Specialisation enables astonishing productivity and efficiency but it comes with problems.
The specialist knowledge of members of a profession is significant or extraordinary but their perspective tends to be limited to a particular framework.
conflicts of interest
Most specialists have narrower aims and interests than the rest of their community. Allegiance to community is diluted by financial incentives and peer pressures. There is usually at least a mortgage or student loan to pay off and a lifestyle to maintain.
Some professional consultants are paid to lobby regulators and legislators to change or ignore laws that protect the community but get in the way of profit.
When heritage or environment is in the way of development, expert approval may be needed to green-light its removal. Pollution often requires a scientist's or politician's rubber stamp. Professionals are paid by Big Pharma to provide research or lobby governments to get drugs approved, banned or made compulsory.
Professional independence is compromised by revolving doors between specialists working as lobbyists one year, regulators the next and consultants another. At best there is a conflict of interest with limited objectivity or at worst there is outright or indirect bribery or some other form of corruption.
Best practice and the demands of clients and the demands of employers do not always line up. Most of us who have worked as specialists have been pressured to do things we are uncomfortable with or are against the law or public interest. It is not always easy to be ourselves and be reliable and effective. To get or keep a job requires fitting into its culture.
loss of expertise
There has been a trend around the Western world over the past few decades for governments and employers who don't want expert opinion to get in their way to appoint administrators with no professional experience to replace the older professionals who learnt their trade rising through the ranks.
Consequently in many professions like teaching and personal social services there has been in some countries a degradation of mentoring, skills, culture, values and independent professional objectivity.
As regulation increases professionals are increasingly appointed as regulators or gatekeepers of public funds with job descriptions that regard the industries they regulate as clients. Often their roles have become less objective and independent,
There is often little time or incentive for experts to keep in touch with latest technology, the community or other disciplines.
the blueprints of society
We create our world in our image. Our society and the stuff in it – the machines, buildings and organisations - are externalisations of ourselves.
The blueprints are the ideas embedded in everyday language. They include broad outlines, minute details, best practice, proportions, opinions, options, stories, outcomes, risks and benefits.
As specialists take over, the words and the blueprints disappear from common language into expert jargon and are no longer in common use for everyone to participate in.
As experts act for a community and knowledge passes out of' community hands then democratic political systems shift away from participatory democracy towards representative democracy.
The world of experts is a small intellectual space to safe-keep the plans of society. The creations of specialists without feedback from the community tend to be less in touch with community needs and are sometimes counter-productive.
The whole community has diverse expertise to draw on to assess, plan and prioritise.
The awareness therapy pages share the blueprints of psychotherapy to reclaim some of the culture of being there for each other, noticing ourselves and our surroundings and taking charge of our lives.
When we know ourselves then our activities can be in harmony with ourselves. When we understand the world around us our activities can be in harmony with our surroundings.