Quotable: Technical Obsession

From The Brothers K (1992) by David James Duncan, a description of the inner condition of the “One-Pointed Specialist,” one who attains excellence in one discipline at great cost to one’s humanity and perhaps that of others as well. The following is Duncan’s brilliant poetization of a phenomenon also identified by Wendell Berry. In Berry’s thought, the category ‘specialist’ is a pejorative term for someone who knows (and therefore effectively cares) way too much about one thing and not nearly enough about anything else, thereby wielding immense power without reference to context, and thereby performing work that is inherently meaningless and potentially disastrous.

“That an all-consuming focus on a single object of desire could achieve a quantitatively spectacular result was no surprise to any thinking person in the early Sixties: the mushroom cloud that accompanied J. Robert Oppenheimer’s dissection of the atom was an unforgettable* demonstration of the general principle. But that the same intensity of focus which made any great quantitative achievement possible might also render it qualitatively bankrupt—that a Golden Glove MVP could accomplish a fabulous feat and end up looking, feeling, and playing, the following year, like a battle-jagged vet just back from some interior front line—this was the ‘un-American’ surprise and bitter public lesson of Roger Maris’ life.

Technical obsession is like an unlit, ever-narrowing mine shaft leading straight down through the human mind. The deeper down one plunges, the more fabulous, and often the more remunerative, the gems or ore. But the deeper down one plunges, the more confined and conditioned one’s thoughts and movements become, and the greater the danger of permanently losing one’s way back to the surface of the planet. There also seems to be an overpowering, malignant magic that reigns deep down in these shafts. And those who journey too far down or stay too long become its minions without knowing it—become not so much human beings as human tools** wielded by whatever ideology, industry, force or idea happens to rule that particular mine. Another danger: because these mines are primarily mental, not physical, they do not necessarily mar or even mark the faces of those who have become utterly lost in them. A man or woman miles down, thrall to the magic, far beyond caring about anything still occurring on the planet’s surface, can sit down beside you on a park bench or bleacher seat, greet you in the street, shake your hand, look you in the eye, smile genially, say ‘How are you?’ or ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘How about those Yankees?’ And you will never suspect that you are in the presence not of a kindred spirit, but of a subterranean force.”

Editorial commentary:
*One might question whether it was sufficiently unforgettable. We don’t seem to have learned our lesson yet.
**’Human resources,’ perhaps? Or, as the new industry lingo would have it—I kid you not, I took a graduate course in HR—‘human capital’?