As to BN, I think I have more in common with him than most people here.
And I think you hate me for it
But that's ok, I don't like people who are too much like me either.
As for arrogance etc...I always believed humility lies in accepting ones flaws, but not in understating ones abilities. If you're good at something, so be it, no need to play down your strengths. Though tones can be important, but hell, this is the internet.
BN, reading books *will* help. You can't be a full-time student of everything, and reading books is the next-best thing. The thing is that books plug into other books; knowledge plugs into other knowledge. That constructs the "framework" I described earlier. This will get you a quite a well-rounded, realistic picture of things.
I think most cultural anthropologists will be laughing their socks off at this bit of text, but I, myself, don't fully disagree. Right up until the point where one overstates the importance of books. Not saying that you do, but even implying that reading lots of books will get you a "well-rounded, realistic picture of things" is a bit of folly.
There's a reason I generally prefer writers who face us with the limitations of the knowledgeable rather than those who pretend to teach us all.
There's a lot of mystification going on about Russia -- how no Westerner can hope to understand the "russkaja dusha," or what not.
That's not what I'm referring to. Russia is a complex nation, like any nation, and suffers from a set of preconceptions. These aren't easily "dropped", because they tie in with the status of their civil society, their current law and law codifications, several traditional concepts of power, liberalism over democracy, etc. etc. They don't *just* tie in with preconceptions, they tie in with a basic understanding of everything from history to philology (philology is my weakness).
"By my beard, no Westerner will get us" is not an opinion I hold dear to, especially not after being told by a Russian that I really "get" them, but I've heard Western political analysts say more astute things than Russians themselves. It's no more weird than, say, Nigeria, but that doesn't mean it can be effortlessly understood, either.
I've met lots of "full-time students" of the Middle East or Russia who understand the region much more poorly than some "part-time students," for any of a number of reasons -- rigid ideological outlook, wishful thinking, losing the forest for the trees, and so on.
So? Despite what you may believe, rigidity of outlook or narrow abilities to grasp foreign concepts is no more unique to full-time students than to part-time students. It is odd at best to assume that a generalist is less subject to human folly than a specialist.
"Understanding" isn't a binary thing -- either you "understand" or you "don't understand." It's a continuum: you can be on very strong grounds about some things, and more tentative grounds on others. You can build a fairly accurate picture of the Middle East or, I'm sure, sub-Saharan Africa by doing a surprisingly small amount of reading -- say, a dozen or so books. It'll quickly get better once you get involved in the discourse -- start talking to people with more understanding about it.
(...)
Partial ignorance" is *always* what it is. Even experts are "partially ignorant" about their topics.
Sure, sure.
The point is that the framework is a dynamic, living thing. As you learn new things, they will connect to it, and change it. It's never perfect, but it can be constantly improved -- in particular by stress-testing it against other people's opinions.
Sure, but the concept that you can understand the limitations of your own framework fully from inside your own framework would be a folly. So beware of self-overestimating. Please don't go all A.J. Jacobs on us.
(Jacobs I can appreciate. I'm coming off all smartie-pants arrogant dude now, but that's because so are you, so I'm just replying in kind, but I like nothing more than mocking my own intellectualism and self-deprecating humour, in a more relaxed setting)
You caution against "disrespecting people with different opinions."
I did, where?
Yet you seem to be doing this very thing: you, personally, are a specialist by temperament. That means you immerse yourself deeply in a subject -- whether it's Russia or Fallout -- and gather a great deal of knowledge and understanding about it. And then you quite clearly (and *very* arrogantly) dismiss the possibility of "understanding" these topics without being similarly deeply immersed in them.
However, that's not the only way of approaching the world. I, for example, am a generalist. I know a quite a lot about a great many things. I probably know more about nearly any subject than you do -- *except* your particular, special areas of expertise (and sports).
That is a funny assumption.
I am a student of Russian Studies. Additionally to a focus on this topic through various disciplines, I study history, economics, politicology, sociology, cultural anthropology and law, with specific focuses on (in addition to Russia, duh), the U.S., Europe from 1350, conceptual frameworks of nation-states, gender discourse, legal innovations in the framework of modernization, etc. etc. Anything from Weber to Wallerstein to Geertz to Elias to Tilly to Keep, I juggle it all. I don't talk about any of them much unless the call comes because I don't consider myself a teacher (even though I have worked as one), but prefer to absorb knowledge. You assume, based on the fact that I don't wear my knowledge on my sleeve, that I lack said knowledge.
Fact is, I'm really not going to discuss David Landes' Wealth & Poverty of Nations with anyone outside of an academic setting, it's just not my thing.
You can call me narrow in that I focus on social sciences, sure. Assuming that I only have two particular, special areas of expertise, namely Russia and Fallout is, well, pretty arrogant
The thing is, everything is connected. Understanding a fair bit about a lot gives you a particular kind of bullshit detector that specialists lack: the possibility to cross-reference and cross-verify assertions and conclusions across many fields.
Since I'm a generalist and a specialist in one sitting, I think I'm aware of the weaknesses of both.
The thing is, there is a lot of reality out there and little of you. The primary question about generalists is not "how smart can you sound on an internet forum", but "how useful are you to society." While I am capable of balancing multiple subjects thanks to the ease with which I tend to glide through social science course-work, I still find it important to have focus, to have speciality, just to be useful. In a real, solid way.
The generalist has no use but to be a relativist. And relativism has never had any constructive purpose. Ever. Frith, I hate relativism.
The one isn't superior to the other, neither when it comes to utility or "really understanding" something.
And because I am both (and no doubt you are too, though you seem not to be claiming to), I can say that this is nonsense. Hogwash to any arrogance, the fact of the matter is that to be a specialist on an academic level you must be a generalist first. First-year historians learn about social sciences and economics just as first-year anthropologists learn about history and sociology.
Homo Universalis is dead. I know because I'd love to be one, but I can't. He's dead. I was born with a knack for exact sciences, and if I had my way I'd be studying biology and chemistry as well, but that's not the way, because there is no time.
Wait, I'm veering off-topic...
The point is that all the generalist has is a broad framework in which he can fit anything. That means he has the ability to understand all of the world, but not to "really understand" anything in it. Because understanding isn't a one-sided process, it isn't just absorbing information and filtering it through a spectrum of true to false. Understanding in the truest sense means a dialectic process of thesis and antithesis by definition, it means you can take a new piece of information and fit it against an old piece of information. Note: not an old piece of conceptual framework, but an old piece of information. I hate to get all Hegelian, but understanding in the most academic sense of the word is impossible without that dialectic process.
Also, I hate Hegel.