There are those who regard specialization as one of the great empowering virtues of our culture. After all, many of our most splendid achievements are the fruit of the hard-won specialized knowledge of highly focused experts, not of interdisciplinary dilettantes. But while great accomplishment can certainly be credited to the best sort of narrow-mindedness, it must also be acknowledged that many of our culture’s worst intellectual, practical, and spiritual failures are likewise consequences (and not all of them unintended) of attending to the details of life (especially the physical details) while neglecting the Big Picture–indeed, in many cases while denying the possibility of there even being a Big Picture.

I am convinced that the Church and her neighbors are in dire need of well-educated generalists–men and women whose intellects and lives offer an alternative to the destructive tendencies of our age’s habit of hyperspecialization.

~Ken Myers, Mars Hill Audio June Letter

I think this is a pretty accurate call to holistic thinking in a modern atmosphere of atomized thought lives. At first glance I couldn’t help but to balk at this apparent about face from the last few interviews of the MHA journal focusing on focus and the need for attentiveness. But the more I think about it, the more I see the higher calling that is presented here.

It’s one of those paradoxes of responsibility; being called to the focused task of general thinking. I am on the backward pendulum swing of a professional career in very specialized niches of software and computer application. The narrow-mindedness of the “professional” can reduce the label to a slur. The professional who only becomes more efficient at doing the work of the profession may never have an opportunity to pause and ask better questions about how his or her work interacts with everything that is… well, the environment I suppose.

I am starting to gain an appreciation for the word “ecology” and just how applicable it is to areas of thought not usually thought of as an ecosystem. Coming up with ideas and efforts that play nice and encourage the best in everything and everyone else is a much more difficult task than simply becoming a “professional”.

However, coming up with the big master plan still feels a bit daunting and even presumptuous. Entering in to this generalizing, is the fun of dabbling in a bunch of activities and communities that share some connectedness and then just being observant about how they effect each other for better and for worse, adjusting yourself and your response… and repeat. Sounds like painting, film making, or an impromptu jazz session…

Categories: Professionalism, Mars Hill Audio