Specialist Generalist At Your Service!
Fireside Chats, Formal Essays, Analysis, Theory and a World of Pithy Satire
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The publishing cosmology that I am in the midst of creating now involves a third Substack newsletter. Oy vey! I promise, it's the last one. On December 5th of last year I launched The Western Polemic – readers of The Turn are encouraged to subscribe. In all honesty, it’s not to be missed! Read my thoughts from launch day published in the pages of Woke Watch Canada, in the aptly titled piece Introducing the Western Polemic.
So far three essays have appeared in the Western Polemic newsletter, with a fourth to drop any day now. All essays include introductory comments from yours truly. Readers can consider WP soft-launched for now, but my plan, within a year or two, is to expand the Western Polemic into something more than publishing alone. What exactly that “something more” will be remains to be determined. I have a few ideas, but the only thing I can say for sure is that whatever future direction the Western Polemic takes, it will be directly relevant to the subject matter of the work it publishes: exploring and defending the Western moral and intellectual tradition. For now the work itself, the quality of the writing, will remain my obsessive focus.
On that note I wanted to say a few words about the type of work I do, or at least, how I like to think about it. There are no rules to McLuhan's Field Approach. Do readers remember the brief discussion concerning Field Approach in my piece from last November called The Long Hiatus ? Well, beyond what was written there, I would like to add another of Marshall McLuhan’s ideas to the mix. Namely, his concept of the artist. It is different from the common conception. While it still includes such categories as poet, painter, sculptor, and musician, it extends to that person who has acquired cutting edge knowledge and skill in practically any discipline. But also, who has fully grasped the implications concerning the medium and subject matters in which they work.
Because I have no formal associations with any institutions of higher learning, I often refer to myself as an independent scholar or an autodidact. However, I only say that when I’m in a hurry. If we go out for drinks, and we pick a nice spot, with dim enough lighting and good enough music, with the type of vibe that unapologetically pulls forth those most frenetic observations of one's eager yearnings, I’ll tell you the truth, and give you the long version. To encapsulate it here in a nutshell: I am an artist first – in the fullest McLuhanian sense – before I am any type of scholar (self-taught or otherwise). I have always been an artist. At first I was attracted to sound and music. I studied Jazz formerly and spent half a lifetime running my own music production business (including 14 years in a commercial recording studio I built from scratch). But now, I deal with ideas, knowledge, history, and theories, through a variety of forms of writing. If you are a regular reader of The Turn or Woke Watch Canada, you know exactly what I do. It's just that I’ve never spoken about it in these terms before. For me, it’s no longer musical, it’s literally literal. Where the musical score used to be my source document, today the manuscript is.
But there is another reason why McLuhanian artistry is the particular brand I’ve circled my wagons around. McLuhan said that the medium of the artist was pattern recognition. And further, that since we lived in an information age, this meant cutting edge artists who were uniquely capable of structuring the experience of information overload via pattern recognition, were indispensable guides for all of humanity. It was the patterns recognized by artists, re-interpreted and expressed through the various art forms practiced, which served as the “antenna of the human race.” In this sense, works of art themselves were to be considered both “Noah's arks,” and an “early distant warning system” of civilizations looming inevitabilities. I am the first to admit that not everything McLuhan said made sense. However, there is something to his conception of the artist. Something that stirs, even subtly, within a deep dark chasm at the frontier of subconscious and soul. I can’t shake it.
Structuring the experience of information overload and searching for patterns using McLuhan’s Field Approach, has in my case, led to the development of a method I call Specialism Generalism. That’s right, as oxymoronic as things may appear, I am indeed the world’s first specialist in Specialism Generalism. I am the preeminent specialist generalist, not least because I am the only specialist generalist. Specialism generalism may someday be all the rage, but until then, I am the Grand Duke Specialist Generalist and I’m at your service.
For reasons already explained, the specialist generalist is an artist trapped in a scholar's body. Whereas many academics dispense with the finer qualities of rhetoric, the art of letters is considered one of the most illustrious forms by the specialist generalist who has dedicated his life to honouring it. Having only a clever theory backed up by bibliographies of empirical facts does not cut it for the specialist generalist. Not by a long shot. The prose must sing, the pithiness must devastate, the irony must never be lost, and the satirical devices must rile the spirit of even the most humorless bore.
The artist who takes up specialism generalism is in a constant state of development and refinement. Becuase no self-respecting artist is ever satisfied with his productions, or felt he mastered his craft sufficiently. And whether I am the world’s leading specialist generalist or not (I definitely am), I declare that my best work has yet to come. My best sentences have yet to be formed. My best words have not been found. However, please do not take this in a way that does not reflect my intent. Do not think the work I do presently is not worth investing in. On the contrary, the work is worth every penny of the cost of a paid subscription – this I know for sure. But what I am trying to articulate, is simply that I am nowhere near the height of my craft. It is a universe away. I may have said a few clever or helpful things here and there, but I have said nothing of importance. Not yet.
But mark my words, five years from now, or maybe a decade or two yet, this specialist generalist will knock the collective socks off of humanity using only the power of ideas expressed through the miracle of words. It will be so. Or maybe it won’t. Whether humanity's feet are socked or sockless, in the end, will matter not. But the writing, oh the writing! The years of expounding and explicating, of declaiming, of privately orating and quietly elocuting. The countless hours spent sifting through books and scanning footnotes in essays, of the collegial relations with circles of researchers and writers forever brimming to share their ideas, the unfathomable openness and sense of liberty found in this life of the mind, it is all so much more than a trivial pastime, it is a deep connection with an ancient tradition, a Western tradition – as Robert Hutchens, the former president of the University of Chicago had it, a “great conversation.”
Between Woke Watch Canada and the Western Polemic, one will find all the things listed in the subtitle of today’s article. But I should first briefly mention that I just updated The Ontology of the Great Illiberal Subversion – a post originally published in late 2022 that I regularly add to. It serves as an index with summaries of an ongoing essay series written by Scott Miller and I called The Great Illiberal Subversion. So far that series contains 15 essays! – for the most part they are academic essays with footnotes and bibliographies. But now, Scott and I have turned our attention to a different series on the history of Western education which we are publishing in the Western Polemic newsletter. You can read the first part here: A History of Western Education - Part One.
I digress. The sub-title of today's diatribe. Right. Let’s go through it. Clearly the pithiness and the satirical device make their welcome appearance often enough in my own opinion pieces for WWC. And of course, at least I would argue, my bluntness is almost unreasonable, although deliciously ruthless in nature. However, there is room for improvement even in my areas of strength. Over the next decade, expect the overtly sarcastic use of scorn and irony to grow teeth and bite your faces. And even though the bluntness cannot really get much blunter, expect to see novel ways of inserting it into areas of historical sharpness. No container will contain, no limits will limit, specialism generalism is a trailblazer on a warpath. Be very afraid.
But please dear readers can we just get a little serious for a paragraph or two? My intention is not to make a joke out of what is clearly a beautiful, patently undamaged by the awfulness of an unfair world, set of authentic notions, inclinations and passions, which revolve constantly around the center of my imagination. It is so much more than the self-indulgent outbursts of some clever idiot with a knack for aesthetics. I may not be that clever, but I am no idiot. What I have happened upon is something. If cultivated, if nurtured with the utmost of care and consistency, it may blossom into something eminently worthwhile. In a small way, in a big way. In some way. It must be. I know it. I am in the midst of doing the things needed to make it so.
The Western Polemic, and Woke Watch Canada, and the The Turn, have all thus far demonstrated the “Formal Essays, Analysis” and “Theory.” As much as I may be dedicated to a pursuit of excellence concerning those aforementioned grand artforms of pithiness and mockery, it is with the formal, the academic, where the real truth-seeking takes place. In this area I also humbly submit to a vast decades long program of development. At some future sunrise, the world will awaken to an academic essay by my pen that will alter the course of history. Or if not, my own belief that it might, will drive me tirelessly to expand on the richness of the academic form. If I fail, there will always be some irony I can expound scornfully about. The pithiness will never tire.
And lastly, this brings us to the “fireside chat.” My friend, contributing author to WWC and the WP, the “anthropologist at large,” Geoffrey Clarfield, says that some of the writing I do is in the style of the fireside chat. He likes it, and I very much like writing it. This article today is an example of the fireside chat form. You can also see it in the introductions I write to the essays of the other authors I publish. But I do it in other places as well, including three or four posts per year which are meant as fund-raising posts. This article is meant as a fund-raising post (although I’ve done a terrible job waiting so long to mention that). I never write a post that simply asks people for donations. Don’t get me wrong, I beg for the donations, I desperately need the donations and the paid subscribers. It’s just that if I’m going to hold out my hat and look pathetic, I’m also going to sing you a little tune, offer you a little slice of something novel, maybe some light profundity, or at the very least a thought-provoking take or two, but always, without exception, lathered sloppily with the satirical goo that makes you smile.
In the weeks to come, I am going to take the fireside chat form to another level. I’m going to step up my fireside chat game and do a few things I have never done before. Among other things, I will share items that I come across in my research that I don’t have time to develop into full essays but wish I did. There will be lots of book and essay recommendations, but other things like art & architecture, films, music, literally anything that floats my boat. These upcoming fireside chats will only be available to paid subscribers of WWC or WP (they will be posted behind paywalls to both newsletters). This is a way for me to offer more value to the current group of paid subscribers, but also incentivize new subscribers. But most importantly it allows me to leave all of the remaining articles and essays freely accessible to the public. Only my fireside chats will be behind the paywall, everything else will remain as it is now, FREE!
Not to hype it up too much, but the fireside chats will include detailed instructions on how to be a specialist generalist - this alone should make you rush to upgrade to the paid tier! What are you waiting for!?
I do humbly and sincerely request that you either donate or upgrade to the paid membership status on any of the three Substacks I run. As well, paid subscribers of The Turn who would like to read my fireside chats (once they start being published later this month) can email at wokewatchcanada@gmail.com and I’ll send them a PDF copy.
Keep your eyes peeled on the Woke Watch Canada newsletter. In a day or two, I will be publishing a piece which introduces and further explains the upcoming fireside chat series. Stay tuned, for more to come. And thanks for reading!!