In the forests of the southern highlands, a short drive from where I live, up and over the Illawarra escarpment, you will find a unique resident. The Glossy Black-Cockatoo is the smallest of Australia’s five Cockatoo species, attaining a length of only 50cm when fully grown. Vibrant red and yellow markings on its cheeks, tail and wings characterise its plumage. Among all the cockatoos, and possibly all birds, the Glossy Black-Cockatoo is unique in that it feeds exclusively on the seeds found inside the cones of the she-oak tree. In fact, some Glossy Blacks are known to feed on only one particular tree over the course of their life. The Glossy Black-Cockatoo is a specialist.
Often voted the greatest sport book of all time is a work by Trinidadian thinker and author CLR James, titled Beyond a Boundary. Ostensibly about cricket, it always polls well in best book lists because it really isn’t about cricket. Well, it is, but the central question that James asks in the book is applicable to much more than the gentlemen’s game. And that question is “What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?”
James gives a potted history of cricket in the West Indies, its worth as a social force, its place in the British Empire, the meaning the game held for a young black man growing up learning about the world, and the significance that cricket held for the nations of the Caribbean as they saw their black superstars venture out from their islands and conquer not just their colonizers but the whole world. James’ conclusion is this: if you only know cricket then you do not know cricket.
Probably Italy’s most famous failed pasta maker is a man by the name of Leonardo Da Vinci. In the 15th century he attempted to design and build a pasta maker that would churn out strings of pasta on an industrial scale. He failed, but his early failures were the stepping stones for others to follow upon.
Da Vinci probably didn’t dwell long on that failure. In between running a restaurant, inventing other machines, such as an early version of the military tank, and doing a bit of sketching and painting, he managed to keep himself pretty busy. Too busy in fact to finish all his projects.
There is a work by Da Vinci that hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Adoration of the Magi. It is at best, half-finished. But two things are noticeable in this painting. One is the obvious hand of a genius at work, the lines, the composition, the captured movement. The second is that standing before it, I could almost recognise the moment that Da Vinci got bored with it and moved onto other things.
Da Vinci was famous for his unerringly accurate depictions of the human body. His most famous piece, Vitruvian Man, is equal parts science and art. Da Vinci’s knowledge of the human body was attained by dissecting cadavers. For his art, he needed to understand how the human body worked, how it moved. To be a great artist, Leonardo needed to know more than art. Da Vinci, needless to say, was a generalist. A highly talented generalist, but a generalist all the same.
The Glossy Black-Cockatoo is in trouble. The she-oak tree it depends on, its only food source, is disappearing, a victim of habitat destruction but also climate change. Large swathes of food bearing trees have been wiped out. To save the Glossy Black will require knowledge of climate change, deforestation, conservation, ecology, demographics and many other things besides. It is a complex problem.
Like those of the Glossy Black-Cockatoo, the problems we face are becoming more complex. But as the world’s problems become more complex we are, unwillingly, becoming more specialised.
Our interests are being catered to by algorithms that give us more of what we already know. More of what we like. They deepen rather than broaden our knowledge. I would much prefer to go down paths of mystery that I may enjoy or hate, but nevertheless allow me to pick up bits of information that may be useful in some future unforeseen context. Or they may be completely useless. It doesn’t matter. The point is that by collecting more and diverse information as I move through life, I am futureproofing myself against a more diverse range of future problems.
We will always need the specialists, the people that are laser focused, that dedicate their life to knowing everything there is to know about one thing. And though we rely on the specialist to obtain information, it will be to the generalist we turn to apply that information to the problems we face. For what hope do we have of saving the Glossy Black if all we know is the Glossy Black?
That is all for this year folks. I am taking a bit of a break to focus on some exciting writing projects I am working on. Many thanks for accompanying me here and for your support over the course of the year. Stay safe, stay kind and see you in 2024.
The Generalist in His Labyrinth