The Age of Specialisation

            Why are there so many workers in today’s cities and towns? Why doesn’t every one of us make the things he wants for himself as people did a long time ago?

           Primitive man did just that. He built his own hut, grew his own food, made his own clothing and furnished his little hut with what he wanted. And he was satisfied; he did not depend on anyone for food or for any other essentials. He was his own master. But as wants grew, and more and more people started to live together, they discovered the advantage of the division of labor. Since practice makes one perfect, doing the same thing again and again leads to greater speed and efficiency. So today different people are doing different things and no one tries to specialize in too many things.

             A result of this division of labor is that in our world we have specialists in all sorts of things. In Western countries young people graduate in dish washing, flower arrangement, interior decoration, hair dressing, and so on. An inevitable result in that people know more and more about less and less and work only in their on narrow field of specialization.

             There are a number of advantages of such a division of labor but there are at least two disadvantages also. One, people do not take much interest in each others work; they are now specialists. Secondly, the worker does not get the satisfaction that comes from producing a thing (e.g. a bicycle or a pen); each worker produces a small part of the thing and no one is its maker.