In his book Voltaire’s Bastards, Canuck philosopher John Ralston Saul likes to opine on the “cult of expertise”, the stunted system that modern, industrial societies volunteered for when they started regimenting working life into wholly separate professional disciplines. “Among the illusions which have invested our civilization is an absolute belief that the solutions to our problems must be a more determined application of rationally organized expertise,” he wrote. “The reality is that our problems are largely the product of that application.” By creating what he called “feudal fiefdoms of expertise”, we’ve asked to be individually limited in every way but one, therefore navigating our societies into positions where “solutions” are only ever the products of singular points of view.

For example, I am a food writer, and not a particularly good one. I may have grown up in the food and beverage trade, but all of you could more capably judge what it is that you put in your mouths. You don’t need me telling you what is good and what isn’t. Ah, but because I have a platform in newspapers, magazines, and the web, I am to be regarded (to those who know me not) as an expert. Such a system not only guarantees that we will often run across charlatans who have no business doing the jobs that they do, it also decrees that I am a rather useless person when it comes to just about everything beyond matters concerning the pen and keyboard (and no, I can’t fix either if they break). As a cold consequence, I would be disposable if suddenly rendered incapable of doing The One Thing That I Do.

Being defined by a profession is a hell of a way to go through life. Just ask every Cooper, Cartwright, and Ratcatcher. The web is no different. You’d think with 20+ years of the internet under our belts that we’d be a bunch of polymaths by now, but as the vapid, huckster Social Media Guru in the video above so poetically points out, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

For those of you who are struggling to adapt to the new social media environment, enjoy.

PS. This video isn’t exactly safe for work. There’s no grotesque bestial nudity, darling, just foul language (via Laughing Squid).