Image courtesy Andrea Piacquadio and Pexels

We’re often encouraged to specialise, to go deeply into something and become qualified in it. It’s sensible advice: a specialist makes more money than a jack-of-all-trades.

Likewise, the standard advice when running a business is to have a specific product, a single focus. Not a little bit of this and a little bit of that… Your impact becomes diluted if you have too many different things going on; you have a scattered effect. 

Ditto when writing a blog: one should have a specific focus or niche. The more specific the better. ‘The Right Socks to Wear to Bed Blog’ will do much better than ‘The General Life Advice Blog’.

It’s sound counsel, but I fail. You’ve probably noticed that I roam through a range of topics and I offer a range of products and services. (Subjects I’m currently offering the home-educated children include Creative Writing, French, Communication Skills, Public Speaking, and ‘A Walk on the Wild Side’ – see below.)

I’m sure that this variety is not good for my business, but as inventor Buckminster Fuller pointed out, with a narrow focus, we miss insights that emerge when we have a more wide-ranging view of things. He recommended being a generalist, a cross-disciplinarian rather than a specialist. 

We can carry the analogy to eyesight: those who teach how to improve one’s eyesight recommend a relaxed, peripherally-aware style of looking rather than an intense foveal focus. There is something about the relaxed ‘soft’ gaze that absorbs more. Besides, we are more likely to engage in lateral thinking with that diffused perspective than if we are hyper-focused.

I decided to call my blog ‘The Whole News’ because of my interest in a variety of things. (I couldn’t do the ‘sock’ thing.) And along the way, I have discovered all sorts of fascinating connections between areas of life that previously seemed to be quite separate.

Actually, my theme grew out of my deep dive into the principle of polarity, and how absolutely everything is two-sided. Despite this fact of two-sidedness, we are often so focused on only one side that we miss the other altogether – such as the fact that the people in our lives who challenge us are supporting our growth just as much (or more) than those who encourage us.

In expanding to include ‘The Whole News’, I wanted to challenge myself and others to see the whole big picture rather than being fixated on just one aspect of something. 

The covid adventure revealed to me that truth often lies in the inverse of what is being presented as the truth. For example:

• We send our children to school because we value education, but the education system seems to be doing the opposite: critical thinking is now a thing of the past, it seems, and basic skills are evaporating (or so I observe with the youth I teach, both schooled and unschooled);
• We have an elaborate ‘health system’ because no one wants to be sick, and yet it’s really more of a sickness system; we are all bewitched by the relatively modern and unproven idea of ‘catching germs and viruses’. (More on that in my musical.) One benefit is that, since covid, we have learnt to be very wary of the words ‘safe and effective’;
• Social justice is extremely important but certain elements (e.g. BLM and transgenderism being pushed onto youth) reveal a murky underbelly;
• Climate ‘science’ ignores facts, such as carbon actually being an essential element of life (so should not be ‘zeroed’); that oil is a renewable resource and not a ‘fossil fuel’; and that many forms of ‘green’ energy are actually significant pollutants;
• Justice is a critical tenet of an advanced society, and yet the justice system in the Western world is actually more loyal to its own legal B.A.R. system than to the people it is supposed to serve; governments around the world, and certainly here in Australia, are not representing and serving the people but have been fraudulently transforming themselves into corporations that are imposing an overwhelming and punitive abundance of rules and mandates that are not actually lawful; and schools are no longer teaching these subjects;
• Our history reveals important truths about who we are (and what is coming), but there are anomalies in the historic and geologic record that make the alert thinker question some long-held views. We know that history books are written by the victors but there is so much more… For example, near the end of his life Darwin admitted that there is no evidence of one type of species evolving into another; there has been glaciation and flash-freezing but there never was an ice age; there are some mathematical correlations in the chronological history of the world that are too precise and repetitive to be natural; there is evidence for both a globe and a flat-earth model (which suggests something else entirely);
• The Bible contains some real history, some spiritual truth, and a lot of fiction; there is no historical evidence for the existence of either Jesus or Moses…

I feel as if my mind is on fire in the wake of ‘covid’ with everything I’m learning!

After a lifetime of absorbing the content revealed to us via mainstream platforms, I’m keen to discover the ‘whole news’ and to share it with you. Hence the focus of this blog, that no doubt seems to be no focus at all.

The ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ that I mentioned above – I’d like to share some of the important and eye-opening issues with youth. We are less likely to react when we see (and can appreciate) the other side, thus developing ‘wholistic perception’.

Meanwhile, here’s what’s coming up this week:

I’m interviewing Dr John Demartini about absolute/objective vs subjective reality on Monday – stand by for the link when it’s published.

I’m teaching a writing class on How to Impact Your Readers this Tuesday night via Laneway Learning. Here’s the information/link to book in.

Jimboomba Open Mic Night is scheduled for this Wednesday night: https://www.facebook.com/WritersOpenMicJimboomba/

And on Thursday night I have an introductory webinar scheduled re The Mastery Club Online Adventure – it’s free! Do join us.