The Renaissance Man is dead. Truly and welly well well mortadella. . . It was not a sudden and traumatic death, although many of our reactions believe it to have been so. It has suffered on the deathbed of historical perspective, something akin to the demise of the British Empire (which happened long before World War Two), or the Industrial Revolution (which really comprised two revolutions). In the days when being a Renaissance Man entailed; darning your own socks, healing a wound, cooking supper, riding a horse, building shelter, wrestling a bear, and understanding women, the process was relatively simple. But the biggest clue that something is no longer possible is the use of all-inclusive yet limiting definitions such as post-industrial, post-renaissance, and especially post-modern.
The phrase ‘Post-Modern’ has an uncomfortable connotation; that everything after a certain time is both all-knowing and unknowing. The implication is that we had Baroque, Classical, Impressionist, Modern, and then Post-Modern. But how do you top Post-Modern? PP Modern? Son of Post-Modern? The Revenge of Post-Modernism? My Nan once told me that I was a Jack of all Trades and Master of none. I think that was the point in history when the Renaissance Man dies; when our Nan’s made this revelation to us. Clever people walk among us, but they are specialists. Brian May is Queen’s guitarist AND a working astrophysicist, but the day of the generalist has long gone, and what do we have left? We have folk who absorb themselves in some manner of ‘spirituality’ in an attempt to gain mastery and omnipotence over the vast and unknowable, thespians who are crafty at giving the impression that they are intellectual overlords, and the grimy unwashed entitlement lords and ladies whose very opinion, in their humble opinion, is equal to true intelligence. Just sayin’
You just can’t be a ‘Know-it-All’ any more. We have other epithets for these folks: Politicians, Trolls, and Dickheads.
