For the last couple days, I attended a conference that involved a number academics. Listening to the discussion got me thinking: Has academics become to specialized?

Not too long ago, I read the excellent book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Among other things, it focuses on Scotland during the Enlightenment, and it reminded me how great thinkers of that era were not specialists. The most famous, of course, is Leonardo da Vinci. He was a painter, inventor, scientist and mathematician. As such, he was aware of the many other great thinkers of his age.

Like Da Vinci, famed father of modern economics, Adam Smith, was an enlightenment era academic. But he famously spent huge amount of his time in the coffee houses of Edinburgh and Glasgow exchanging ideas with the greatest minds of his age from a wide range of disciplines.

Mutli-disciplinary expertise wasn’t limited to Smith and Da Vinci. Surgeons were naturalists. Geologists were moral and natural philosophers. Lawyers were interested in physics and chemistry. (Check out this list for many more examples.)

As such, the great thinkers were constantly challenged by the best ideas from other disciplines. Myopia induced by specialization was impossible.

Over the last few days, I listened to hours of academic presentations. Only once did a speaker suggest looking to other disciplines for guidance. And his remarks, it seemed, were met with skepticism among the assembly.

Why shouldn’t the principles that underly physics or philosophy or psychology impact the theory and practice of communications? It seems to me that it should. And it seems to me that professors of all stripes could benefit from looking beyond their own fields a little more often.

Over at Bitter’s place, I saw this post about fatherhood and manhood. Apparently this is the subject of a piece in Time Magazine, but here’s the post that got me thinking.

“Masculinity has traditionally been associated with work and work-related success, with competition, power, prestige, dominance over women, restrictive emotionality. . . But a good parent needs to be expressive, patient, emotional, not money oriented. Basically, masculinity is bad for you.”

That comes from Time, btw, not the blog I just linked to. But the blogger responds in part by saying:

The problem with ideas like masculinity and manhood is not that they are bundles of bad behavior. The problem is that they’ve been hijacked by half-men. The droves of males we see advancing themselves in their careers by neglecting their children should not rightly be called real men. They are boys playing at the game of man. It is a man-boy who thinks money is his measure. It is a man-boy who works long hours so he can win the approval of his CEO. It is the man-boy who thinks he is something because he can get women to do his bidding.

A real man, on the other hand, protects and provides for his family, and partners with his wife to train up his children in the way they should go. He isn’t necessarily gabby, but his children know in their souls that he loves them. He is patient and kind. He lays down his life for his family every day.

Fifty years ago, we all knew these things. Today, however, we are beset by a host of intellectuals who haven’t the sense to recognize that fewer and fewer males know how to become real men. The problem is not that masculinity is rotten. It is that so few men live up to it.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! This is why books like the “Dangerous Book for Boys” are so popular right now. Some of us recognize that our parents didn’t raise Generation X, they raised Generation Wuss.

But here’s the thing: you don’t get to be a man’s man by caring about being a man’s man. You don’t get there by reading Time freaking magazine say that masculinity is a bad thing. You get there by not caring. You don’t give a damn what the neighbors say, or whether or not your sister-in-law is going to cluck over your decisions. The only thing you care about is this:

“Is this the best thing for my family?”

Because being a man (once you’re a father) is all about your family. For the vast majority of us (Teddy Roosevelt not included), the legacy we will leave to the world is not our job, or our bank account. It’s our kids.

This doesn’t mean we drop everything in order to cater to the whims of our offspring… quite the opposite. If you’re lucky enough to be one of the few well-adjusted Americans that remain in this glorious Republic, you and I probably share some similar experiences from childhood.

- Our lives weren’t structured to every last minute of every last day. Sometimes we simply had to amuse ourselves.

- Our parents weren’t our friends. They were our mom and dad, and we clearly knew the difference. It was easier (and certainly more pleasurable) to imagine kissing our 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Wilcox than it was to imagine calling our mom or dad by their first name.

- We didn’t get our way. I don’t mean we didn’t get our way until we pouted for twenty minutes, or we didn’t get our way 20% of the time… I mean it was common for us to get told “No”, and that was the end of the discussion… unless we kept whining “please please please” and then we got punished for that.

- We knew our parents loved us. You don’t need a Ferrari on your 16th birthday to understand that. You need to be told, and you need to be shown. A hug and a kiss, an “I’m proud of you” or “You did a great job!” go a long freaking way.

We weren’t babied, we weren’t coddled, we had actual responsibilities and obligations even as kids. We weren’t abused, but bullshit wasn’t tolerated in large amounts. We were punished when we needed to be punished, and we got cool treats that were completely unexpected at times. And we turned out fine.

At least I think I did. Honestly, I really don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I guess I’m secure enough in my manhood and fatherhood that I don’t ponder these things. The sad thing is, apparently enough Americans feel differently that Time Magazine devotes an entire article to this phenomenon.

You don’t need a self-help book to be a better man or a better dad (of course, I reserve the right to disavow this statement if I ever write such a book). Honestly, it’s not that freaking hard. “Is this the best thing for my family?” That’s all it takes. Well, that and the ability to answer that question without lying to yourself.

“19 years ago, Albequerque was kind of a dump.”
- Cam Edwards

(Note to now-annoyed Albequerque readers: Cam went onto say how beautiful the place was on his recent visit.)

Cam: Gee, that’s the quote of the day? Talk about slow news… we’ve got breaking news that bright lights are interesting and apparently the fact that Albuquerque (it’s spelled with a U, by the way) was a dump two decades ago is the most interesting thing someone’s said?

Man, just wait til I finish the post I’m working on.

By the way, the bright light thing was a joke. That’s an incredibly cute kid Jim has, and Lord knows I post enough kid pictures at my blog.

When I was a little kid, maybe four years old, I crawled up in my mom’s lap one day and asked her: “Will I ever be too old to sit on your lap?”

My mom, of course, answered no. And I believed her. But the truth is, I asked the wrong question.

You’re never too big for your mom or dad’s lap. But there’ll come a day when they’re too small for you. Today was that day.

I spent most of this morning in the office of an oncologist in Houston, Texas. It seems my mother, who survived lung cancer eight years ago, is now suffering from pancreatic cancer. The question now is how far has it progressed, and what (if anything) can be done to stop it. Right now, I have no idea what the answers are. I just want to be there for my mom like she was there for me at all of the crucial moments in my life.

One day, one of my kids may ask me a similar question to the one I posed to my mother 29 years ago. I’ll probably answer them the same way my mom answered me. And I won’t be lying. But now I know they’re just not asking the right question.

I think we all come to this realization sooner or later. I suppose it’s a blessing that I made it to my 33rd year before I truly realized that nothing lasts forever… even the ones you love.

Jim: Cam, as I mentioned earlier, I keep looking for the right words to address this heartbreaking situation, and I just can’t find much beyond, “I’m so, so sorry.”