Division has been a profound force in shaping the way we live with and around others, in virtually all aspects of our lives. In social contexts, this increase in division manifests as a bent towards individualism. We have lost sight of our connection to others. In older societies, there was a more communal (not communist) approach, where individuals understood that their actions affected others. This understanding has been replaced by a view that favors privacy and autonomy (though I will argue later that these new favored virtues are in fact far from what we’ve actually achieved).
The consequences of this kind of division are several. First, because humans are innately social animals, it has led people to flock together by ideological or other abstract categories. It used to be that people would think of their physical community, instead of their ideological community. An excellent article in The Atlantic entitled “The Anti-Social Century,” discusses some of the more recent origins of this phenomenon. One of the more striking conjectures is that the erosion of “middle-ring” relationships—casual, in-person social bonds with neighbors and local acquaintances—has weakened social cohesion and tolerance. This has led to rising polarization, political nihilism, and a craving for recognition through confrontation. As people retreat into tightly bonded inner circles and digital echo chambers, they lose both the practice of compromise and the ability to understand those outside their ideological tribe, making democracy harder to sustain. The ironically named social media industry has contributed materially to the rapid rise of this phenomenon.1
In economic settings, we have fully bought into increased specialization, and also, separately, an adversarial, winner-takes-all approach. We have incentivized the development of extreme, narrow expertise, and largely shunned inter-disciplinary thinking. But this comes with many problems.
Take diabetes, for example. It’s classified as an endocrine disorder and thus typically falls under the care of an endocrinologist. But diabetes often affects the heart, eyes, kidneys, nervous system, and mental health—requiring input from cardiologists, ophthalmologists, nephrologists, neurologists, and psychologists. And that’s just to manage the disease after diagnosis. Its root causes span genetics, diet, lifestyle, chronic stress, and socioeconomic conditions. If the real goal is prevention—not just treatment—it is evident that the best approaches would cut across all these domains, guided by professionals capable of seeing the whole picture. But that obvious ideal is far from the current reality of segregating expertise into narrow categories.
Or, think of the epidemic of poverty in the world today. According to the World Bank, as of 2024, around 44% of the world’s population – roughly 3.5 billion people – live on less than $6.85 per day. And around 8.5% of the population (700 million people) live in extreme poverty, “surviving” on less than $2.15 per day.2 These problems are very difficult to solve, precisely because they require solutions across domains of health (including nutrition and food security, acute treatment of issues such as malnutrition or malaria, preventative care, and psychological health), education (for children and adults), and economic opportunity—just to name a few. If someone becomes healthy but still lacks opportunities to earn more than $7 per day, there is little room for hope. Solutions popular with philanthropic funders tend to be narrow and specialized – a new malaria pill, or providing community health workers for remote, rural areas. But what’s actually needed is a bold effort across all the relevant domains.
In both of these instances, hyper-specialization becomes a form of division that prevents effective, systemic solutions. It is worth noting that this kind of specialization aligns with prestige and status. That, too, can shape the solutions that get prioritized. This is a topic we will examine later in this book.