Generalists or Specialists?
I saw this quote surfing around on some blogs:
“We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. Advancing science has now discovered that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by overspecialization, whose concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability. Thus the specialist’s brief for pinpointing brevity is dubious. In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual’s leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.” - Buckminster Fuller, “Synergetics”
Now I suppose that one might not obviously see the connection to stand up comedy in this quote, but I did.
From time to time I find myself in conversation with a fellow comedian and the talk turns to whether or not it is the comedian's responsibility to go to the audience or should the audience go to the comedian. It is my personal belief that it is always the responsibility of the comedian to find where the audience is an entertain there. This is not simply the result of some blind adherence to the "customer is always right" mentality, though that is part of it. A professional performer should be able to modify, even if only minimally, the presentation of their material in such a way that the main goal, laughter, can be accomplished. In this way, I think the comedians who have the ability to be generalists have an advantage over comedians who are specialists.
What is interesting is the fact that it seems that if in fact more people are becoming specialists in that we read only what we want to read and watch or listen to only those things which reinforce those things we believe - it makes us less of the generalist a comedian would prefer us all to be.
“We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. Advancing science has now discovered that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by overspecialization, whose concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability. Thus the specialist’s brief for pinpointing brevity is dubious. In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual’s leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.” - Buckminster Fuller, “Synergetics”
Now I suppose that one might not obviously see the connection to stand up comedy in this quote, but I did.
From time to time I find myself in conversation with a fellow comedian and the talk turns to whether or not it is the comedian's responsibility to go to the audience or should the audience go to the comedian. It is my personal belief that it is always the responsibility of the comedian to find where the audience is an entertain there. This is not simply the result of some blind adherence to the "customer is always right" mentality, though that is part of it. A professional performer should be able to modify, even if only minimally, the presentation of their material in such a way that the main goal, laughter, can be accomplished. In this way, I think the comedians who have the ability to be generalists have an advantage over comedians who are specialists.
What is interesting is the fact that it seems that if in fact more people are becoming specialists in that we read only what we want to read and watch or listen to only those things which reinforce those things we believe - it makes us less of the generalist a comedian would prefer us all to be.
posted by Jamie at 11:19 PM
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