As I’ve made clear in previous columns, I like reading. I have Bloglines subscriptions to almost 700 blogs, of which I probably read 400-500 pretty regularly. I tend to group my blog subscriptions into two major categories, culture and politics – what I call “news and views” – although lately I’ve been supplementing those with blogs speaking to other interests of mine, like food and grammar and LOLcats. And I’ve noticed the same problem with these blogs, particularly the political ones, which I came across in just about every hobby of mine through the years. By and large, the writers seem to believe their subject matter is the only one worth pontificating about, and any blogger who has “outside” interests is not worthy to be in their circle.

We live in an era of divide and conquer, where each faction is encouraged into its own little category, where the idea of a well-rounded individual is anathema to getting ahead, where specialization is the order of the day. Because of deadline pressures, many artists who make their living doing comic books have to choose between penciling and inking. My husband is fond of noting that in England, where he lived for the first 36 years of his life, there was no such artificial division of labour when he learnt his craft. Imagine his frustration when we were going over the rudiments of baseball and he found out about all the different subdivisions of pitchers and fielders! He still can’t understand how a professional ballplayer can’t field at just about any position, and why most pitchers can’t complete an entire game. To tell you the truth, the part of me that’s been a baseball fanatic since girlhood, and remembers lots of complete games, readily agrees.

But everything these days is compartmentalized to within an inch of its life. “General interest” and “Renaissance person” have become almost freakish notions these days. Why this is so in the days of “multitasking” is beyond me. We’re expected to juggle umpteen tasks simultaneously at work but we can’t choose more than one passion in our downtime? (more…)