TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2015: NOTE TO FILE

Confessions of a Generalist

How to render yourself valueless

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: AUTODIDACT, FROM THE WIRES, HISTORY, ON THE ROAD, FEET OF THE MASTERS

Abstract: Another self-indulgent retrospective occasioned by the birthday it was written on. I confess to being a know-nothing by demonstration.

TUCSON (A-P) — I do not have a degree in General Studies. Back in the day, when students were not seen as consumers and offered what they wanted, I just took whatever classes seemed of interest and sat in on others while I paid my own way through three years of community college. It was cheap, so inexpensive that I was able to spend summers as a migrant farmworker and live the rest of the year in the back of a 1954 Ford pickup in a plywood shell I had designed and built.

Still, I came to wonder why I was paying to take classes when I could feed directly from the trough of knowledge—libraries. This was pre-internet, so I moved to a student ghetto near a major university, lived on the streets in my truck, and spent my days and much of my evenings in the library (the 9-story library with open stacks closed at 11 pm). My studies were interrupted by walks, kite flying, student recitals, plays, open discussion groups which I did not participate in (I didn't know enough to have an opinion), and free movies. I was not a "real" student and never presumed to socialize with those who were. Parties seemed popular, but I never went to any. I once momentarily lost my voice from several months of disuse.

I basically wandered the stacks and read such books as were mentioned approvingly in the better books I read. As the years passed, I came to read most of the books that seemed to merit consideration. I cultivated no special interests: history, literature, philosophy, math, religion, mythology, humanities, et al., though I suppose science (all) was a special interest. Still, any lack of interest seemed a confession of betrayal. To be interested in anything less than life, the universe and everything is a betrayal of the intellect.

After about six years of library studies I decided, while in a boxcar watching the Oregon countryside go past, to try getting a degree or two in some area of special knowledge that would make me seem useful (I thought of living in other parts of the world as a volunteer ag advisor/expert, maybe Peace Corp). My summers had been spent as a Road Scholar as I hitch-hiked and rode the rails to follow the migrant farmworker path. Over the years I made more money than I spent even though when doing piecework I always made less than the minimum wage and never more if paid by the hour. A side-effect of my Road Studies was that I could pay my way through several years of study at a State University (CalPoly SLO).

For a time I was a real student, which came with the 'right' to complain. For the first year or two the library had all current periodicals/magazines/journals on display. My habit was to browse the covers of all of them, in all fields of inquiry, and dip into the offerings. Then the librarians decided to only put some offerings on display where a generalist might see them without asking to. Specialists would read their journal, which no one else would/could have an interest in, and it made sense to put on display only popular magazines, like Psychology Today or Scientific American, where the masses might fold or somehow damage a page by turning it. I complained to the librarians, but no cogent reason for the change was offered. There was some concern of 'damage' and to 'protect' the current publications from casual users who might do something. At any rate, the possibility of browsing ended. As a trouble making malcontent I wrote a letter to the editor of the school newspaper to protest,which got me a meeting with the head librarian who noted I could always ask to see any journal (and maybe not wait 'long' to be handed it), but apparently too few felt impacted by the change in policy. This was before the Internet thing and whatever the policy gained exceeded the alleged harm done to people like me who couldn't figure what information they should limit themselves to. Schiller had said something about 'the very gods themselves' contending in vain, so I wasn't alone.

I considered the months spent on-the-road (Kerouac seemed like a pretender) as an essential counterbalance to the months of reading tomes. I took my higher education where I found it, and some teachers on the road rivaled the best of the best professors and authors. I suppose an example should be offered.

It was late season, I was picking apples in a camp near Wenatchee, WA, not far from the Canadian border. It was not crowded and we each got our own cabin. My modus operandi was to be myself—a poor, dumb, ignorant SOB of a white boy. But I would show interest when spoken to, as one wanting to learn. I rarely said anything and never opined, as I knew I knew nothing. To speak is to repeat what you think you know, which excludes the possibility of learning anything.

The only distinction I achieved as a farmworker happened under a camper shell on the back of a pick-up at 4:30 AM on the way out to the fields to chop cotton near Bakersfield. Someone noted, "Que bueño, we have a spicy crew today: Chili, salt, and pepper." The black guys were the pepper and I was the salt.

Some, mostly old men, would take an interest. They told me what they would like to have been able to tell themselves when they were clueless youths. I got to hear what I might say to myself were I to live as long as they who were graduate students of the University of Hard Knocks all and life-long learners. I saw no reason to learn everything the hard way, so I listened and learned from the particulars of their lives how to be less clueless. Some had been Hobos in the 1930's, had lived regular lives, but a death or divorce had led them back on the road. I was unimaginably privileged to know them. In one camp I got to know someone who had been a Navajo code talker.

After a few days spent working with a crew or in a camp, I often came to be considered okay, maybe not mentally ill, perhaps educable, and some would offer to teach me a few things they had learned over a lifetime. This was what made it all worthwhile. I wasn't on the road to make money. Such money as I made was incidental and as I spent little, it accumulated over the years.

Back to the apple picking example. I spent my evenings after work invited to sit in the cabin of an elderly black man and listen to his stories. We humans are the storytelling animal, and he was an exemplar of the species. To digress again, I had had an English professor who was a black woman raised by white Quakers in Pennsylvania. We read numerous essays on the race question written by many well-known public/academic intellectuals and all agreed that race was a major issue requiring endless pages of nuanced analysis. We discussed each essay and wrote our own. I doubt anyone emerged thinking they had a grasp on race issues. I certainly didn't, not until an old black man in disguise laid it on me.

His life had been the novel he would have writ if there had been a publisher. He spoke of his experiences growing up black in America, his adventures, his exploits, of the black brothers who did him wrong and of whites who had treated him right. He had bought into the race thing. He had thought of himself as black and considered all the black identity memes that had been offered, trying each on like fashionable clothing. He looked like a black man, but I came to realize I was mistaken, a victim of my own color-think.

The moment is chiseled on the marble of my memory. There was a pause as he tried to assess me. He had something to say and he was wondering if I had the ability to understand him. I can think of no higher honor I have ever known than to be judged worthy of what he had to say. I was sitting at the feet of the Master, who was wondering if I merited his hard won insight. He spoke. He said, "Race is a crock of shit."

I said nothing, of course, but in the context of all his prior stories, none of which had been unbelievable, I knew, in a manner that involved no questions, what he meant. He wasn't black. I wasn't white. The whole conceptology of race is delusive, having nothing to do with anything apart from concepts and the misfortunes (real enough) secondary to them, which can involve the burning of cities. All the essays ever written, ever to be written about race, were missing an important point, had been superseded: Race is a crock of shit. Period. His was the final word. I never had to think about race again. It was a non-issue never to be mentioned apart from discussions of human folly. There is the past, there is structural racism to contend with, and there is still color-think, but sufficient unto the day... I took my higher education where I found it. Race, nationality, religion, political and personal narratives...are all crocks of complex concept-mongering verbal shit talk believing minds swim in but are unaware of. As the fish said, "Water? What water?"

Confucius I eventually ended up with three degrees, but I consider that a minor aside usually not worth mentioning. My higher education had been on the road and in the library (later internet accessible material). It is not possible to get a general education from others, only information from questionable sources.

It is now possible to get a degree in General Studies, but such a degree merely hints at a possibility. To get a generalist education one must be an autodidact whose progress no one will assess. No credit will be offered and the most one can hope for is some knowledge of what you do not know.

The downside of being a generalist (other than having a fool for a teacher) is that you will have nothing others will want. Almost all are specialists as that is what is valued and paid for. The only value associated with a General Studies degree is that you might be better able to develop ad hoc, on the job, the specialist functionality to deal with the issues you will actually be paid to deal with.

To have a general interest in and grasp of reality, without focusing, is valueless unless you end up teaching general studies. All who serve [the SYSTEM] must peer through the microscope of the particular. Those who habitually peer through the macroscope are virtual non-entities, speakers of an incomprehensible language, sound and fury merely, signifying nothing.

The macroscope is a conceptual and methodological construct, a metaphor for the toolbox needed to begin putting it all together. The microscope, though an actual device, is a metaphor for the focused inquiry into particulars. Cosmology, physics, philosophy, chemistry, biology, and so on are microscopes, so it's microscopes all the way down. Microscopic inquiry, the fruits of which are a wonder of human achievement, must come first as otherwise there is nothing to put together.

Public and private education is funded to produce successful and functional (as defined by success) cogs in the overarching global growth culture. Those who write publishable books have the right (power) and freedom to say what is marketable. Otherwise, thanks to the internet, generalists can self-publish offerings that some unimaginably small percentage of humans will read a bit of, and almost all of those few will not buy what they don't want to hear as they are habitual shoppers in the marketplace of consumable ideas.

Science is open to deep criticism as it awaits what will seem like a paradigm shift. Up until the mid-twentieth century, amateur and later professional scientists were in drill-down mode, and this functional paradigm is still almost the whole, the all pervasive mind-set. The needed counterbalance to the views through the microscope is largely unknown and has yet to spread. If specialists, scientists and citizens, are slow on the uptake, then that could be the ultimate survival issue.

Education will need to follow a similar seeming paradigm shift. The three pillars of education are literacy, numeracy, and ecolacy (systems science literate, with systems ecology—a prerequisite for understanding the geobiosphere). That "ecolacy" has to be defined is telling. Some efforts are made to teach numeracy, but virtually all public intellectuals are innumerate and the failure of most citizens and their intelligentsia to understand the exponential function is exhibit A for the claim that numeracy education has failed. The claim that ecolacy education has also failed cannot be made as there is virtually no recognition that there is something to teach, much less that it is the third pillar of the educated mind. Educators can claim some success in literacy from the rudimentary to "higher literacy," partial success with numeracy, and an F in ecolacy. Overall, with grade inflation, the educational system, public and private, can claim a solid C. It could be worse. [So I protest inecolacy.]

Literacy includes science, which is the endeavor to tell the most likely story. Numeracy is a prerequisite for science. Numeracy is not limited to equations, but includes an ability to appreciate the information content of graphs and diagrams. Ecolacy is the third pillar because we are living in a thin film of a planetary biosphere. Quantum Mechanicalacy is not a fourth pillar because quantum illiteracy is non-critical unless you're doing high-energy physics and is included within science's endeavor to tell likely stories. Ecolacy is too, but being inecolate can be a terminal condition irreconcilable with "educated."

Science is consilient with literacy, numeracy, and ecolacy. Many who are scientifically illiterate are proud of it, write for the intellectual rags, frequently appear in the media, head academic departments, type countless blogs, and are doing very well, thank you, in a society skewed towards considering literacy, as mere eloquence, as the main if not only pillar of education. That public intellectuals will, with near unanimity, agree that to be literate (which includes science?) is to be educated, but folly by consensus doesn't make it so.

General Studies may be an academic offering, but generalism is viewed through a glass darkly as a sort of intellectual chimera, rather than a way of knowing, and is not taught as an essential part of higher learning. To get an exposure to a collage of specialties is mistaken for a generalist education. A rudimentary grasp of quantity combined with no evident grasp of ecolacy is entirely consistent with a degree in General Studies and utterly inconsistent with being a generalist. It may be possible to be a generalist without being a specialist, but all specialists, all educated citizens, need to also be generalists. To get a generalist education in the current system requires a steadfast determination to transcend all specialties. To be a generalist is to define the term as you go along, which of necessity is to be an autodidact.

Why wake up, get up, and piddle one's way through the day until sleep delivers us from our self-accredited awakened state? As with all deepity questions, the answer can be found in one or more lines from Star Wars. What could an alien, any thoughtful, observant, compulsively truth telling alien say that would be true of all humans? As said to the supremely wise (for a human) Obi-Wan: "Your grasp of reality is fragile, hu-man." This is a magnanimous concession, an almost flattering compliment given that the alien is crediting humans with some ability to have some grasp of reality, however fragile, seemingly ignoring all the evidence that we have none. But let's consider the possibility the alien is right. From eye opening, from first morning light, perhaps we should endeavor to use every semiconscious moment to improve, however marginally, our grasp of reality. Doing so could provide some meaning, help us to have a life-driven purpose. To entertain any hope, we must see past what we want to see, such that some dim grasp of the what-is can be seen through the glass of our mind's eye darkly. Such is my excuse for living. What's yours?

Within the halls of higher education, the millstone around the collective neck is economics, universally regarded as an established field by academic administrators, as a required subject to be accorded the same respect as any other subject one can get a Nobel Prize in. That economists are in great demand by the funders of education, private and public, is not lost upon the administrators. That economists serve as chief apologists for business-as-usual, both political and economic, is overlooked or enthusiastically celebrated.

Economics is not a pseudo-science as there really is a subject in need of understanding. The subject arose to replace the theology and the theologians who had been the apologists for the feudal system (based on the divine rights of kings, or God's Mandate). Classical economics didn't quite serve and was replaced by neoclassical economics which still serves (for a time). While nation-states became a political alternative, the greater power lay in the global transnational growth economy that arose mid-nineteenth century and effectively subsumed the nation-states by the mid-twentieth century. China and the Soviets took a bit longer, but other than a few, the likes of Iran and North Korea (the People's Democratic Republic of Korea), there are few who have not been fully assimilated. Russia is dominated by billionaires and China is a playground for the corporatocracy.

Economists are later-day theologians, purveyors of Growth's Mandate, needed to justify whatever the well-moneyed need to do to maximize growth and dividends The story told by economists, despite all the seemingly impressive math, serves no other purpose. If they cease to serve, they will be replaced as were the theologians before them.

The problem is that neoclassical economic apologetics is not consilient with biophysical economics (eco-nomics) which is science, but is and will continue to be marginalized for reasons other than being unconvincing so long as purveyors of business-as-usual prevail.

Eco-nomics is the paradigm shift economics awaits. It is fundamental to ecolacy. Understanding the ecosphere is fundamental to having a grasp of reality. Even if we were living on the Spaceship Beagle, being ecolate would still be essential to being educated enough.

June 23, 2018:

Basically everything "I" think is just an unattributed quote/paraphrase. In the past few years every line of thought ends up with E.O. Wilson's observation that "people would rather believe than know"—the implications of which are vast. There are some humans who would rather know than believe (some fraction of a percent), but they are not running the show. In narrow ways, they can be tolerated, even paid as clever apes for services rendered, but for other services that aren't what people want to hear/do, they are at best politely ignored, misunderstood, obfuscated, marginalized, vilified, imprisoned, killed, or given standing ovations. When David Suzuki gave his farewell lecture, featured in the film "A Force of Nature," he was enthusiastically listened to, given a standing ovation, and then the next day everyone went shopping, to a movie, or asked, "so where's the party? And where's that lattè I ordered?" They are the people who adore him, have donated millions to the David Suzuki Foundation, who believe in Green, who buy "sustainable" goods and services, and yet fail to understand the implications of what he told them, while proclaiming, "Yes, David, we will!" (see Life of Brian).

I happen to be on Suzuki's email list and two years ago when he turned 80 he sent out an email. It briefly mentioned some accomplishments of the Foundation, but concluded that"the pace of planetary destruction has not slowed." He claims to be "a man of science," which implies he would rather know than believe (so he refuses to believe that his prior 26 years of environmental activism had changed the SYSTEM, since, well, it hadn't), and so I'm vetting him to be a man of science. In his blog, Science Matters, he posted an article, "The Fundamental Failure of Environmentalism" in 2012 which the David Suzuki Foundation, who were hosting "Science Matters" (likely staffed by environmentalist believers all) deleted from the site. [But I retrieved]. Only articles apparently written by staff (but with his name on them) since 2017 were linked to [which also removed one embarrassing article: "Solar: A brilliant way to get energy" which I wrote about.]. Now, 5/2018, the site no longer hosts any information of interest that might conflict with the interest of current and potential donors, or confuse those who might donate.

This leads to Al Bartlett who gave the same lecture 1,742 times to admirers who by and large forced Al to conclude that "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." This may extend to any inconvenient fact or understanding (e.g. H.T. Odum's systems science) that fails to support the central narrative of the SYSTEM—that growth is good and has been from time immemorial (which, as Garrett Hardin notes, is three generations).

The entire SYSTEM serving intelligentsia have been NCE (neoclassical economics) trained. I recall having to take two semesters, and as I could not parse the material into what I understood science to be, I thought I was just too stupid to get it. Even in the 1970s, however, there were those natural scientists (who were apparently not too stupid to understand economics) who failed to see NCE as a science and were willing to say so. I don't recall my source, maybe Issac Asimov, but considering the possibility that I was maybe not too stupid was helpful.

To end the prattle: For 147 years the NCE narrative has served the SYSTEM. It is the Growth's Mandate narrative, which serves the same purpose as the God's Mandate narrative that served the feudal SYSTEM. Our collective belief in the narrative is the only "thing" that supports the unsustainable SYSTEM that we have all been subsumed by. To change our trajectory, for better or worse, will require dismantling the shared narrative and replacing it with a "better view". NCE is at the center of the still beating heart of the intelligentsia's belief in the Growth's Mandate narrative. This entails maintaining H.T.'s endeavor to "shock the scientific establishment into a better view" and then extend Nature's narrative into the minds of the putatively educated.

Mark Twain said that he "never let his schooling interfere with his education," so I should say schooling rather than education. There has been a fundamental failure of our schooling system in that it selects for specialists and not generalists. Specialists serve the SYSTEM and generalists threaten it by threatening its shared narrative as told mostly by university trained wordsmiths. A generalist, who hears of Odum's conceptual macroscope, would naturally want to look through it. Even those who do, however, are at risk of ending up serving the SYSTEM (being paid) to do emergy analyses or whatever serves. To offer a final nail to the coffin of our schooling system, I recently realized that specialists are basically "idiot savants," humans trained to do one or a few (useful to the economy) things brilliantly, or at least competently, who otherwise are clueless with respect to understanding the SYSTEM much less system principles. Most professors are idiot savants paid to manufacture more savants with enough hubris to think they are not idiots. If your computer doesn't "work" it is "damaged" even if the issue is software related. So David Suzuki's description of NCE as "a form of brain damage" and "pretend science" is defensible and most academics are afflicted.

I'll confess to being a Suzuki and William Rees, both academics, fanboy. Rees wrote the foreword to Haydn Washington's "Demystifying Sustainability: Towards Real Solutions". I consider the foreword to be perhaps better than the book, which I wrote a complete synopsis of and share Rees' foreword and Washingtion's introduction and link to the first chapter.

June 23, 2019:

As an intentional eMigrant I now live in Oregon. I didn't join the Extinction Rebellion as I am intent on destroying techno-industrial society, and not by inconveniencing nor entertaining it to death. As a compassionate revolutionary, I am concerned about prescriptions that increase the probability of further human evolution. Sharing information may help; I started answering some questions on Quora. I even wrote an open letter to Greta Thunberg.

To make a full confession, I must reaffirm that I have never had an original thought. Most of my musings have been occasioned by the thoughts of a Chinese scientist/visionary whose works I have been privileged to know of. I was contacted in 2011 and asked if I could serve as web host for the teachings of a fugitive I know nothing of. Another intermediary in closer contact is also unknown to me other than as "Zhenhost," a sender of curious writings. The writer was in danger of being silenced if their teachings were to become widely known/popular. Zhen, the author, has spoken, has nothing more to say, so cannot be silenced. I can now reference the source of my thoughts, the better part of them, as mere embellishments to The Teachings of Zhen whose thoughts may be noted throughout my own as source and inspiration. Zhen focuses on religion while I tend to consider the political/social/ecological implications. Zhen also sees change as bottom-up, while I see a top-down changing of our collective mind as more likely. Still, the more I consider Zhen's words, the fewer are our differences. I tend to become, as understanding slowly seeps in, more like those so obviously smarter and better informed than I. Sometimes I think my highest calling is to be a worthy student of Zhen. Thank you, Zhen, for the bread crumbs.

June 23, 2020

There are many domains of discourse, but the domain of discourse, the third secret, remains uncharted. I seem to have developed a domain of discourse having one speaker. I am not a source of information. Nature is. I do not speak for Nature. Why should anyone read my typing? I don't know, which does not exclude the possibility they should. We humans need to endeavor to listen to Nature, to 'understand or die'.

I confess I'm an extremist. If there were a button that would destroy industrial society, Guy Fawkes might have pushed it. Ted Kaczynski would push it. And I would push it, although for reasons different from anyone on the Far Right or Far Left (or anyone in between). All extremists are outside the Overton window of all in power or who serve industrial society with some element of enthusiasm (winning or inheriting a million dollars would be considered a good thing—and not to use to destroy the empire). The only way extremists can come to power is by destroying the default world (e.g. A New World from the Ashes of the Old).

Unfortunately there is no 'Press here to destroy the current techno-industrial society, aka Euro-Sino Empire' button. Islamists would press the button. Hardcore Antifa and the Neo-Nazis would, but everyone I can imagine pressing it would do so for political ideological reasons and envision a new world arising that they would rule.

I can envision the possibility that humans could someday come to understand the planet and learn to live with it properly. I would seek out the condition now that will come anyway, so the ending of a dynamic that is not remotely sustainable (and turns the denizens of industrial society into humans of NIMH—no intent implied) should end sooner than later for a better outcome. But no one can destroy it.

So no one needs to. The revolutionaries who seize power during collapse will merely fight to see who inherits the rubble. Revolutionaries who plot foundation change (aka revolutionary change) may have a different outcome. Political revolutionaries can no more create a new world than they could significantly change the old one. Like all prior empires, the current one will falter, wobble, climax, and decline. That the empire is global for the first time is a distinction. Will climax occur this century? I don't know.

Will the old pattern of empire-building ever be replaced by new rules of the game that select for a different outcome? Could humans become abelievers? Could they learn to live in complex societies by adapting and evolving? I don't know, which also means I don't know that human will never do more than build ruins. The collapse of the Euro-Sino Empire is neither good nor bad. The transition to living functional lives, as Nature determines, or going extinct is the high-stakes endgame we are now playing (badly).

Orwell envisioned a sustainable world, but few would want to live in it and those who do would form a dissapative structure that might be incapable of evolving. It was a vision of a sort of endless detaunt between three empires that had perfected the means of manufacturing humans to live within. Three global empires could work if the loss of functional behaviors was held steady by giving all a life-driven purpose. Three would be a viable number as if any one empire actually threatened to conquer another, the third would be next and so an alliance would form to prevent conquest. Perpetual war that no one would or could win would thereby be stable and potentially sustainable

Orwell envisioned a sustainable world, but few would want to live in it and those who do would form a dissapative structure that might be incapable of evolving. It was a vision of a sort of endless detente between three empires that had perfected the means of manufacturing humans to live within. Three global empires could work if the loss of functional behaviors was held steady by giving all a life-driven purpose. Three would be a viable number as if any one empire actually threatened to conquer another, the third would be next and so an alliance would form to prevent conquest. Perpetual war that no one would or could win would thereby be stable and potentially sustainable

June 23, 2021

Along autobiographical lines, I became a 'published' author for the first time last year. A Life in Question.

June 23, 2022

I offer my 'final offering'. At 69 years of persisting I am slowing down, but there are more lies to tell, so the 'final offering' is a 'final featured offering' as I will likely add lesser offerings to the list.

Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.... I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. —Mark Twain

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. — Isaac Asimov

The more he became truly wise, the more he distrusted everything he knew. — Voltaire

Knowing that you do not know is the best. Not knowing that you do not know is an illness.... True words are not pleasing. Pleasing words are not true. Those who are right do not argue. Those who argue are not right. Those who know are not learned. Those who are learned do not know. — Lao Tzu

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses. — Martin Gardner

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge. — Nicolaus Copernicus

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! — Abraham Lincoln, 1859

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. — Thomas Jefferson: Letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

Among the fragments left us by the Greek poet Archilochus there is a line, dark in meaning, that says: "The fox knows many things: the hedgehog knows one big thing."... Ecologists, in my opinion, are hedgehogs. The one big thing they know is this: "We can never do merely one thing." This simple sentence imperfectly mirrors the one big thing ecologists know—the idea of a system... It's tough to be a hedgehog. You take a simple little idea—the right one, you hope—and "thinking on't constantly" (as Newton said) you discover it has wide and unexpected ramifications. In the variety and disunity so cherished by foxes the hedgehog finds a unity, knit together by his one big idea. Being the first to feel its power, and alone with his thought, it is not surprising if he doubts his sanity. Darwin, his mind big with the idea of natural selection, suffered grave self-doubts. Writing to a fellow naturalist just after the publication of the Origin of Species he confessed, "When I think of the many cases of men who have studied one subject for many years, and have persuaded themselves of the truth of the foolistest doctrines, I feel sometimes a little frightened, whether I may not be one of these monomaniacs." — Garrett Hardin, Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle, 1972. [Addressed to foxes, who prosper and proliferate during the exuberance of growth and exploitation for its own sake phase, to whom all hedgehogs look like monomaniacs.]

The realization that you know essentially nothing is at the heart of science. Richard Feynman was asked to define science, and he said that it’s "a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance." Science is "the belief in the ignorance of experts." Experts, specialists all, are those who may know enough to have an opinion. The chatter of everyone else, in taverns or on social media, is likely to be less instructive.

  There is one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that no paradigm [belief system, ideology] is "true," that everyone, including those that sweetly sing your own worldview, has a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond hu-man comprehension. It is to "get" at a gut-level the paradigm that there are paradigms [that are not "true"], and to see that that itself is a paradigm, and to regard that whole realization as devastatingly funny. It is to let go into not-knowing, into what the Buddhists call enlightenment.
  It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that hu-mans throw off addictions [their purpose-driven Calhoun-rat consumer life], live in constant joy [when not dealing with life debilitating situations], bring down empires [so what are you waiting for?], get locked up, or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.
  There is so much that could be said to qualify this list [see chapter six] of places to intervene in a system. It is a tentative list and its order is slithery. There are exceptions to every item that can move it up or down the order of leverage. Having had the list percolating in my subconscious for years has not transformed me into a Superwoman. The higher the leverage point, the more the system will resist changing it—that's why societies often rub out truly enlightened beings.
  Magical leverage points are not easily accessible, even if we know where they are and which direction to push on them. There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of Not Knowing. In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go and dancing with the system [as distinct from the SYSTEM]. [idea: Donella Meadows, aka master Zhen, so read Thinking in Systems: A Primer]

For decades Martin Gardner wrote a column for Scientific American inviting the merely intelligent to explore the limits of their clever apeness via his Mathematical Games. He also, as the skeptic's skeptic, wrote a monthly column for Skeptical Inquirer exploring the vastness of human folly. Surrounded by atheists he deigned to make room for a theist/fideist view, pointing out that when it comes to understanding the universe, we humans may have no more ability to understand things that matter than a dog has of understanding calculus. Garrett Hardin urged "humilitas" as an extinction-avoiding antidote to hubris. Wittgenstein counseled us to guard against allowing our minds to be bewitched by language. See a pattern? (Laozi, Confucius, Voltaire, Twain, Feynman, Wittgenstein, Gardner, Hardin, Meadows....) Our best and brightest recognize and confront limits without flinching, without using sleight-of-mind tricks to obscure them. I'm willing to consider the possibility they might be right.

I am not now nor have I ever been an academic, scientist, engineer, professional, acolyte, voter, or follower. I have no tribal identity or political or religious identity. I ascribe to no -isms. I may be or be called an evidentialist and fideist, but I don't know what to call myself. Through no fault of my own, I use evidence and reason as a way of finding things out, which culturally puts me in Hubbert's matter-energy systems worldview. This was squired largely apart from my schooling. I have made money, but never had to work for it as some things, like farmwork, involved being given money, but its value seems counterfeit. I can't say I was ever part of the monetary culture. This may allow me to think out of the domain of discourse, the consensus, the box I never felt a need to serve. What I see is perhaps idiosyncratic, but that alone does not make me wrong.

Per Wittgenstein, 'The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher' [or at least one like Wittgenstein]. I would say I'm not a citizen of any domain of discourse, so am I a philosopher or a generalist? How about a know-nothing from the hood who just doesn't get it? Communities of ideas are many and all seek consensus as do all tribal gatherings whose members seek social approbation—to moisten one another in a slime of self-accredited certitude. None would have me as a member as I cannot assent to be sane.

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