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“When you see someone often flashing their rank or position, or someone whose name is often bandied about in public, don’t be envious; such things are bought at the expense of life…. Some die on the first rungs of the ladder of success, others before they can reach the top, and the few that make it to the top of their ambition through a thousand indignities realize at the end it’s only for an inscription on their gravestone.”
The Daily Stoic
Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Since specialization is a way of coping with the inadequacies of the human mind, it should hardly be surprising that those with the vision of the anointed often view specialization negatively, or that their vocabulary often reflects that. Cosmic decisions require minds with cosmic scope—and to say that there are no such minds, that the human experience must be broken down into manageable-sized pieces, is to deny the vision of the anointed. Meanwhile, those with the tragic vision have often proclaimed the virtues of specialization. Adam Smith attributed much of economic progress to the “division of labor,” Edmund Burke said that he “revered” the specialist within his specialty, and Oliver Wendell Holmes said that specialists were more needed than generalists, whose presumptions he derided. But such views are the opposite of the views among the anointed.
The Vision of the Anointed
Thomas Sowell
We want to be ready to act in a crisis, but it’s hard to stay vigilant and keep an edge when nothing ever seems to happen that calls forth our abilities. The motivation to stay sharp atrophies, and we’re lulled into apathy and complacency. As a result, men’s standards, self-respect, discipline, and all-around hardihood get soft.
Idleness kills manliness.
Idleness Kills Manliness
Brett and Kate McKay
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