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Day 278 - Feb 25 - Home, CA

Posted by Dave Rat on

OK, I fly tomorrow and will get back on the sound and travel thing and in the mean time, since I am trapped in a ponder, I may as well share it.

**** Ponderings ****

Jack of all trades versus master of one. Whether to be the specialist or the multipurpose man.

It seems I constantly find myself cycling between round and around I go like a tennis ball caught in the spokes. Left to my own devices without outside influence, curiosity so easily draws me into hyper focus on projects that I drill into to the point of satisfaction or frustration, where I set it aside till a time when returning will bring further results. A way I have learned to tear myself away to maintain a grasp on my surrounding life, like trying to keep a multitude of spinning tops in motion. All too many times I have lifted my eyes from an immersion in the timeless sensation of being meditationally lost in a project, only to find my body starving, bills unpaid and loved ones pondering where I have wandered off to. Self imposed moderation. I force me to stop and look around, take a break, breath, remember to breath. The hangover is so much more bearable when fresh water is mixed in at regular intervals. Dilution, maintaining a perspective, holding onto a thread to find my way back and to remember not to get lost. Lost, as if anyone can actually truly mentally return to a spot they were once before now. As if going back was an option rather than an illusion. My efforts made to hold onto my bearings, pay attention and refine the surrounding skill-sets that allows me to adapt to the world around me in a more versatile way. Yet I wonder. I wonder when my value truly is. For that matter any of us. If there were two villages, one full of multipurpose villagers, each able to do nearly every task pretty darn well but not great and another village full of specialists where each person was a master at a particular craft and not so good at everything else, which village would I prefer to live? Which village would I more likely belong? It seems the small villages could start as multipurpose and as they grew, the specialists would increase. Do I allow me to be a specialist or strive to be versatilist? It seems society rewards the highest praise upon the specialists yet the specialists are also the least stable in a wide variety of situations. It of reminds me of biologists speaking of highly evolved specialized species and how they are so easily threatened with extinction. So, I just now do a Google search on "highly evolved specialized species extinction" and look what I find.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0147%28194303%2F04%2977%3A769%3C133%3ASAE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6&size=LARGE#abstract

Somehow though they seem to come up with humans specialized to the point of extincting themselves which very well may be the case but there is another layer. The creations by the hyper-specialized thinkers, defy time. Permeating all modern cultures are revered items and creations filling museums that are the result of absurdly time sponging efforts in various mind boggling directions. The unimaginable survival of what should be extinct. Incomprehensible creations, when each of our day today lives absorb our existences and yet somehow a some human finds time a spare decade to create monstrosity without forgetting to stay alive in the mean time. Decision decisions, hmmm.

http://sodarace.net/index.jsp

http://www.strandbeest.com/

**** End Ponderings ****

Ok, back to recuperating,

Dave Rat

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Millerworld on :

A wise man once told me that a specialist was someone who learnt more and more about less and less, until eventually, they knew everything about nothing....

marco (yespa) on :

i think tha human life is so short and becoming a specialist isn't worth at all, but it's a very hard question.

HowdThatTaste on :

hey dave, see/hear ya tomorrow in chicago! if you get a chance to talk to the lampies, put a request in to light up row 19 on the floor! keep on bloggin'! and the answer is, "the multi-purpose village". not because its better than the other, its because the "specialist village" is bad bad bad. One instance, there, eventually, people have children and parents teach their siblings their special trade, but, one day a sibling isn't gonna want to do that trade, but he's forced too, etc... soon, you have a village full of specilist that hate their jobs. yuck. on the flip side, multipurpose land would fair better in an attack. if the specialists loose their great warrior chief, they are left to crumble, yet the mulitpurposians can shift their combined skills to 'power in numbers', etc. and of course, multipurposians would be more social and like working in groups, etc. There would be less loners and sex offenders and weirdos. no?

sunshine on :

i think you're a very special versatilist

Mikey B on :

More Introflectraspektion!! Have a good trip. Bangin that Nasty Funk!!!

luzmono on :

know something about evrything, and everything about something

rex on :

i seen this wooden thing before its kinetic which makes it that much cooler all it needs is a little push you should see some of the other things they build for burning man it was amazing this huge mountain like thing made of wood..:)

Julie on :

Hey Roadies...just a heads up from iowa...blizzard warnings...ice sleet...heavy snow wind...thru friday 6 p.m...timing of storm sucks...be careful flying in..love jules...

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