[FRIAM] types of knowledge

[jon zingale]

"They're not trying to *fix* the thing so much as bathing in its beauty."

I love this observation, universals like beauty are grounded by being in the
world.

"To entice them into such jobs with money is impoverished"

While I mostly agree, I cannot help but notice that (by the numbers given in
the video) the top plumbers can only hope to make as much as an entry-level
web developer, and then there are the externalities...

"We need to entice them/us into such muck in the same way we entice, say, a
field biologist into their muck."

The *muck* isn't simply mud or shit, but an ecosystem of hepatitis and
parasites. Also, there is culture. While working as a laborer to a plumber
wasn't the worst job I have ever had, the general milieu encouraged violent
humor and poor diet, discouraged thinking, and a bordering-on-philosophical
acceptance that we live, breathe, and eat shit. It doesn't take long to
start to feel the hate creep in, folded into the soul as a consequence of
being in the world.

Then, there are the strange side-effects of our meritocratic capitalism. It
seems to me that the cultural dynamics pressure individuals both toward
specialism and away from meritocratic principles in a number of ways. Two,
off the top of my head, counterintuitive and interrelated points include[†]:

1. Generalized spoils: Becoming a certified expert in a field occasionally
confers expertise *over* individuals without certification in matters
outside the scope of practice. A back of the envelope heuristic is employed
along the lines of "Well, we know that *this* individual did some hard
thinking in one area so *at least* we know they can do hard thinking
*generally*. *That* individual we know nothing about, so place your bet
accordingly". That this is a common feature of our society suggests that
with access to deeper levels of certification comes greater access to
agency. Too often, doing "low level" *essential work* bars an individual
from being taken seriously.

2. Optimized employment: A career (whatever those were) is a process of
canalization. Specialists are often more employable exactly because specific
work is needed and throughput is directly measured. An effect, it seems to
me, is that valuable generalists are left to roam nomadically between
careers, under continuous exposure to forces that actively inhibit a sense
of agency, value, or accumulated skill[≃]. As another option, I suppose,
generalists survive the optimization through mimicry, the stultifying
practice/training of one's self toward myopia.

My concern here is that neither with academic work nor manual labor is there
much room for the life of the mind. Especially not for a generalist mind.
Instead, as youngsters, we are shown futures construed as accolade-valued
functions along the real line. The rhetorical image, familiar to everyone
here, is that "If you want options you head toward school"[∅].

[†] Please, pardon the touches of autobiographical bitterness.

[≃] Specialist-Generalist inequity in the workplace is a place that I would
love to see more attention given.

[∅] Even at 40, people compulsively give me this advice weekly.



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