- - among professional disciplines (e.g. science, business, media, legislation, etc.). Even our top-notch educational institution are firmly divided into discipline-based "departments", each jealously guarding their individual territories. Make no mistakes - the same is obvious in our industries (e.g. marketing, production, R&D, etc.), governments - and in the life all around us ! Are we so possessive, so turf-minded, basically, so power hungry ... ?One does not have to go far for examples. Just recently, I was attending a superbly professional and well organized Symposium on Water Reuse - a very controversial and very interdisciplinary field indeed. The room was full of Engineers because it was organized by the American Society of Civil Engineering - not a single BIOLOGIST and not a single SOCIAL SCIENCE person there - and yet, we discussed the most important problem of reused water ACCEPTANCE.
How to make people trust it, use it - obviously a psychological issue. Advertizing people know well how to handle those - a new product acceptance and promotion !
We had nobody around to illuminate us !
So the blind kept talking about light - in the darkness - -
And the Everglades ?
Just see who is on that issue of life importance :
Ecologists, engineers, agriculturalists, developers, meteorologists, hydrologists, biologists, lawyers, demographers, big business, small business - you name it - and, of course, always politicians.
Do we really communicate - and hear each other in the noise ?
Do we even have the same language - let alone goal ?
An excellent point ! Professional "jealousies" and the usual lowly turf wars seem to be part of human (competitive) nature and the major basic obstacle. Let's get together and pull on the same end of the rope for the "common good". Or is there such a thing - that could make all kinds of disciplinary boundaries and/or "shyness" disappear ?
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