5 ms·
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall
by trentnix 6y ago
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
— Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
- gordon_freeman 6y ago+1 if you remove the "butcher a hog" part from above!
- therufa 6y agohow is this relevant to the topic?
- em-bee 6y agoonly if you are vegetarian, otherwise you should be aware how the meat arrived on your table.
- Icathian 6y agoStrongly agree. I've been vegetarian for years, the only exception I'll make is if I go hunting with my family. If you aren't willing to kill it and clean it yourself, at least once in a while, you should probably stick to salad.
- croissants 6y ago> If you aren't willing to kill it and clean it yourself, at least once in a while, you should probably stick to salad. Why? Is the idea that meat has a unique ethical component that a consumer must grapple with up close by killing and butchering? There seem to be many items we consume that have complicated and unethical production processes, but nobody goes around telling people they need to make their own cell phone or t shirt at least once in a while.
- cameronbrown 6y agoI'll bite: There's something 'humane' about hunting an animal, rather than it being in captivity birth to plate. T-shirts and mobile phones were never alive so this doesn't strictly apply, but I think everyone could tinker with a Raspberry Pi and sewing at least once. It keeps us grounded with reality.
- dgb23 6y ago> but nobody goes around telling people they need to make their own cell phone or t shirt at least once in a while Maybe we should.
- em-bee 6y agoyou have a point, but actually we should. not so much build your own phone but at least understand how it, and anything else is produced, where the materials come from, the environmental and other damage the production causes, how the profit is distributed (how much are those miners earning?) etc. for food those are actually more well known, and we are starting to care about that more, but the demand for eggs from cage free hens is really not much different than a demand for better working conditions for factory workers, or for environmental friendly production processes
- forgotmypw17 6y agoI agree with you. I wouldn't be able to make a cellphone from scratch in a million years, but I have researched where they come from, and have settled on only using secondhand units, so that I am not directly complicit to everything which goes into making one. I've developed a similar stance to most products, and have largely abandoned spending money, exactly because factory farming is not that much different from making a cheap T-shirt, if not worse, in terms of cruelty and environmental damage.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- yeezyseezy 6y agoI swear Heinlein reuses this in Stranger in a Strangeland. Maybe he was an anti-specialization specialist.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago> Specialization is for insects. Was going strong right up until this. Figured he was going for jack of all trades, master of one. Attacking specialization outright is just silly.
- ampersandy 6y agoIn context, the quote is actually from a list of principles/observations the character has written in a notebook. I do not read it as an argument that mastering a skill/field is bad, but simply an observation that never bothering to learn new skills would be rather boring.
- rubidium 6y ago17/22 at 35 years old. Hope to not have to fight in a war or set a bone, and I’d rather die peacefully. But game to grow :)
- downrightmike 6y agoYes, the ideal Captain Kirk was modeled on. Too bad Heinlein was a horrible, horrible person.
- swyx 6y agoand what did he specialize in, pray tell?