Dilettantes and gatekeepers

Social dynamics, in particular the human gregarious behavior, our need to feel part of different groups, has always piqued my curiosity. In previous posts I have discussed the importance of the signals we produce (including costly rites) to prove beyond doubt our membership to certain groups, such a religion, as well as the social norms that allows us to stay in the group or the benefits that belonging provides to the individuals, such as recognition and support. But any mathematician can confirm the definition of any group automatically defines its complementary, which is formed exactly by all the elements that do not belong to the first one. In mathematical terms, membership to groups or sets is determined by immutable rules and, in fact, if a rule cannot be affirmed or negated unequivocally, it is not a good rule, but in human terms the definition is much more blurry and often subject to discussion.

One of the elements of uncertainty in the definition of membership is the power of the gatekeepers, a few individuals (elected or self-appointed) whose task in the group is to determine if candidates fulfill the conditions to be considered members. In the same way that the librarian will check you card and verify that you are "in good standing" (i.e. with no open penalties for late returns) many other groups will not consider you a member unless you match certain criteria. However, this criteria are often loosely defined and might be waived under certain conditions, or be applied to you with full rigor while you are on probation, even if you thought you could already count with a full-fledged membership.

Photo: Simon Li

This is more or less what has happened to Canadian psychologist Steven Pinker in this article in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Nathan Pensky, who laments that, for the third consecutive time already, the academic has  left the halls of the discipline that earned him his well-deserved fame and leveraged the attention he always draws to publish a book thickly populated with historical and philosophical concepts but, in the opinion of Mr. Pensky, completely devoid of rigor. I have to admit to having fallen for his out-of-field charm, and in fact I mentioned some of his works in a previous post. His arguments are compelling and his narrative captivating, even if he falls short of the level of detail expected in academia. Mr. Pensky compares Pinker to another public speaker of my devotion, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who probably has similar shortcomings in the field of astronomy but is doing nonetheless a wonderful job at promoting space science in general and the involvement of the new generations in particular.

Being by his own admission fresh of a PhD program, one can only imagine the amount of scrutiny that Mr. Pensky has been suffering in recent years, and is therefore not very surprising that he exerts it to a similar degree on a suitable target. And finding numerous flaws he has every right to play the gatekeeper deny Mr. Pinker the label of "humanist in good standing", applying instead the somewhat derogatory term "dilettante", deeming him an amateur, someone who dabbles in a field out of casual interest rather than as a profession or serious interest.

The question that arises immediately is one of legitimacy: to which extent is a recent PhD, even if he graduated in literary and cultural studies, entitled to establish who is and who is not a proper humanist? This problem goes back all the way to the medieval guilds, whose membership could only be achieved with the approval of the sitting members so the only option was to "become one of them" (e.g. establish friendships and relationships of patronage) if you wanted to become one them. But at least back then it was an association of peers, so a tanner master had plenty of experience of what the job entailed to determine the quality of an apprentice's work. Much less balanced, perhaps to the point of unfair, is the relationship between artists and critics: the latter are socially granted the right to inspect and judge the works of the former possibly without having produce a single piece of remarkable value themselves. Cooks, playwrights and painters are all equally haunted by the unforgiving eyes (or tongues) of those experts that are unable to produce anything and instead devote themselves to deconstructing the careful composition of these artisans.

The surprising fact is that this professionalism is a fairly recent development in human history, dating back only to the Agrarian Revolution, approximately 9000 years BCE, because before that we were essentially all our own hunters, cooks and artisans. And even with today's push for professional everything, we can hardly claim more than one career (e.g. a professional athlete), while we stay as amateurs (yes, dilettantes) in every other aspect of our lives, provided that we do not get any training for being a parent or a child, a friend, or a neighbor. And the few activities where training is mandatory (e.g. driving lessons, firearm licensing) do not allow us to consider ourselves professionals by a long stretch. But what is the alternative?

Crouching safely in front of my keyboard I have to admit to be an amateur in many things, particularly in writing (I never trained to be a writer or a journalist), but that does not prevent me from forming, and even speaking out, my own opinions. They might lack the robustness of the arguments of consolidated opinion makers, but that is not the idea. I do not intend to survive deep scrutiny or systematic demolition of my logic, just want to share the thought that course, in a rather haphazard way, my mind in case they can provide useful seeds to you. I will probably never know if that is the case, but as long as it serves me to force my ideas to come out in an orderly way, it will be time well spent. Have a nice evening.