The other ethics of the division of labor

What shape should you give your life: Single-minded, uncompromising dedication to a calling or dabbling in several areas at a slightly-above-average level?

My last Ruminathan began discussing the ethics of the division of labor, raising the same question, but from the point of view what we owe each other. Provisionally, I gave the pat answer: Specializing allows us to be more productive, giving us all a better chance of meeting our needs and desires as long as everyone plays by certain rules. The pat answer doesn’t do it for me, but that is another subject for another Ruminathan. In the meantime, I am interested in the same question from the perspective of choosing the good life.

At my age, I have pretty much placed my bets on dabbling. But it’s still a burning question as I raise my children. They will, of course, choose however they choose. But I can help them recognize that it is a choice.

There are different ways to specialize. The workers in Adam Smith’s nail factory divided up the nail-production steps, and by specializing, they became more productive. Yet it would be wrong to conclude that specialization always involves the separation into simpler and simpler tasks that require less and less skill. That kind of specialization can lead to productivity gains. But it also leads to the worst kind of drudgery. If that were the only variety of specialization it would clearly be a bad choice, offering neither intrinsic rewards, nor good pay, nor job security. We wouldn’t choose that specialization. We’d have to be forced into it by circumstance, as many have been and are forced.

That is one of the most powerful ethical arguments against a Social Grand Bargain built on a relentless division of labor. Whether that argument has been defanged by outsourcing drudgery to machines and programs is an important question that I won’t pursue for now.

But what about the “interesting” specializations, the ones that take years to develop, that involve a winnowing, both of contenders, and of the individual contender’s habits? Where – even when mastery is achieved – you have to spend an enormous amount of time just to maintain your level, never mind hone your skills further. Where you truly have to sacrifice at the altar of your dream. Professional musicians and athletes are examples, of course, but the same goes for most creative work, and wherever commanding a vast and evolving body of knowledge is essential. Is the single-minded pursuit of these specializations a good choice in the game of life?

I’m not concerned with recognition per se. And in any case, recognition and remuneration will not occur until after you’ve made your choice. Probably long after. I’m concerned with what questions will haunt life’s second half, after the die has been cast. And I don’t believe the only important questions are “If I had taken the other path, would I have received more recognition? Would I be wealthier?”

Nor am I concerned with “happiness,” whatever that may be. Maybe the best way to frame the question is: “Assuming that we have only one life to live, did I make the most of mine?” 

You might think natural talent plays a role in the decision. But it’s not like we can measure raw talent reliably before we put in the hours. In winner-take-all fields, you probably need both exceptional talent and practice, yet there are many fields where you can make a living on an average talent endowment, provided you put your nose to the grindstone. And then, if you don’t make it to the very top of your field, you may always have to ask yourself if it’s because you’re missing that secret sauce or because you could have devoted another half-hour a day to your calling: You may never know for certain that you are truly talented, to which “imposter syndrome” testifies. So the question of whether or not you have talent is separate from what shape you choose to give your life.

And of course, there are people who achieve excellence in more than one area. My own favorite is an astrophysicist and historian/practitioner of stereophotography who is also a musician of some repute. Often, these Renaissance people attribute their success in each to cross-pollination between their interests. But that probably just means the lucky bastards were endowed with many talents and can dabble at a superior level. The question remains: Would they lead a more fulfilled life if they pursued a single calling?

As an inveterate dabbler, I can always rationalize some ways to recommend the dabbling way of life: Single-mindedness is, in any event, always a matter of degree. Some time every day needs to be devoted to needs up and down Maslow’s hierarchy. But for the single-minded, any individual indulgence – the carefully prepared meal instead of the scarfed-down takeout, the late night with friends followed by the unproductive, hungover morning, the palette-cleansing fantasy novel read instead of slogging through Kant in the original – has to be not just a guilty, but a remorseful pleasure. At least from my outside dabbler’s perspective, it seems that the single-minded pursuit of a calling can’t help but overlay everyday joys with anxiety. 

Or maybe it’s the very theft of those moments that renders them truly exquisite in a way that a dabbler can never appreciate?

What’s for sure is that our Social Grand Bargain exerts pressure to specialize, so it’s at least possible that the voice inside you telling you to pursue a calling is nothing other than that social pressure, internalized. Then the persuasive force of that call is grounded in the argument that we owe it to each other to specialize: Single-minded specialists are the ones who cooperate fully in the social game, devoting all their energies to the domain in which they are the most productive. Dabblers are exploiters who fritter away their energy in less productive ways, while enjoying the surpluses produced by the specialists. If we buy that argument, and if we believe that participating in a society – in the sense of living according to its rules and expectations – is at least a necessary condition for the good life, then maybe specialization is the way to go. But those are very big ifs.

What if we’d all live fuller lives if we made music ourselves, even if we sing out of key; if we spent more time cooking, even if we boil noodles into a soggy mess; if we told each other stories, even if they aren’t as epic and plot-twisty as Breaking Bad; and if we put our kids in childcare for half a day while we work half a day at any old job, instead of paying someone to take care of them all day while we pursue a high-powered career?

A colleague of mine just announced he is leaving his current job to go to SpaceX, having dreamed all his life of working in space exploration. Pursuing his dreams involves uprooting his family and moving halfway across a continent. His is a choice I’d make very reluctantly, but it raises the question: Do I have a “dream” at whose altar I’d make that sacrifice? Does the good life require that intensity of worship?

Having written this, I admit I’m no closer to a conclusive answer. I may return to the question in a future Ruminathan, but I feel like I need to go back and read Kierkegaard first. And what dabbler has time for that?