All Things Considered
My wife is not impressed with my extensive knowledge of all subjects.
I want her to exclaim “You are a boy genius!” when she says, “Have you heard of Sukkot? and I say, “Oh, the feast of the tabernacles?” Instead she just says, “Yeah”.
When I ask why she isn’t impressed she says, “I just expect you to know everything”, which is nice, but the right answer is, “How can any mortal man have so much knowledge? They should give you an honorary doctorate in All Things.”
What does “Allgemeinwissen” mean, then??
But this isn’t just “general knowledge”, its my extensive knowledge of all things ;)
well, yeah it’s easy to google for the translation, but basically what you’re describing is basically Allgemeinwissen. In Germany they honor the knowledge in all things more than over here! Where it’s good enough to be an expert in one thing and for the other things you hire minions…
I was waiting for you to come back with a real answer, so I didn’t just have to depend on google translate.
Agreed. I am a fan of people having great broad knowledge with some real expertise in one or two areas.
Tim Brown, founder of IDEO describes people like that, the kind of people they like to hire: “people who are so inquisitive about the world that they’re willing to try to do what you do. We call them “T-shaped people.” They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T—they’re mechanical engineers or industrial designers.
But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need”.