Month: May 2021

The genius and curse of specialisation

Post author By Mike Lowe
Post date May 23, 2021
No Comments on The genius and curse of specialisation

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
Arthur Schopenhauer

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully, nor for much longer, unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
Buckminster Fuller

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.
John M. Culkin (provenance unclear – see here)

The genius of capitalism is also its fatal flaw – and that thing is specialisation. In simplest terms it means that the baker can just focus on baking, the cobbler can just focus on making shoes, the builder can just focus on building and at the end of the day each person gets everything they need – food, clothing and shelter … and much more.

Politics Psychology

When we don’t listen

Violence is often a form of communication born of desperation.

When we don’t or won’t or can’t listen to each other and respond to what we have heard at a human level, there are consequences.

The wisest commentary I ever heard on the Middle East was from a young Palestinian who observed that in her home country there are two peoples crying out in deep pain, desperate for their pain to be heard and acknowledged by the other – and yet each unable to hear and acknowledge the other’s pain. The rocks and rockets, bullets and bombs have their roots in a desperate cry to be heard and seen and acknowledged as fellow suffering humans.