What I mean by this, is that the efficiency and selfness structured in autogamy encourages more autogamy. Rimer’s Study: Many College Students Not Learning to Think Critically in Columbia University’s The Hechinger Report, specifically points to this issue: “Students who majored in the traditional liberal arts — including the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences and mathematics — showed significantly greater gains over time than other students in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills… Students majoring in business, education, social work and communications showed the least gains in learning” (Rimer). The liberal arts and the humanities naturally encourage creativity, critical thinking, reading rigor, and above all, allogamy. These disciplines are comprehensive, drawing from multitudes of sources and ideas. Unfortunately, business, education and communications are far more autogamous. These disciplines intentionally separate themselves from the wide-reaching, open-scoped humanities.
The detriment, in such autogamous rigidity, is that with a varied collection of resources, ideas remain very stable. Ideas rarely undergo innovation, because the resources themselves are very akin to one another – each source of information is alike the next. Autogamous disciplines like business, education and communications rely on their separation from liberal arts and the humanities. This stems from the generalist vs. specialist debate. During the 20th century, the marketplace favored the specialist. So much so, that as work and workflow became more and more assembly-lined, individual tasks became the sole responsibility of a worker. This only furthered specialization. Autogamy is a very strong model when specialization is the desired outcome. The division of labor, departmentalization, and the separation of tasks were championed in the 20th century market. Functionality is key. An analogy can be drawn between specialization and an organism. Each cell in the organism’s body performs a designated task. The entire body requires each cell to continually perform this task, for without the collective work of all the cells, the body would perish. The 20th century economy is structured very similarly.
But this places a huge amount of pressure on the specialized worker, who must not deviate from his/her task. This also makes the individual worker completely dependent on the system. In this specialized workforce, the individual does not perform anything independently. His/her individualism is secondary to the collective production. And s/he is completely removed from the end outcome – s/he only plays a part, but never produces anything as a whole. In one sense, this is vastly important because without specialization huge goals would be unattainable (ie. enormous production numbers, speedy processes, rapid growth). But in this model everything is autogamous. The specialized worker can only train another worker in his/her specialized task. Ideas flow top down and are tailored to very specialized, isolated functions. Autogamy is efficient, but not comprehensive. We can see how business, education and communications favor this model. Each of these fields produce highly specialized professionals which enter highly specialized markets. But these markets are quickly and irregularly changing. In my previous papers, I explained how autogamy is ideal for a stable environment whereas allogamy is better for an unpredictable environment. Autogamy focuses on rigid structure and best practices. Allogamy focuses on fluidity and integrating varying ideas. Under these principles, autogamy is very specialized and allogamy is very generalized. Autogamous adaptations become specialized because there is no need for variation – the environment provides the same stimuli. Allogamy needs variation in order to cope with drastic changes. In biology, species are categorized in such ways: generalist or specialist. Those species which are generalist have a greater chance of long-term survival, but must also undergo evolutionary changes. Specialists fill special niches, but if that niche changes, than the specialist species typically dies out.
Koalas are specialists. Their entire repertoire of adaptations is for a very specific environment and a very specific food source: eucalyptus. Because of this, koalas live only in the coastal regions of Australia, and could not survive anywhere else. An animal of similar size, but is far more equipped for change, is the raccoon. Unlike the koala, the raccoon is an omnivore and inhabits the entire continent of North America (in all of its climates and ecosystems – north, south, east and west). A subtle change in the koala’s habitat could result in a mass extinction – for instance, a disease killing off most of the eucalyptus trees would have disastrous effects on the koala population. Raccoons, on the other hand, eat a variety of foods including invertebrates, plants and fruits, and vertebrate animals. Any shift in any of these food sources, would simply mean the raccoon would have to find greater quantities of the others. Autogamous disciplines are specialist-orientated like the koala. Becoming an expert in a very narrow field makes you very desirable as long as that market is stable. Once there is a shift, the skills mastered in that field are rarely transferable to other fields.
Being trained in finance does not mean you can transfer those skills to personnel management. Likewise, art teachers typically cannot teach math or physics. So we can see that autogamous training is very efficient and beneficial as long as the market provides consistency. But what if the market changes over night? What of a dotcom boom or new technologies replacing old practices? What of smart technologies? What of automation? How can a specialist cope in such markets? The 21st century has been hallmarked by great cultural, societal and technological upheavals. And these are projected to remain exponential – continually growing at tremendous paces. Does the koala or raccoon fair better in such a world? Who adapts and who goes extinct?
references
1. Rimer, Sara. "Study: Many College Students Not Learning to Think Critically." The Hechinger Report January 18 (2011). Print. Teachers College, Columbia University
2. Pink, Daniel H. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead, 2006. Print.
3. Peat, F. David. From Certainty to Uncertainty: the Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry, 2002. Print.
4. “Grow up? Not so fast,” By Lev Grossman. Time, January 16, 2005.
5. Robbins, Alexandra, and Abby Wilner. Quarterlife Crisis: the Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. Print.
6. Palmer, Parker J., Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner. The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.
7. Shoemaker, Jean Eklund, and Larry Lewin. "Curriculum and Assessment: Two Sides of the Same Coin." The Changing Curriculum Number 8 50.May 1993 (1993): 55-57. Print.
8. Fiero, Gloria K. Landmarks in Humanities. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. Print.
9. Tufte, Edward. "PowerPoint Is Evil; Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." Wired Sept. 2003. Print. Issue 11.09
10. Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub., 2008. Print.
11. Reynolds, Garr. "Storytelling Lessons from Bill Cosby." Rev. of Keynote Speeches and Comedic Career. Web log post. Presentation Zen. Garr Reynolds, 28 June 2011. Web. 30 June 2011.
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