Do you know how a CD works? Even if you know how it works is it something you think you could make by yourself? Try something even simpler. Do you know how you would make a pencil? Or how to make the paper to write on if you managed to figure out the pencil?
Our society and most of the world in general has become very interdependent on each other. It's a strange dichotomy that our society is so individualistic and yet we're totally reliant on everyone around us for nearly everything. Each of us has knowledge, but it seems to be isolated to specifically what we need to do for our individual lives. We know our jobs. We know our role and where we fit. We know this because that's all we need to know. Sure some of us may know how to program a computer and build a house. We may know pieces and parts to various things outside our need-to-know lives, but look at all the aspects of modern life and you can see how many holes there are in our knowledge. It's not exactly a bad thing either because not needing to know everything means we're allowed to fill our minds and our time with non-essential things like sports and art. Maybe it's the fact that we stopped requiring each of us to know everything that goes into surviving that we've progressed as far as we have. The theoretical physicist shouldn't have to worry about where her organic bananas come from when she goes to the grocery store. The banana farmer doesn't need to think about the complex computer code that goes into the banking software that tracks his family's finances.
I wonder when it all started. At what point did man start breaking up certain tasks to specific individuals? I would imagine as the groups of people got larger the more granular the tasks became until it got to a point where some people never knew exactly what the others were doing. In fact it's gotten to where we hardly know what kind of effort is put into keeping our society running. So much so that we take it for granted that things will just continue working because someone somewhere is taking care of it. They do their part while we do ours. With that there sometimes comes the assumption that what someone else does must not be that hard to do. How many times have you found yourself sarcastically asking "How hard is it to do this job?" when the power goes out or when something stops working? Just remember before you ask that question know that when something stops working that you're responsible for there may be someone asking the same thing about you.
Some of us may never experience that need to know more than our little part of the puzzle. We hope that things will continue on as they have been, with people knowing what they want to know. Part of me wonders though if we're not due for a reversal where our knowledge isn't so compartmentalized. If that were to happen could you rely on yourself to catch your own food? Could you sew your own clothes? More to the point, is the knowledge you currently have enough to help you beyond your own specific life?
