For the promotion of its object by firefly

I was yet another Asian Australian cookie-cutter story. Like most of the other nine-year olds at my multicultural public school on Sydney’s north shore, my parents took the parental strategy of throwing things at me to do in the hopes that, through trial and much error, I would inevitably figure out how to master at least one. I scaled the piano keyboard in bursts of agitation and I flung tennis balls into all sorts of landing spots (bar those within the singles line). Weekend classes were spent thinking only about the next ten-minute break, with zero regard given to the intrusive parental philosophy of why my Year 3 NAPLAN results would seemingly dictate my earning potential at age 48. 

A decade later, I remain where I started: as a master of none. There is a contemptuous attitude of denigration attached to the phrase, and the famous expression itself originates from Robert Greene’s phrase “absolute Johannes Factotum” to dismiss none other than Shakespeare whilst in the midst of his pivot from acting to playwriting. Needless to say, only one of them has become compulsory on the high school English syllabus. Yet when an 18th century oil painting of Benjamin Franklin sits on the front of the Wikipedia page for polymath, it becomes clear how generalism is too often seen as a Renaissance artefact: admirable, but without any rightful place in the modern world. Today I may remain as a master of none… but contrastingly, I am one who descends from a newly-enlightened and increasingly restless state itching to discover more and more in spite of a world which values depth above breadth.

At the intersection of childhood and adolescence, generalism begins to get lazily chalked up to a kind of aspirational yet unrealistically exceptional phenomenon of multipotentiality. Too many fail to understand that generalism does not have to involve being prodigious in every possible field. The ‘jacks’ (Elizabethan for commoner) of all trades with varying successes in a disarray of competencies are the true underlying epitomisation of what the modern-day explorer should be: relentlessly motivated to cure a chronic case of boredom with an addictive dose of curiosity. This is what comprises the delta distinguishing my disinterested young self labouring through a broad itemised prescription from a genuine appreciation for multifaceted and complex range of experiences (though it must be said that the privilege of experiencing the former was perhaps what eventually led me down the path of the latter).

Unfortunately, like most things in life, this demises by adulthood at the hands of an inconvenient economic system. 

***

  “This is a Brooklyn-bound F local train.”

It was on a subway train in New York where a passionate argument between two seated passengers made me question the constraints of the world above.

  “Nobody on this train will see more than a million dollars in their life.”

My reflexive reaction was defensive with a tinge of stubbornness, internally perusing through all the possible ways I could prove him wrong. But as I spent more time around the people of the richest city of the world, it became quite evident no matter where one goes or who they are, the individual’s securement of income and identity tends to revolve around one field, one vocation, one thing. From the suits of the skyscrapers to the saxophones of the subway, people all seemed to self-distinguish in a rather similar fashion: through an outwardly-facing and internally-dominating singular raison d’etre (one which also usually manifested as their primary source of income).

Our world today is dictated by specialties and our economies are naturally structured around incentivising being really really good at doing one thing. From the way one introduces themselves to take-home remuneration pay packages, specialisations dominate. The gradual creep of skillset singularity begins at high school with students gravitating towards organic segregations ranging from ‘Asian combo’ HSC subjects to vocational training pathways. For those who rebel in exploring a diversified path, it is not long before they are faced with an inevitable and inescapable push to focus their studies on a single field within a context which increasingly (de)values universities as a means to a degree rather than as a means to an education. By the time we reach our working lives, the act of self-learning French or reading about Freudian psychoanalytic theory merely becomes an occasional sidetrack, though we may have one hobby that we have become committed enough to justify self-identifying with. Interdisciplinarians have become scarce, and ultimately, the rational dominant strategy to attain upward income bracket progression revolves around people getting better at doing their thing in a life which is oriented around sticking to that thing. There is nil impetus to diverge from the status quo once someone has ‘discovered’ their thing. 

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with specialisation, and I suspect that there is a significant number of people who would derive significant enjoyment and satisfaction from honing a craft they truly love, myself included. For those of us who are yet to find a suitable candidate craft, we imagine a certain vicarious romanticisation of people who experience such a honed passion. Higher education has a responsibility in producing graduates to the point of an employability whereby they can be compensated for their investment. Australian working life is internationally renowned for its accommodation of the so-called work-life balance. 

Yet despite these concessions, there is very little cultural or economic compassion for the majority of those who fall outside of this mould. Our world is a game which rewards those who play by its ruling motto.

  Discovery precedes specialisation, but dedication exceeds exploration.

***
  
It wasn’t always like this.

The concept of a liberal education with its pluralistic celebration of learning for learning’s sake, was once the predominant educational philosophy in the world, from Western Europe to Taishō-era Japan. But as an arms race for hegemony unfolded with the outbreak of World War Two, liberalism emerged as the next cultural casualty as societies became ambivalent, if not outrightly hostile, to an educational philosophy that was now misaligned with the militaristic nourishment of market-driven demand. This demand was for a rigidly industrial perception of education’s responsibility to formulate the most important factor of production: labour. Our well-intentioned hyperfocus on skill shortages and unemployment rates has come at the unnecessary expense of the inherent humanity behind education as an equitable arbiter for access to all kinds of knowledge. The pressure to specialise before the deadline for university course preferences has normed major-switching as students today lament their institutions as degree factories with a tokenistic set of substandard outreaching learning opportunities beyond their chosen field of mastery. 

It is about time our society remembered the value of the master of none. We would do well to start with the place where formal education began in post-colonial Australia, and we would only have to do one thing to fix this century-long retrograde amnesia. 

  “The object of the University is the promotion … of scholarship, research, free inquiry, the interaction of research and teaching, and academic excellence.”

  — University of Sydney Act 1989 (NSW) s6(1)

We would do well to return to the promotion of its object.

This piece was an entrant in the non-fiction category of the 2024 Honi Soit Writing Competition, run by the student newspaper at the University of Sydney. It was not a finalist or shortlisted piece.