Tuesday, April 3, 2012

No equilibrium for specialists

A successful state needs specialists. Even the ants and bees have maintained specialization as a successful model for millions of years. But the individuals in such a specialized state have to pay a high price, of which they are not even aware in general. This also applies to the human state.
Who for a long time always does the same subtask, necessarily undergoes withering of many other potential abilities. Free-living individuals, both animals and humans, have obviously a much larger space of experience, a lot more opportunities to realize themselves in life than those who do a good mission for their state. Actually those fulfilling their duties with optimum performance are well respected. But secretly many are toying with the all-around life of a non-specialized wanderer through all worlds thereby bringing with it, however, a significant financial loss to themselves. For this kind of life I decided myself, more and more.
Some conclusions came again and again back to the surface and it irritates me to repeat them much like a ruminant. But they seem to be really important and poorly anchored in the general thinking. Most of them I've tried to make clear on my website ars-una.net. But I am under no illusions that many people initially read and then also enter into a discussion about them.
Beyond the seemingly abstract ideas of those convictions, there are also conclusions that have a direct impact on one's own life and what I strive for. First and foremost it is the desire for equilibrium between the different spheres of life. Like an itinerant preacher I repeated that human beings consist of a head, a torso, abdomen and extremities. These four parts can be taken as perception and thinking, feelings and emotions, sex and power, and as activities and work. Each of these parts should have according to my opinion about the same significance and the same proportion in both the lifestyle and the communication with one another.
But what about it in practice? Essentially, only perceiving and thinking, often just memorizing predigested perceiving and thinking, comprise the school education. Emotions and feelings, however, dominate especially the daily life of so-called well-bred circles. The areas of sex and power are discussed only behind closed doors and acted out in restricted areas. Those who dedicate themselves to the working world or to any kind of intensive private activities, are usually doing this more or less as a full-time job. Of equilibrium in this sense there is generally no question.
What does this mean for the practical life? Lifestyle and communication have to do with each other and closely interact with each other. Both should therefore be considered correspondingly. Let us briefly consider the four parts separately.
Perceiving and thinking should play everywhere and throughout life up to senior age an important role. Throughout life, we must all and everywhere have the opportunity to learn. This is true not only for the head, but emotionally as well in the area of sex and power as well as at the workplace and during personal activities. Everyone should have the same opportunities in life and especially in new areas of life to look around and learn.
Purely emotional decisions and the world ruled mainly by sensations of everyday life in said well-bred circles require a good deal of skepticism and may not be taken for granted. Good observation and clear thinking must also be practiced daily by people tending to prefer feelings. Sex and power in them often take only a very small proportion in their life. To what extent work and activities in these circles have a priority, is often highly questionable. The free right to decide oneself, when and how much and what you want to work, is a desirable objective.
Sexual behavior and power relationships are taboo in a similar way very often, which is certainly an evil. On how problematic kind people deal with sexual problems such as, for example, fidelity, prostitution, homosexuality, and also with questionable power structures, such as the unequal treatment of minorities, mafia structures and rights of young and old people or even animals, is often unbelievable. This affects not only the lifestyle, but also their communication. Sexuality can be an integral part of human communication. That just today, when medical advances, helping that the transmission of diseases and unwanted pregnancies can largely be avoided, this possibility is even more preferable and rewarding, still meets with almost incredible opposition. And to what extent the discussion in the media about questionable power structures is prevented, shows up as another sad chapter.
In the working world, people are isolated from the other three areas, or they cut themselves off during their intensive activities from those, which often seems to be a real scandal. Anyone who does not dedicate himself or herself almost one hundred percent to the work is excluded and has greatly reduced opportunities. How their own activities as well can shoot out over the top, may be shown by computer enthusiasts and football fans, as examples. Independent thinking has usually a disadvantage compared to what the boss is saying. Careful observation of what happens in the executive suite is no less undesirable. Feelings should be retained. Anything sexual in the work area is frowned upon anyway.
Generally, the quest for a balanced lifestyle and in the mentioned sense as well of such a kind of communication is regarded with undisguised suspicion. To what extent the quality of life will suffer, often seems to be hardly aware.
The desire for equilibrium also concerns the search for an understanding of our entire world. A vastly exaggerated specialization seems to govern. On the website mentioned a balanced importance of art, religion and science is called desirable. This issue will not be discussed here again. What extent of resistance might be expected is shown by a lot of human experiences and examples, which are also not discussed here. Generally it can be said that many representatives of these areas are extremely reluctant to sincerely regard the other two areas as equivalent. Thereby the search for a comprising equilibrium in any attempt for a better understanding of our world is made much more difficult
If the term "equilibrium" is not liked by somebody as too much taken out of physics, it can be easily replaced by talking about the search for the middle path, which is used in the religious sphere, or by speaking about the search of balanced beauty, as it is known in arts. You ought to forgive the physicist for talking about equilibrium.
But the crucial point is the personal waiver of specialization. I am well aware that a modern state would collapse without specialists. But I think we can afford, if a certain proportion of the population can give up this kind of lifestyle more reminiscent of a type of slavery life.
Therefore in plain text: A quarter of my life I would like to devote to thinking and perceiving, and another quarter to the feelings and sensations, another quarter to the love life (don't get me into a discussion about the difference between love and sex!) and the power requirements, connected to it and not necessarily only the own ones, and ultimately a quarter of my time spent with activities such as traveling and always still working as I am now sitting at the computer and writing this text after some mental "work" into its memory and perhaps even a little transferring it to the memory of other people.
Exactly the same is valid for my desire wanting to keep trying to "understand" this incredible world. Anyone who has read my website (convictions), will know why I put the word "understand" in quotation marks. But the essence should be, by offering art, religion and sciences as three equal legs, to give to this project a firm footing. So I would like to dedicate myself to all three of them equally. A specialist will find very little of equilibrium if it is understood this way.

(Remark concerning the translation: Of course, in English many people would prefer to talk about balance instead of equilibrium. It is avoided thereby to give a higher ranking to economics.)

© Hans. J. Unsoeld, 2012