On being a "renaissance man"

I was reading a blog article that was focusing on the idea of the modern "renaissance man" [OK, renaissance person] and how one would attempt to become one. I was struck by the fact that our modern era is one of specialization and it is rare find someone who is broadly competent in a variety of areas. It is so rare, in fact, that it seems downright odd and our culture and society does not reward or value that kind of broad knowledge. We tend to become employed in a narrow area of responsibility or technical expertise and society views any concerted effort to gain a broader knowledge as wasted effort. The education system seems to be narrowing the student's focus and exposure rather than broadening their education. A university education is priced out of reach for anything that doesn't have a career payback.
Sometimes we will hear about a baseball player or someone else in sports who also has an interest in something other than their sport. It is mentioned as an oddity -- and as "color commentary" that player 'A' is a gifted artist or a musician or writes poetry or makes furniture.

One short line from the blog article stuck in my mind and I paraphrase it here: Nothing exposes a person's ignorance and lack of culture quicker than faulty geography or a lack of literary knowledge. I would add to that a lack of basic historical awareness. I don't think that you need to be a walking encyclopedia but you should know that Pakistan is in Asia and Ecuador is in South America. It would help to know that India and Pakistan are neighbors and that people in Ecuador speak Spanish.

Americans are notably ill informed on geography, literature and history. The situation is so bad that you cringe when people call into talk radio or C-SPAN to ask a question or make a comment. The ones who are least informed seem to be the ones with ready access to telephones and the airwaves.

Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman, and Texas Governor Rick Perry have managed to rise to the top of political life with little basic knowledge or apparent understanding of history, geography or literature...not to mention the constitution or economics.  Presumably, the people who support them are either equally ill informed or choose to ignore the obvious deficit in the candidstes' knowledge. Some of it is pretty comical but the Founding Fathers would be appalled at the lack of basic knowledge in both the voters and the candidates.

It's getting late so I'll end this for now -- to be revisited later.

Getting our house in order

The current debt ceiling debate has been an embarrassing free for all that serves only to demonstrate how far we have fallen from our nation's purpose and potential. The posturing and contrived political schemes have reached a a new level. Instead of solving the problem the real issue became how to use this crisis as a tool to get what we want.  The question is...How can we beat our opponent?...not How can we help the country?  Often we hear some political hack uttering the rhetorical comment that "We must get our house in order!" -- a particularly elusive goal.

Granted, our house needs attention. We live in an interesting neighborhood where neighbors keep climbing our fence and camp out in the yard. We have some friends but there are also some folks that are very unfriendly and downright hostile and we have to keep sending our kids over to get them to stop harassing us or we hire security guards to watch our stuff. Grandma and grandpa are hanging on as best they can but have some incredible medical bills and can barely pay for their meds so we have to help out a little.

Trash is piling up around the door because we have gotten into the habit of just heaving it from the porch. The sidewalk is crumbling and the driveway is full of holes but we can't afford to go anywhere anyway because the price of gas is way out of reach. The SUV isn't running very well anyway and leaks oil and smokes. The paint is peeling and the gutters are falling off but that's just on the outside. The furniture is worn out, the roof is leaking, windows are broken and the sewer is clogged and backing up. Something is growing in the refrigerator and poisoning the food but we don't want to look in there. Family members are hateful to each other and constantly fighting and half of them are packing heat. We have locked up a bunch of them because we don't know what else to do. Meanwhile it is getting hotter and hotter and the lawn and shade trees are starting to look pretty bad because we have ignored them but some in the family are convinced otherwise and scream at us when we want to try to do anything about it. Several family members have started chopping down the few trees that are left.

Luckily, we have friends in the neighborhood who will loan us money to try to keep this house together and functioning as well as it does. We have a lot of money of our own but we don't want to use it for any of this stuff because we want to install a hot tub, big screen TV and upgrade to granite in the kitchen. Some of us have accumulated a fortune but aren’t sharing and take nice vacations to places where the plumbing works.

Lately those favorite neighbors that loan us money have been grumbling because they also want granite in the kitchen but we have their money and don't want to give it back. We try to ignore their complaints and get them to keep supplying the money with promises that we will do better and will pay them back someday. After a huge fight we hatch a repayment plan -- stop helping grandma and grandpa with their bills and postpone or cancel repair work on the house and, if that doesn’t work, fire the security guards. This should still allow for the kitchen upgrade and hot tub installation but the big screen TV might have to wait a while. Sacrifice is hard work.