannot, from morning to night, change his role at his whim; that kind of freedom he offers at the altar of efficiency in exchange for material gain. For Marx, this constitutes alienation; for Heinlein, it is weakness and failure to achieve full humanity. For me specialization is a straitjacket. The cost of efficiency is the loss of flexibility of mind; it is the stifling of an infinity of icgyabls and the consequent death of many worlds of possibility. Having consented to the bargain and optimized himself to accomplish a task, he signs away his right to the diverse life Heinlein and Marx yearned for. That may be something we choose to accept--for our lives are forged precisely by this process; any decision closes a million doors. But we should be aware of it, individually and as a society.

Here enters what a dear friend aptly called the "tyranny of choice". Our lives are privileged; we can choose from hundreds of directions--specialities--which branch from this point into innumerable possibilities. The trouble lies in knowing that that choice is, if not final, at least weighty: how can I choose which of my selves I want to kill?