Every specialist yearns to be taken seriously

The alarmists about the population were an exciting alliance. Some simply hated people who believed in a god who would not bless condoms and abortion. Others were more afraid of the Chinese. Perhaps some were gentle humanists who were so nervous and saddened by people in such large numbers that they could no longer distinguish individuals. The really funny are those who blamed their disgust with man as a species. With lustful longing, they could talk about the coming epidemics and famines.

For my part, there is only one thing that worries me about all these people. This is what they will spend their days doing.

I am not afraid that unemployment will rise. On the contrary. People have an amazing ability to find something to fill their days with, and the better off, the less the invention relates to obvious needs.

Take the epidemic as an example.

It’s a bed of disappointment

In the past 20 years, the proportion of university graduates in Sweden has almost doubled. The evolution is the same in many countries. All of these people specialized in something. CBT, for example. or physical physics. or the origins of gender education. Of course, all these people think that their specialty is important. Otherwise, they would have chosen something else. And after three or four years of investing time, all of these people think their specialty is more important. Otherwise, they will be directly self-destructive.

The problem is that the more majors we have, the more competition for attention. It is a bed of disappointment. Almost all specialists will think that they, or at least their subject, get very little attention.

But suddenly it happens.

Epidemiology has been a specialty in recent decades. Horder has researched, granted, and created a common picture of what’s to come. And what will happen are real catastrophes, which only epidemiologists can control. There is even a kind of high priest for this specialty. His name is Neil Ferguson and he is located at Imperial College London. Hardly anyone has managed to sneeze in the past fifteen years, without coming up with a report showing that hundreds of thousands will die.

Of course, he was always seriously wrong. Despite covid. But this time the message still goes home. Perhaps he was a little mistaken in his exaggerations than usual. But I think above all that the reason is that we now have enough professionals coordinated in this guild, all over the world, to succeed in leading the society forward.

So I think the future will be. Every specialty must be taken seriously. Every specialist wants everyone to understand that what they are doing is the most important thing. And when it comes to the opportunity to leave everything behind for the most important of all – my specialty – society doesn’t have much to oppose.

We didn’t have this problem when we were so few that we had to specialize in obvious needs. The shoemakers knew we knew they existed. But now we are so many that the world is full of professionals who feel left out. They are just waiting for their chance to take over. It will happen again.