experts and specialists

our mind usually tends to focus on well defined forms and facts.
What we have been able to define by these forms and ideas is what we grasp, and what we grasp creates the context of our environment.

From generalities we have been able to grasp specifics and these specifics have developed into a specialisation over a period of time. Our environment is composed of such specifics and specialisations.
Doctors, Lawyers, Equity Investors, Bankers, Sociologists, are specialists in their field or profession.

These professions were formed partly by our recognition of such a need in our environment and today we choose these forms and ideas to represent ourselves by way of a profession in the environment.

Each of these professions are composed of definite forms and ideas, each have their uniqueness, ideas and specialisations. And people who take up one of these professions get molded to a form of thinking that is requisite of that profession.

When the well defined ideas and notions inhabit our thinking we usually are unaware or ignorant about the specialisations and uniqueness of other professions. In time, we usually begin to infer that we understand more than we usually do.

We tend to extrapolate our experiences from one profession and make decisions on presumptions about the other.
If a person is a Doctor by profession, she could also be a financial investor in stock or an real estate investor or ascribing to legal codes in trading.
As a Doctor specialised in medicine one does make general decisions about various other specialisations be it stocks, real estate or the law.

How good these financial decisions are vis a vis a Financial Expert or vis a vis a Lawyer would be circumspect, but such kind of decisions are made in our lives.

Though being specialists in one field we do delve into other fields with no specialisation, though our profession is one, we do bank, we do make investments in stocks, we conform to legal codes, though our knowledge is limited in these peripheral fields given the specifics of our profession, we tend to interpret or infer our understanding in these peripheral fields.

Our lives does interplay with these other specialities.
But given our profession or speciality, there is a knowledge gap between what we know of these other specialities and what we think we know of these specialities which introduces an improbability or uncertainty in our functioning and thinking.

The point is not that this is wrong, but the danger lies between what you know and what you think you know for those ideas/forms that do not form our speciality.

In the old days, the specialists were few and far between, most people were concerned with their farms, live stock and house. Our great grand fathers were specialists in cultivating food, providing shelter and defending their own.
The disconnect even if there was any would not lead to a great uncertainty in their farms, live stock and house such that it would impact their existence and lives dearly.
They were in essence generalists and being generalists they risked less.

Today given our environment and the need to be specialists, we risk more albeit unknowingly.

The crux is that if we risk so much being specialists on account of our profession, and this is the realm of what we know, imagine what we risk on account of being unaware or uninformed.

How many of us would have predicted the rise of fuel costs, the fall of banks where we keep half our savings, the fall of insurance firms where we have the other half of our savings, the loss of homes or investments with the sub-prime fall out.....

Specialisations comes at a cost...and a risk....
But then pay offs from specialisations can be great too.....