Amusingly enough, in Russian there's an expression (with a certain nuance) "You have to know everything."
It's simple: life is vast, complicated, and you will be fucked in every possible direction you are ignorant of. You have to know everything. Cutting off a piece of reality and saying "that's for technicians" is for schmucks.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an
invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building,
write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a
bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders,
cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new
problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty
meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization
is for insects.
(Lazarus Long, in Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein, 1973.)
Researching discussions of that quote, I was amazed at how many people think the sentiment is completely unattainable, and honestly view achieving just 2-3 of those points is a major achievement.
To the contrary, I do expect myself and others capable of doing anything (including learning how as needed). I do expect the average joe to know how to unblock an occluded pipe; I'll understand if said Joe chooses to hire someone else to do the job faster, cheaper, and as leverage to free up time for greater personal productivity...nonetheless, I expect Joe can if need be grab a monkey-wrench and a bucket and proceed to unblock that pipe somehow.
I'll admit I may not be able to do all of those things well, but dad gum I'll get 'em done. I'll also admit "comfort the dying" is by far the hardest.
I should look up the discussions for this quote, but I share your view -- such achievements are not _difficult_ or unattainable, they are a _necessity._
I pay for the convenience, productivity, and in some cases _safety_ of having someone else do certain jobs -- but I _always_ make it a point to understand _what exactly_ a professional is doing for me.
I've done all sorts of things in my two decades: I've replaced garage doors, high voltage lighting fixtures, electrical panels, theatre lighting, wheel bearings, strut towers, head gaskets, automobile brakes, ignition coils, automotive and marine batteries, flat tires. I've installed car radios, 120V 10+ Amp switches and outlets, appliances, cabinets, plumbing fixtures. I've assembled computers, shortwave radios, robots [out of legos, soon arduinos], model R/C planes, cars, etc.
I don't consider any of this _unattainable_ or even _extraordinary._ -- There are many things I hope I never have to do again, and there are many things that took me ages to do: but I'm still glad I did it, and I would _never_ put an upper bound on the number of things I _still need to obtain._
That is the key. I am not done, I will _never_ be done. I will go to the grave wishing I had accomplished more.
To say that two or three of these feats is a major achievement is laughable. _These achievements are what life is about._ Not the 8-hours I spend at my desk on a weekday, not the X-hours I spend watching television series, or reading fiction. Not the Y-dollars I spend or invest.
Life is about learning, creating, experiencing. Achieving two or three of the listed feats is no major achievement, it's the mark of a boring individual who cannot claim to _truly have lived._
---
I don't expect everyone to be an expert on every field of study -- but I cannot understand the lack of desire to know more. You commute every day, why _wouldn't you_ want to know more about your preferred mode of transport. (How it works, how to repair it, etc.) Even if that's _walking_, there's plenty you can learn about exercise, biology, etc.
You probably get sick several times a year: why wouldn't you want to learn about modern medicine? Hygiene? etc.
How can one turn on a radio and not be _amazed_ that the signal is being broadcast from 10s or 100s of miles away? (Even 1000s in the case of shortwave radio.) The same thought applies to using a cellphone, or a wireless internet connection.
Many of my peers grew up with dial-up -- how are you not amazed that we have speeds a hundred times faster _with no wires!?_ How can you be content with the poor broadband speeds in North America when these same people have _seen first-hand_ what happens when we increase our speeds by an order of magnitude?
An important point though is that Heinlein is not suggesting that you have to be a professional chef, or programmer who can write a twitter mockup in a day in Haskell, or an accountant who is able to recite chapter and verse of GAAP.
Society needs people who specialize and are domain experts, but we need to know the basics of each area so that we don't starve, don't run out of money because we didn't know how much we were spending, etc. Knowing the basics also allows us to talk and reason in those areas. And to become domain experts if the need arises, it's much easier to start with basic knowledge than no knowledge at all.
Yeah, but it is a really inefficient way to run a society. Time I waste figuring out why my corporate overlord's choice of email client isn't working with the server when I have little knowledge of the backend infrastructure is time wasted for the company.
It's not about how to run a society, or a corporation.
It's about how to live your life.
All snark aside, I'm really, really sad that there's someone on the other end of this communication that immediately thinks only of how to optimize how well they fit into someone's machine.
The choices we make about the ability to trust another person to fix something ethically says something about a society? You don't think dashcams on every car in a country says something about trust in a country?
Time I spend learning to fix my car is time I don't get to spend deepening my knowledge in one area. You are trading some amount of specialization for generalization somewhere else. The world is become more specialized, not less.
I suppose if you want to be a cog in a machine instead of a human being, this is a reasonable position to take.
Time you "waste" is time the overworked IT department doesn't have to, in a company that's not too big to function. Your knowing more is never a waste.
This reminds me of Masha the Bear, in Misha i Masha (my own transliteration, can you tell?). That image of the old guy who lives out in the woods and can fix anything seems really Russian (also very American, actually). I want to be that guy when I grow up.
Given recent (~100yr) history, one of the most ironic things I noticed when I was studying Russian was the odd characteristics that could be equally applied to either culture (another odd one is some kind of fetish for acronyms).
Time you spend in one place may have been better spent elsewhere. The time you take to learn one thing may have been spent elsewhere. Some knowledge is busywork as well. All knowledge is not created equal.
You remind me of the guys I knew at Eli Lilly. Those unfortunate enough to end up in technically oriented departments are warned not to learn too much - it will limit their career to learn about things instead of making relationships.
I was happy to have the door hit me on the way out. I learned a lot there. I wish you all the luck in the world.
It's simple: life is vast, complicated, and you will be fucked in every possible direction you are ignorant of. You have to know everything. Cutting off a piece of reality and saying "that's for technicians" is for schmucks.