I'm currently suffering through my second reading of The Merchant of Venice in my life, and as I painfully bear witness to the simple honest racism (against Jewish people, against Africans, and Indians, and I've still got twelve pages left) of the piece, part of me is asking myself, "What the heck is so great about being a Renaissance man?"
Obviously, my goal isn't to line my closet with pantaloons and compose sonnets, and is Elizabethan England even really the Renaissance? I always liked "Jack of all Trades" better, even with the qualifier "Master of None" attached. I actually preferred it that way. There's something about specialization that screams warnings to my rather Darwinian outlook. I'm not saying I want my heart surgeon to be only as good at chest cracking and bypasses as she/he is at stage lighting or sushi rolling. Obviously, we're not creating humans who can only survive in certain career strata. Only so much is passed on to our kids. I mean, my parents are hardworking and successful. Until my kid was born, the most impressive thing I had created was ...wow, started that sentence before I knew how it would end. Kinda wish I had something, even a pathetic, "How much time at your minimum wage job did you spend making that instead of doing your work" sort of thing. Really. I got nothing.
Okay, forget I said anything. Specialists are awesome. I like technology. I like services.
But for me, I think the problem is my intelligence. There's a quote by Twain that I put on the whiteboard for a "Quote of the Day" for my English students, where he said something like, "There is no appreciable difference between the man who does not read, and the man who cannot read." For me, I think it reads, "If you choose to be ignorant long enough, you're not ignorant anymore, you're just stupid."
I think I was that way. I feel like my background knowledge covers the surface of a lot of things, but doesn't go very deep. 37 feels late in the game to try to develop depth. Gravitas.
On the other hand, I don't actually WANT to become a specialist in some field right now. I am not interested in struggling to get a Masters degree in one specific area of teaching. If I got that, I'd be kicking myself for not studying palaeontology, or anthropology, or one of the other things I'd be wasting my time reading about while I was running out of time for thesis work.
I know myself. And I think that my self-image is more improved by the idea of getting off my butt and creating my own opportunities to learn.
If I can do that without dumping a whole lot of money at university, that'd be okay, too.
Renaissance means to "Be reborn". There is no person in the world who learns as many new things as a very young child. Not knowing Jack is a good place to start.
-Mike
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