The BIG, BIGGER, BIGGEST Picture
So. You learn these micromasteries, become more polymathic, happier, more successful (in the widest sense, of course), but what is the really important reason for all this? It has to be the growth of the individual—you, me—measured in the degree of integration of your selves that you ultimately achieve.
It is no good overdeveloping one self at the expense of the others. It might serve some organization, army, cause, or family—you might be a good worker bee like those Japanese executives who die from overwork and dedication to their corporations—but that wasn’t why you were put on this planet. We’re not here for purely mundane earthbound reasons, and any motivation that misses the human need to connect to the greater mysteries of life is ultimately going to shortchange you.
To do this you need to be a better person—more integrated, less trivial, more perceptive, more empathetic, more resilient, more energetic. A single self obsessed by stock prices, beauty products, or toy trains can’t run your real life. You know you are a whole gamut of selves and these need integrating to reach the next level of connection to the deeper realities of life.
Our multiple selves compete and demand recognition. But they also attack and belittle each other. When I am my business self and see a painting or photograph, I often unthinkingly dismiss it—yet if I was my artist self I would admire it. Business self wants to put down any other selves.
Take a moment and observe your different reactions to things. Take food: one self might like healthy food, but when the other self, who likes guiltier pleasures, is in the driving seat, this healthy food will be lampooned as inedible or boring. So not only do we lose energy and direction by switching selves, we also lose a lot more by attacking other selves. This is where attempts at integration begin.
To integrate all these disparate selves into one useful operating organism is like herding cats—or can be. What is required is a powerful and compelling overarching identity that can draw all these elements together. This identity has to be more than just a job description. You can’t expect “taxi driver” to cover all the components of what you hold dear. I knew someone who’d been a drummer in a rock band that had almost made it; he gave up and become a courier rider. Instead of keeping up the drumming he got rid of everything (he gave me his drum kit) and tried to be as “professional” as possible with matching leathers and a fancy BMW, showing a certain disdain for his former life. He was trying to integrate everything under a static definition, a mere job description. And, sadly, as a courier he was less successful than another who rode a battered bike yet was lively and more likable, and who self-identified with being a “world traveler” . . .
The poet, photographer, and businessman Ramsay Wood once told me that identifying as “poet” was much better than being just a “writer.” I wasn’t sure why but I know now. A poet as an identity vouches a greater connection to the mysterious and valuable—it is a higher-level kind of identity.
It is up to all of us to find a higher-level identity, something that connects and unites all our various elements, something that stops one of our multiple selves murdering the others, something that encourages the growth of all aspects of our personality. The kind of things you micromaster over time will give clues about which higher-level identity is appropriate to you. Merely being aware of it will help you find an identity that works to integrate your life better.
If you overdevelop strength of mind, you may end up despising others—a failure of empathetic development. If you overdevelop caring you may end up stunting someone’s ability to stand on their own feet—a failure of perception. But just because an overdevelopment of one aspect is so obviously grotesque doesn’t mean we can’t try to work on developing ALL aspects.
Having a polymathic worldview might lead you to dabble in many things. Micromastery is the way to turn dabbling into a glimpse of your true and amazing potential. Micromastery is practical polymathy. It’s a way to really achieve a dream of doing many things—your personal bucket list, like the wish lists of Clifford Pickover.
It’s also a great way into a subject you may eventually choose to master. I have seen people who would be classified as delinquent and incapable of learning anything new walk out of an aikido dojo after a year with a black belt. They started by learning a single move. A micromastery.
I’ve met people with little formal educational background who have studied a hard foreign language to fluency. They started by entering a language school to find out how to order a meal and a coffee. A micromastery.
Micromastery is about regaining the permission to be interested and involved. In certain eras this philosophy was embraced; how else do we explain the explosions of talent in the “polymathic” phases of history—Islamic Spain, Elizabethan England, Revolutionary America? Once people grasp that their task is to develop their potential in every direction, then the world becomes a better, brighter, more enlightened place.
It is the very opposite of any form of narrow-minded fundamentalism that seeks to enslave people to further a worldview. In a small way, micromastery is the first step to becoming truly superhuman.