A Culture Against Polymathism

Here’s a sensible attitude for my internship, since my feet aren’t firmly planted on the programming boat: treat work like school. In other words, treat work like work. In other words, don’t obsess about it, and don’t let it interfere with the other activities you want to pursue and tasks you want to accomplish. I have lots of open doors in front of me, and it’s difficult to get a good feel for each room at this point — doing so requires an active commitment and a lot of time.

My mentioning this probably goes to show how pressuring society is — “Be good at one thing!” “Find out what you want to do — quick!” It seems like businesses and colleges just don’t want you to be good at multiple things these days.

But why not? Take a look at the polymaths of the Renaissance. These guys were open to anything and everything, and they approached all aspects of life with curiosity and energy, extracting the absolute most from each. They were probably interested in different things at different points; they didn’t satisfy themselves with just one activity.

This polymath-attitude more accurately captures how I feel about my future and my interests right now: I’m open to being a writer, a traveler, a programmer, an engineer, an entrepreneur, a social scientist, an economist, a teacher… My interests vary frequently, and I continually revise my methods for getting things done, trying different approaches, etc. I can’t imagine restricting myself to just one pursuit. I think I’d be happy if I were stuck with any, but I don’t want to be stuck. I don’t think the accomplished polymaths of the Renaissance would have liked it, either. (Then again, maybe they had to hop from discipline to discipline because none was as advanced as such disciplines are today… In any case, I imagine they kept themselves busy enough that they were relatively happy.)