Specialization or Generalist

Our culture seems to view specialization as the answer to things, whether it be a new weather app for your phone or a PhD or certain ways of farming (according to the Ag Industry). Yet, it hasn't always been this way. It was not all that long ago when visitors from Europe were amazed at American ingenuity, creativeness and know how. "Average" (is there such a thing?) Americans were inventing things right and left - sometimes very similar things to what someone else was inventing in another state, without knowing it. By and large, the American population was a population of generalists.

And so I wonder, are we better off (as a species, as a culture) being specialists, or being generalists? Are we better off as a subspecies of frog that lives its entire life in an orchid in the Amazon rain forest, or as a seagull?

Seagulls can be a nuisance - that's for sure. And people seem to either really love them, or hate them. But you got to give them credit, they are EVERYWHERE! They eat anything. Talk about a generalist; talk about adaptability!

In this time of environmental (and economic?) change, it would seem to me that being a generalist allows one to be more adaptable. Not all the eggs are in one nest for the seagull to rob, sort to speak.

I think that a life on the water, calls for this sort of generalist, adaptable attitude and approach, but I certainly don't think it is the only place.

Where are you being called to adapt? Are you finding being a generalist or a specialist more useful?

Just my pondering as I watch seagulls fly around on a very blustery March day.

Blessed Be

Joel