Monday, February 20, 2012

Specialization and Politics


Just a really good quote from Wendell Berry. As with Plato, the state of a community reflects the state of the soul. This is what the "realists" ignore.
“The disease of the modern character is specialization. Looked at from the standpoint of the social system, the aim of specialization may seem desirable enough. The aim is to see that the responsibilities of government, law, medicine, engineering, agriculture, education, etc., are given into the hands of the most skilled, best prepared people. The difficulties do not appear until we look at specialization from the opposite standpoint – that of individual persons. We then begin to see the grotesquery – indeed, the impossibility – of an idea of community wholeness that divorces itself from any idea of personal wholeness.” Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America, p. 19.

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