The Fungibles
 

So I think we can agree that people professionally are fungible: doctors, farmers, scientists, and most especially lawyers. But what about artists? Are they the one profession where a singluar vision is required which therefore makes them irreplaceable?

I'd say a great majority of "artists" are fungible -- for sure. In fact, I would't classify architects designing the strip mall or microwave oven office building an artist. But not the greats, or the unique -- their singular vision and creative spirit is not something that another can replicate. And this is different than the great or unique doctors or lawyers etc. Another would have taken Earl Warren's place on SCOTUS and Brown v. Board would have come soon enough. Same with Fleming, Currie, Watson and Crick, or even Abe Lincoln -- even if he had never been president, slavery would be a thing of the past today; don't know how or when, but it would have gone the way of the dodo; and the Union (once split -- maybe) would be one, like Germany is now one.

But Michelangelo and Rothko -- nobody would have painted the Sistine Chapel or worked with marble like Michelangelo, and no one would have painted naked emotion and the elemental like Rothko. Or Shakespeare and Hardy, or Giocometti and Serra, or Palladio and Wren, or Olmstead and Koons. Or Dickinson and Keillor (yes, that Keillor, Garrison the genius). You can say this about artists. You can't say it about any other professionals.

And you can't say it about prophets.

Therefore, have children. Because unless you are a singular artist, you're nothing but a cog and wholly and entirely replaceable by a simple trip to Ace Hardware.

are parents fungible?

No. If you had experience with the foster care system, you would know this without asking.

Good example. Parents do make a difference. But if you had parents making a good honest effort, at that point the differences won't matter as much. It's the consistent honest effort that must pervade what we do.

I disagree, unless you're using a very liberal definition of artist. Genius is genius, and infungible in any capacity. There would have been no other Einstein.

On the other hand, the simultaneous development of calculus by two different philosophers, independently of one another, lends some support for your argument that however great one man's discoveries, eventually another one could have and would have made them.

You have kids, right? I think you do. There's a book you might like that celebrates the importance of even the artists of the world (whose significance and necessity is often overlooked in our society). It's a cute kids' book called Frederick. It's a classic, and almost certainly at your library. It has a great message about artists, but really about the significance of every individual (assuming that individual is not fungible, of course), no matter his talents.

No person as an individual is fungible, but a person's professional life is entirely fungible -- except the artist.

And that's why I ended the first post with "have children," b/c for a child, the parents are irreplaceable.

Therefore, no matter what you do professionally, if you're a parent, you'll be, in at least one area of your life, irreplaceable, needed, and essential.

Now those people who are both parents and artists . . . wow, just wow.

Some scientists almost function as artists.

When Journey replaced Steve Perry with Steve Augeri and they sounded exactly the same, I'd say that proves some artists can be fungible.

There's a line-drawing problem, but it doesn't disprove the point.

I know this is a week old. I'm slow.

I think I agree with your conclusion, but I'm not really sure what you mean by the foster care example.

I think the fact that parents are not fungible is what causes adopted children to feel a sense of loss and abandonment, regardless of whether they are adopted into loving, intact families.