BOOK REVIEW : RANGE - WHY GENERALISTS TRIUMPH IN A SPECIALISED WORLD

We live in a specialist’s world. In everything we do, we are advised to go deeper and deeper to specialise so that we gain the ultimate knowledge on what we do. ’Total competency, full focus and specialisation’, the mantra goes like this. In management theories ‘core competency’ had become a critical asset for professionals, thus, making him a specialist.

Here is a book by David Epstein, which glorifies the generalists than the specialist. He had taken considerable examples of people and situations to reiterate his argument. In these times of specialisation, we can take the book only with a pinch of salt, for, the experts always say that specialisation is critical for meeting career and life ambition.

After reading the book, we have to appreciate that there are two ways of living, either as a specialist or as a generalist; both could be interesting and exciting. This book highlights achieving success as a generalist and we see so many successful people in this category; Aristotle, Leonard da Vinci, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky etc., all big names! When David Epstein argues that generalists can see the big picture, can see the forest for the trees, can tell us deeper stories of our times and are more apt to see the macro picture; what about it? And he has question to ask such as: How do you make systemic change to avoid extinction without generalists?  Without generalists in place, how do communities survive economic downfall? At the highest level of society, how do you prioritize without generalists? He emphasises that a society that is atomized by specialists stays on only because of the integration done on it by the generalists.

David Epstein, the author of this book, has been translated into 21 languages. He is a master's degree holder in environmental sciences & journalism and he worked as an investigative reporter for ProPublica and also as a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. Another successful publication of him is ‘The sports gene’ and that was before this book.

This book busts the theories of ten thousand hours of deliberate practice for becoming successful & the 'tiger moms'. It encourages readers to try lots of things, doing them broadly and failing many times.  It suggest a mind-set of not going down any single rabbit hole to the exclusion of everything else in this life, which is  another way of saying that in general, specialists are unable to see beyond their own domain. Someone widely read, having wider experiences and knowing many things about different fields; can have much greater chance to make creative connections that most others will miss. It's not about knowing any one thing. It is on the ability to see the forest than the trees. About seeing and intuitively feeliing the bigger picture. It's about grasping out trends, and tossing out the bad ideas!

As a sports journalist David Epstein uses the example of Roger Federer, one of the all-time greats of Tennis, in this book.  As a young kid, Roger didn’t focus on tennis and didn’t get fancy coaching or strength training. He played a range of different games including Soccer, Badminton, Skateboarding, Swimming and Table Tennis. Until he was a teenager, he didn’t start playing competitive Tennis. Even his parents did not encourage him to take up Tennis. But once he became a Tennis Pro, he turned into one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws! This, Epstein attributes to the wider level of experiences and learnings that Roger Federer has had in his formative years, as he embraced diverse experiences and perspectives while he  progressed, before becoming a Pro. Epstein also cites Charles Darwin, the creator of the most fundamental book of science, ‘On the origin of species by means of natural selection’. Before Darwin got aboard the HMS Beagle and sailed to the Galapagos, he had trained not only in natural history but also medicine, theology, philosophy, and geology which helped him to have the acuity to analyse and conclude the origin of species.

Another interesting finding of Epstein is that a lot of successful people, in various domains, did have unusual career paths. He observes this as a natural process. He says, “Our work preferences and our life preferences do not stay the same, because we do not stay the same”. This leads to the observation against too much focus on personality traits in work environments because the reality is that personality tends to change over the time.

Bill Gates recommended ‘Range’ as one of the 5 good books to read for a lousy year 2020. Gates liked the book very much and has this to say about the book and the author “Epstein provides a good framework for understanding why polymaths are so important for innovation. He writes that when great innovators are studied, the researchers find “systems thinkers” with an ‘ability to connect disparate pieces of information collected from multiple sources’ and who read more and more broadly than other technologists”

The book poses a serious question on how can go we back from a culture that focuses too much on specialisation. The general criticism of ‘Range’ is that Epstein creates an impression of being too critical of specialists. Against this, Bill Gates gives good advice. “If you’re enthusiastic about a hyper-specialized field like molecular biology or quantum physics, go for it. However just give some room yourself to explore what your colleagues and friends in other fields are learning”, says Gates.

I find the ‘Range’ as a myth busting book. However, it is a very slow read, as one needs time to digest the hypothesis that Epstein throws at you, chapter by chapter. I recommend it as a must read all thought leaders.

DEV BHUMI & GOD’S OWN COUNTRY

What is common between Uttarakhand and Kerala, you may wonder! 

Part of Ayravarth, Hindi speaking, BJP ruled, Himalaya bordered, predominantly vegetarian Uttarakhand and Dravidian cultured, Malayalam speaking, Communist ruled, Arabian sea bordered, predominantly non-vegetarian Kerala could easily qualify as antithesis to each other. 

But there are commonalities.

The first is that both states have a Godly connection. Uttarakhand, part of the Himalayas, with its high mountains, is considered as the abode of Gods, particularly the ‘Mahadev’ (Shiv)! Thus, the  state calls itself a ‘Dev Bhumi’! Kerala has a ‘coined’ description of it as ‘God’s own country’, that has to do with the myth about Lord Parshuram, an avatar of Vishnu, reclaiming Kerala from the sea by throwing his axe into it. 

The next commonality is the rivers, while there is no comparison of the mighty Ganga/Yamuna with the short rivers of Kerala, the fact is, both states have a river culture and river based economy. 

Both states had high forest cover that is depleting due to encroachers, poachers and the politician controlled forest mafia. 

The power generation in both states is hydel based, that has to with excess water availability due to lavish rains that occur there. 

Another connect is the renowned and venerated Badrinath Tempe of Uttarakhand, consecrated by Adi Shankara from Kerala during 8th century CE, where the puja is performed by Malayali Brahmins, even since.

Now comes the negative  commonalities. 

Both states continue to suffer from disastrous landslides associated with incessant rains that has unseasonably increased every year, due to climatic changes happening across the country/world. 

Every year, we read about heavy floods, high number deaths and loss of property that go unabated in both states.

And, the governments of both states haven’t done anything proactively to mitigate the sufferings of people from floods and landslides, which need strong and forceful methods. The unplanned ‘developmental‘  activities without taking the nature into consideration; such as construction of roads, dams, power stations, urbanisation and all, is adding to the nature’s agony. The inaction is due to vote bank politics and the forest mafia influence. The clever politicians would not want to disturb franchise equations of the state . 

All that both governments do is, lip service. The question is, how long will they continue this way? 

Till both the states are ravaged by nature’s fury and completely destroyed ???

THE DISTURBING QUESTION

Some 70,000 years back, Homo Sapiens came out of Africa (OOA-2) and started moving. They were referred to as ‘Hunter gatherers’ and they started expanding, initially through the southern coast, to Asia & Oceania and finally, reaching all continents. During their journey across, the Sapiens sometimes fought and sometimes interbred with the Homo Erectus (and its various avatars), who had come  out of Africa (OOA-1) and spread across the planet, some 2000,000 years ago. 

However, it isn’t very long ago (in comparison), only about 7000 years back, that humans started settling down with agriculture cultivation. They domesticated wild animals, dug up metals, built up townships and began societies. 

History and science, thus, tell us that  the whole human species are migrants and of course, grossly interbred. All of us carry certain percentage all those hominids in our DNA, which could easily be identified through a DNA test, something not expensive to undertake today! The question therefore is, to which percentage faction in the DNA is one biased? 

Take the case of the Indian sub-continent which over the the last millennium had become 7-8 nations with a possibility of permuting again. The current India where the diversity is still very strong (in haploid factions, languages, religions and culture), the unity is achieved by accepting and tolerating the diversity with the level of empathy that was required to do so. Until now, it went well, under the protection of the constitution. With the rising of majoritarianism that is on now, are we not showing the candle to burn off what is not accepted? And, will it only burn off whatever unwanted, or the whole?

This is the introspection that we need to do. Looking at the way in which the persecuted minorities behave across the world, are we not intelligent to understand that any act of aggrandizement can only result in resistance, chaos and annihilation of all that we had built up, on either side of the spectrum? 

When we fight the so called separate others, are we not fighting within ourselves?

‘AUKUS’ TAKES ‘QUAD’ FOR BREAFAST

In the past, I had made some posts about the importance of Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, QUAD in short, an umbrella security club sort of an arrangement that was built by Japan, Australia, India & the US, in order to oversea the autonomy of Indo-Pacific Ocean zone, in the wake of Chinese’s assertion over it for the past two decades. With the increased Chinese aggression over the land, India considered it to be a strong deterrent against that nation. At the time of my earlier posts, with Donald Trump as the US President, the QUAD was buiding up steam at the right earnest, later culminating  in the ‘Malabar Naval  Exercise’ jointly by the QUAD member nations in the middle of this year. 

All that has changed now. The US under Joe Biden now has demoted QUAD into a ‘cooperative effort on things like energy, people to people exchanges, infrastructure and supply chain resilience”, as announced by Ms Wendy Sherman, US Deputy Secretary of State at Delhi, lately. 

What brought about this change of plans? 

1. Subsequent to Biden taking power in US, the country’s policies shifted and it was felt that an informal alliance such as QUAD will not work effectively and it needs substance of power to work against China. So, they involved nuclear capabilities to deter China. The fact is America never trusted Indian nuclear endeavours and so, it joined up with its besty, the UK and of course, Australia to form Australia-United Kingdom-United States, AUKUS, an alliance for nuclear submarine capabilities in the Indo-Pacific Ocean zone. 

2. The Indo-American relationship was never made on strong rails. There continues to have mutual distrust in several areas between the two nations. India could never be a stooge of US as Pakistan had been and it is not expected that India will support every move of America. And, India continues to maintain very good relationship with Russia (whom the present US regime hates), including military dealings with it. 

3. The Biden-Harris duo have been directly and indirectly chiding India on the perceived erosion of its democratic values and the intolerant stand that Indian ruling dispensation has taken on other religions. 

4. Come to think of it. Isn’t there a racist angle in the formation of AUKUS? Japan and India are Asian nations and are not white controlled. Culturally too, the US is not comfortable to have intimate relationship with the Asians. 

All these must have changed the US perspective and it demoted QUAD into a social club for cooperatiion on developmental issues. 

Is it a setback for India? From the current foreign affairs perspective, it could be viewed as one. But India, with an external affairs policy that conceived initiatives such as NAM (Non Aligned Movement), it never tried to cosy up to US, UK etc, in the way these nations want the relationship to be (a la US-UK, US-Pakistan etc.) 

So, with the weakening of QUAD, India is back to fending for itself……

THE NEED FOR A STORNG OPPOSITION & THE SELF DESTRUCTIVE CONGRESS PARTY

All agree that democracy works best when the opposition to the ruling party is strong. There is an absolute necessity for a balance in governance that can only be provided by a strong opposition party. We have seen that in nations when the incumbent party accumulates excessive power without a strong opposition, it goes autocratic. There are many examples of it across the world and at home.

Huge incumbency & concentration of power in the hands of few individuals in the parties of yesteryears had given birth to many regional parties. In many Indian states viz: Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, MS, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Punjab etc., we see very strong regional parties; many of them ruling the states now. However, at national level, these regional parties have not been able to make major impact, as their focus is on their respective states.  

The Indian National Congress (Congress) that ruled the country for many terms continuously, is a sick party today. Most of the regional parties of the country are actually those splintered out of the Congress. Still the party then had enough strength to play at national level to form government, even if in a coalition format which is no longer the case now. Over the years, the Congress had become rudderless. The Gandhi family, without much accountability, had failed to hold the party together. Even within the mother-son-daughter, there are differences on many issues. The elders in the party (Manmohan Singh, AK Antony, Motilal Vohra, Pawan Bansal etc.), have no opinion and acts as ‘yes men’ to the family. Leaders such as Chidambaram, Oommen Chandy etc. are there but are indifferent. Within the organisation hierarchy of Congress, many had established ‘checkmate’ between each other to protect self interest and stop others going up. With gross inactivity and incumbency at its peak, some ‘thinking’ (?) people;  Kapil Sibal, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Manish Tewari, Sashi Tharoor etc had formed a Group of 23, asking questions and seeking remedies from within which is not taken kindly by the acting president and the family and the group is being strongly resisted. At every state, be it Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan etc. where Congress party is ruling, there is huge dissent within, things are unmanageable now. 

All these being the case, the ruling party which wanted to obliterate the Congress, doesn’t need to do much, because the party is on a self destructive course by itself. All BJP did was to choke the money sources of Congress. Today, nobody needs to destroy the congress party, it is destroying by itself. That is good for the BJP as it could go about with the  ‘Hindutva’ agenda while enjoying absolute majority, without even having an opposition leader in Loksabha. 

At this rate, in the next union election, the ruling party can take out one D (Democracy) out of its 3D slogan and make it simply, 2D (demography & demand) !