I might just be searching for something that doesn't exist, but it's worth a try. Lately, I've been describing myself as a multipotentialite or hyper-generalist, but I think that just confuses people. I'm looking to find a community of likeminded, differently skilled, non-traditionally intelligent people who appreciate both physical and mental pursuits in the true Renaissance spirit, i.e. improve one's body through hiking, trail running, yoga and body weight workouts -- while at the same time improving one's mind through reading, discussion, writing, understanding new concepts and frameworks or engaging in academic, spirited, yet friendly debates.
For example, I recently met someone at a retreat in the Eastern Sierra of California who was a former dancer in the New York Ballet and who studied under Mikhail Baryshnikov. He is now a care taker of the retreat center where I stayed. I had great respect for this man's dedication to a dream. As for me, I hold on to my pursuits and dreams the way some people love their children. You wouldn't abandon your children, would you? In that same way, I used to perform in symphony orchestras, traveled with our college's debate team and pursued a degree in political science. I run, hike, compete in trail races, play disc golf and get into philosophical discussions on metamodernism, complexity theory and the state of our political and economic systems. It's a balancing act because people in these different groups never meet each other -- but when they do, it's sometimes like oil and water. It's been like that for me since high school where I try to find the thread that connects all these different people and their ideas together. I've never tried to find a group where this all exists in one place, but it would be an ADHD / Renaissance dream come true.
I honestly believe that there is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts and if people from all these different interests came together in one place, it could be a place for paradigm shifting ideas, new inventions and who knows what types of new combinations of things. Now, I know what you're thinking -- they already have universities and community centers in certain cities. True, but notice how fields of study are separated into different buildings with different philosophies on different sides of the campus -- and students are forced to choose an identity. Even traditional schooling tells us that we must divide things into math, science, English, social studies, etc. and that it makes no real sense to try to combine such things (yes, of course there are exceptions. I taught at a high school that created thematic units of instruction that encouraged students to find connections).
It would be a dream to also find a way that this community could thrive economically. Imagine the creative and productive potential of such a community, where every imaginable skill would be available, for example, in creating content for the internet. Everyone would bring connections from different fields or areas of interest such that contracts and opportunities would flow. More left brain people do one thing. Right brain type people would do another. Visionaries and conceptual minded people would sit alongside GSD (get sh*t done) oriented people such that thought would be formed into action.
I have to add that I did my research in the area of self-organization and chaos theory as a model for education -- so I believe that a decentralized community where good ideas organically rise to the top has a much greater chance of success than traditional companies and organizations (where one might argue that brilliant ideas often don't see the light of day).
Let's put this another way. Companies generally do not recruit people in this way. Even with AI assisted job search tools, they've only figured out a faster way to scan through skills in traditional resumes. They still don't know what you truly know, what your innate abilities are, how you feel about certain things philosophically or the things that make you feel human or alive. They don't ask, typically, and they often don't care. Whereas, a truly revolutionary intentional community of the sort described above would ask these questions first.
I have to say -- if this resonated with anyone out there, you would change my heart and my view of humanity. As I sat down to write this, I wasn't even sure where it might go, but this is where it went. I was thinking this exact thing yesterday - that we might just have it backwards. In most academic pursuits, you start with a thesis and then find evidence to support your claim. Yet, there are many who say this leads to confirmation bias - that you are only finding things which support what you believe to be true - as opposed to sampling things and seeing what might arise. There's a name for the latter. Grounded Theory. I believe that if the right group of people came together around a central theme of, I don't know, finding a better way to live or a better way to make a living and enjoy being a human being - it might just work. It could even be started around a small set of questions, rather than a statement. Instead of restricting ideas with a tightly scripted purpose, you purposely keep it open because ---- open systems thrive!
Links to related work, ideas and examples are below:
What if you’re a jack of all trades and a master of the space in between all of them?
Thriving on the Edge of Chaos: An Argument for a Complex Adaptive Theory of Education
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