A Gentleman Delegates

In his 1973 novel, Time Enough for Love, Robert Heinlein wrote that

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

That quote gets shared a lot, and perhaps rightly so. Like most quotes, it is generally shared out of context. Time Enough for Love is the story of Lazarus Long, a human being who, as his name hints, has managed to live for some 2,000 years. Two millennia give a person an extended opportunity to master many skills, but most who repeat these lines think the rest of us should acquire all these competencies in the briefer time we are allotted. (I appreciate that Heinlein starts with the diapers before moving on to planning invasions and dying gallantly. It’s a good riposte to a certain kind of contemporary masculinity influencer, the sort who believes in rigidly complementarian gender roles.)

An oft-repeated joke in my family:

How many WASPs does it take to change a lightbulb?

Two. One to mix martinis, and the other to call the electrician.

To outsiders, the joke suggests alcoholism and laziness, and the lamentable truth that wealth and privilege breed astounding incompetence. To insiders – those who grew up in a certain Cheeverish world of Our Kind of People – there’s something else. A gentleman might not be able to butcher a hog or program a computer, but he almost certainly can change a lightbulb. He calls the electrician not because he is lazy or wasteful, but because he likes to be surrounded by people who are very, very good at what they do, and he knows he himself cannot be good at all things.

A gentleman smiles indulgently at Heinlein’s claim that “specialization is for insects.” A gentleman believes that some people have expertise that others don’t, and that truth is to be celebrated, not decried. Training matters. Passion matters. Patiently acquired skill matters. And instead of demanding that each of us become a jack of all trades, it is better to have the “masters of one” saved in your phone’s contacts. Humans are meant to live in communities, and though (contra the new mayor of Gotham) rugged individualism is to be celebrated, we cannot spend our entire lives self-sufficient, sovereign, and autonomous. We come into the world helpless and dependent, and many of us will leave in much the same way. One can try to do one’s best, avoid being a burden wherever possible, and still surrender to the reality that one will always need other people. Calling the electrician to change the lightbulb gives a craftsman his deserved fee – and reminds the gentleman to acknowledge his own limitations.

A gentleman must never be a bore. Part of what makes a bore a bore is that he is a know-it-all, claiming expertise in all fields. A bore assumes that his knowledge and his skills are what make him interesting and useful, and he believes that unless he repeatedly reminds everyone in earshot of all that he knows, he won’t receive the respect and attention he craves. A bore can’t quite internalize the truth that it is always better to be interested than to try to be interesting. A bore is convinced he will only be loved if he is needed, and that he will only be needed if he can demonstrate Heinleinian levels of knowledge and competence.

As a boy, I was taught to ask questions, and to draw people out in conversation. And I was taught to admire anyone who was an expert in a particular field, be it blacksmithing or neurosurgery or renaissance polyphony. Listening to someone describe their passion – or watching them work on a craft that was clearly a calling – is a delight all in itself. How foolish to claim a similar expertise, or to insist on doing the same thing yourself (and doing it badly), when one can sit back and watch in wonder as someone gifted does what they were born (or at least trained) to do?

A podcaster to whom I occasionally listen recently mocked “grown men who wear other men’s names on their backs.” It was somehow indignified and unmasculine, the podcaster claimed, to celebrate another man’s triumphs as if they were your own. It’s okay for a man to be a sports fan, apparently, but not to identify too closely with the skills and abilities of an athlete younger than oneself. I have an official Matthew Stafford Los Angeles Rams jersey, and a (now-dated) official “Chicharito” Los Angeles Galaxy jersey. I wear each with pleasure, and I delight (or in Chicharito’s case, delighted) in the on-field successes of the men whose names are emblazoned on my back. It’s absurd to imagine that I could ever do the things these men do, and even more absurd to claim that it is somehow undignified or unmasculine to delegate to these superb athletes the task of winning a game for the angel town.

A gentleman, I was taught, is always curious, brave, and willing to try new things. He is someone others can rely upon in emergencies. He is also someone who cheerfully acknowledges his limitations, not for the sake of shirking responsibility but for the sake of allowing the more talented and skilled to ply their trade. His sense of himself lies less in his encyclopedic knowledge of survival skills, and more in his open and cheerful willingness to delegate to his betters.