Zerebria

I’ve recently come to know that there is a name for what I do, which is always a very pleasant sensation (at first at least).

I never paid much attention to it, but the fact is that I have always been a “deep diver” into everything that catches my attention. I guess I like to learn, as long as I can see the immediate effects of my new knowledge.

The Greek term “polymath” is used to describe those people with excelling knowledge in several subjects. We could have a long discussion about what “excelling” means, but the fact is that 35 years of a very attentive life, and a very promiscuous list of intellectual passions have taken me to quite a prominent (”above the average”) knowledge in very diverse areas. Out of the bat, I can think of the Marvel Comics mythology, Latin American literature, songwriting or Buddhism, just a few elements among an endless list.

At first I greeted the term as a curiosity. I hadn’t ever had the sensation of being “this” or “that”; it was just my normal way of facing things: I discover something (usually followed by my admiration), then I’m curious, then I’m suddenly in the middle of it. Such process was for me as natural as breathing, and the result (absolutely casual, unwanted), was that I came to know a lot about what was so passionate about. But, again, the important part was not the result, but the process. As natural as breathing.

That’s when the first flaw of the definition came in. Wouldn’t you feel suspicious if someone came near you and said “oh, so you’re one of those breathing people?”. Besides, if definitions are always reductionist and brutal, this polymath thing is perhaps the champion of definitions. People who feel attracted by people of the same sex, or those who only eat vegetables, have something very clear in common after all, but, “mastering several areas”? Oh, come on, what the hell does it mean?

As usual, it turned out that I had made the very common mistake of taking for granted that one’s stance is the usual, “default” one. Nope, not at all. In fact, in our overspecialized world, people who enjoy several areas of reality and show coherent knowledge about them are in fact a rarity.

In a way, the definition acts as a sort of “safety fence”. It assumes a whole status quo in which one must have ONE area of expertise, which is the important and defining element, which will be used by the others to label you. You can have other interests besides that one (it is impossible not to have them), but they are “recreational”, i.e. insignificant.

Such conception of the human being considers knowledge as some kind of capital, hardly earned, and which must be carefully administered. Any idea of joy or growth has been extracted from it.

I reject that, my guts reject it because that is not the way in which our brains work. A mind becomes powerful by interconnecting areas: the more you know, the richer your connections are, the bigger your hunger for learning, and the richer the results. Knowing a lot about one single field is being a pathetic ignorant.

I like to think that the existence of terms like this implies that things are slowly changing to clear the way for a more complete, natural human being, more aligned with the way we in which we are genetically programmed. And yet, there is still a lot to do,  the “safety fence” has very sharp thorns, like the need of being an “expert” in every area in which you get involved. A person with several levels of deep knowledge is nowadays not regarded seriously. By some reason, people finds very soothing having a single category for each person:

-Oh, so you’re a breakdancer…

-Yes, but I’m chess world champion, too…

-(!)

Any breakdancer among the audience, please?

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There’s nothing wrong with being a freak
The key, if you ask me…
A taste of minority
Femiline / Mascunine

June 4, 2010 at 9:05 pm by Nacho Jordi
Tags: Adaptation, Beauty, Brain, Difference, Education, Experience, Growth, Humor, Knowledge, Learning, Perception, Polymath, Proactive, Serendipity, Social conditioning, Society, Specialization, Thinking, Words